“Sometimes I think we’ve got angels watching over us…” Catherine was sitting happily, and warm once again, in a Romanian car being driven by a Turk along the bouncy, rain-lashed roads of southern Bulgaria.  Just an hour before we’d been standing at the edge of Turkey looking for a final lift to take us out of the country; a chill rising as a hidden sun was setting behind thick grey clouds which were threatening to tip their contents all over us. If we’d have known then what the future held for us we would have felt that the angels were about coming out to work overtime on our behalf…

The day had begun back in Istanbul in the place of our couchsurf host Ozkal, an electrical engineer, university lecturer and inventor. Ozkal had an exceptionally cluttered top-floor flat in the heart of historic Istanbul filled with books, circuit boards and his own inventions, including a cool little robot which buzzed around of its own accord hunting out and extinguishing candles with a fan on its chest. The confusion of Ozkal’s flat was in direct contrast to the clarity of his thinking. Over our final breakfast in Turkey he gave us the best critique we’ve heard yet of Turkey’s current regime. How sad it is to learn that the economic growth which is currently benefitting the Turkish people is built upon the same fools’ gold foundations as the incredible collapsing economies of Europe. So the government ministers borrow money, buy popularity, fill their own pockets and leave the people an unpayable debt to deal with later…

After three months we felt so at home in Turkey but now it was time to go, with only nine days left for us to complete our eastern European travels before reaching Venice. The only thing that stopped me from feeling too sad about leaving was the certainty that we’d return. In fact, I needn’t have felt sad at all because I was about to discover the Turkish experience was about to be extended all the way to Bucharest…

We walked from Ozkal’s flat to the edge of one of the main roads out of the city and started hitching. One of the laws of hitch-hiking is the more cars there are the less chance you have of getting picked up, I think it’s got something to do with the phenomenon of bystander apathy – if there are lots of people around everyone assumes someone else will do it so they don’t bother. And that’s why I didn’t feel optimistic starting our journey out of Turkey on one of the busiest roads out of Europe’s busiest city.

Still this being Turkey I needn’t have worried, an hour and a half later we had had three lifts, been offered two meals and given a cd of a Turkish singer as a present from one of the people who picked us up (I may have mentioned before but the quality of music, generally Turkish / Kurdish traditional, played in almost all of the cars that pick us up is very high).

Nevertheless the dark rises early here in November, so when the last of these lifts dropped us off we found ourselves on an empty road under skies changing from grey to black quicker than Paul McCartney’s hair. Whenever hitching in the dark I always, despite myself, start to get scared. All the cars that I previously imagined filled with sunny, good-natured people on the lookout for people to help out, I suddenly imagine to be driven by dark-minded devils who won’t be able to believe their luck at being able to steal away the souls of a couple of foolish hitch-hikers by the roadside.

So it was that when a speeding car pulled across three empty lanes to park up for us in the hard shoulder just on the cusp of dusk I sprinted towards it, hopeful that the last lift of the dying daylight might get us as far as the border town of Edirne where we would be able to look for a truck into Bulgaria.

The driver, Adil, not only spoke fluent English but he and his wife, Efsun, couldn’t have been warmer in their welcome to us. Within a minute we’d discovered that not only where they driving to the border they were also going to cross it, and then drive all the way across Bulgaria and into our next intended destination of Romania. And within another minute they’d invited us to stay with them for the night at their place in Bucharest. Scarcely believing our luck we gratefully accepted. Our deepest memory of Turkey was its incredible hospitality, and so it was that Turkish hospitality not only carried us out of the country but across the next country and into the next one after that.

At the Turkish-Bulgarian border a long line of sleeping trucks was lying, their lights switched off and no signs that any of them would be stirring soon. Apart from us the only thing moving at the Bulgarian border was a stray dog wandering between the pools of street light and the border barrier which rose up, at the command of an unseen hand, to let us into our next country. Had it have not been for Adil and Efsun’s generosity I’m not sure how we would have been able to get beyond the border at all.

Unfortunately, though that did mean pretty much missing out on Bulgaria altogether. My long-standing interest in visiting the country had begun when I was a teenager and a well-travelled slightly older lad I met in France sung its praises to me and told me that the Bulgarian women were the most beautiful in the world. Sadly, on this my only trip to Bulgaria, my only experience of the country was of a series of dark, very bumpy two lane roads. We made one stop at a petrol station where my sole glimpse of Bulgarian women was a portly, middle-aged lady serving the coffee and sandwiches that Adil bought for us.

The bumpy roads of Bulgaria were made even more interesting by Adil’s unique style of negotiating speed bumps which involved driving over them at the same speed he was already going at whilst shouting “wooah!” At considerable speeds the little Romanian car we’d changed into at the border rushed and leapt through Bulgaria and within a few hours that was behind us and we were entering Romania, where Adil and Efsun had a second home.

Before heading out to their house on the edge of town Adil gave us a midnight tour of Bucharest. Catherine, whose image of the country was all shaven headed orphans and people living in sewers was amazed “it looks like Times Square”. Even I, who was here in 2005, was surprised by how much it’s been spruced up (although it is possible also that my standards have fallen after spending lots of time in the biggest cities of India and Indonesia).

Catherine commented on the fact there was a shop selling religious icons right next door to a sex shop (that particularly European phenomenon). Adil told us the interesting tale of a recent scandal in Romania, when it was discovered that the country’s “first sister” was pregnant. I imagined the unfortunate nun to have been trying to visit the icon shop but to have accidently opened the next door and entered a world of sin.  I thought she should have tried to cover up by claiming divine conception but unfortunately the plot thickened when it turned out the father was no less a figure than the country’s first father – the chief bishop.

Adil and Efsun had a luxurious house on the outskirts of Bucharest and our new friends treated us to a post-midnight feast with bottles of wine and spirits cracking open as if we were celebrating at a reunion after ten years away. Unfortunately I can’t remember too much of the specifics of this early morning drinking session so I’ll just have to finish off by repeating the status I posted on Facebook at 6am that morning just before going to bed….

I was very sorry to leave Turkey, a country where we have enjoyed the most amazing hospitality, but what a great final experience of the country – hitch-hiking out of Istanbul this afternoon we were picked up by a Turkish couple who drove us across the border, all the way through Bulgaria and into Romania and invited us to stay at their house in Bucharest. It’s now 6am and after a great night and with a belly full of Turkish food, Moldovan wine, Irish liqueur and an unidentified Romanian spirit I’m off to bed. çok teşekkür ederim everybody who helped us out during our amazing 3 months in Turkey, some people in Europe think the worst of the Turkish people but if they only knew what they’re generally like then they’d think them the best people you could ever hope to meet.