The night before, we had tried to find a dash-cam for the car since there had been some brilliant roads on the way already, but failed. Our last minute purchase from Mediamarkt, before we set off, turned out to be terrible to the point of useless (never buy cheap stuff!!!), that was down to me not having enough time to source a decent one.

Hira was feeling none of the symptoms and we were quite upbeat about it all. We looked at the road ahead and the weather forecast was not pretty. Nevertheless, we thought we’d make it to Sofia for lunch and a stroll through the city centre and then we’ll head towards the Turkish border to spend the night in Svilengrad. The idea was to arrive at the border crossing early in the morning to beat the rush and have plenty of time in case the Turkish customs agents decided to have a thorough screening of the car. We had seen some tough experiences while doing research on other people that had done similar road trips so were a bit cautious.

Roads in Serbia were pretty decent, specially the main link between Belgrad and Sofia is probably the busiest in the region. We made good distance in no time. New sections of this motorway were being built so we did run into some diversions and start-stop traffic in the end but all manageable.

The border crossing into Bulgaria was uneventful but the immigration officer did take her sweet time with checking every single piece of paper, from car registration to passports and health & car insurance… dont know how much of that was necessary, given we were driving a German registered car back into EU but I suppose this is what EU demands from them.

Once in, we were advised to purchase highway toll tax number. This was supposed to be an all electronic, online process but none of it was possible as all the machines were out of order. Someone had won the job of checking car registration manually and issuing the registration confirmation via a dot-matrix printer (remember them?). Didn’t have to stick anything to the car windshield, something that we had to do at every border crossing since leaving Germany (there are no tolls to use German Autobahn, even for foreign registered vehicles).

Good thing we kept all the paperwork at hand because not more than 10 km inside Bulgaria, we were pulled over by Bulgarian police. These gentlemen went through all the paperwork that the lady at the immigration had already checked, plus the receipt for the highway tolls. This time, his handheld computer was working just fine.

As we approached Sofia, the weather took a turn for the worse (as predicted). So much so that we didn’t see a point in making a stop in a city. The navigation system was showing some traffic build up that made the decision even easier. We kept driving and arrived in Svilengrad in the late afternoon.

We had originally intended to stay the night here but having talked to the gentleman at the service station, we found out that the border crossing into Turkey at this time of the year is not busy at all. So instead of staying, we decided to cross into Turkey right away.

Even though there were kilometers upon kilometers of trucks, waiting to be let in, the lane for cars and busses was fairly empty and we were able to approach the crossing in no time. Turkey was one of the more stringent checks, with all the documents receiving proper attention. If you’re heading this way, make sure that you get a ‘green card’ from your car insurance provider. Some include Turkey in their coverage and that’d not only save you valuable time at the border, but also save you money. The immigration officer indicated that we need to report to customs for a screening of the car. Once we approached the customs officer, he was happy enough to just see through the car and bags, without actually wanting us to open them up for him.

And so we were now in Turkey.

Just had to find out how to get an electronic tag for the highway tolls. There are plenty of them available right outside the crossing point and you can purchase tags with credit loaded to them depending on your period of stay in Turkey.

Time-wise, we were doing great. It wasn’t even sundown and Istanbul seemed like a very realistic goal for the night.

And that’s exactly what we did. We arrived in Istanbul around 11pm. This turned out to be 14 hours on the road with all the driving and processing at borders and it was to take its toll, as we soon found out.