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Where was I...
According to "The Computer", we had entered Turkey with a car, and obviously they wouldn't let us out again until the computer said it was OK. But Geary (the registered owner) had no stamp in his passport saying that we had entered with a car, so they couldn't (wouldn't?) give him a stamp out and remove it from the computer.
All this was goging on a oppersite ends of no-mans land. Each kept telling us to go back to the other. "Go and see Borish and tell him I said it was OK" was the kind of thing we had to deal with. The guy on the north end thought the rally was pretty cool and wanted us to get through and carry on. At one point he said "You are free to go. You are going to Istanbul." but he absolutely no right to say that. I was at this point that we spotted that heavily armed military check point. Keeping a very close eye on our game of limbo limbo. Eventually we managed to get them to actually go and talk to each other, decide and sort out what we were gong to do, and let us do it.
It was all very stressfull and a big mess, but it was also obvious that they weren't going to let us live in no-mans land and that they would have to sort something out. Geary (god bless him) was doing most of the fixing and running around, so even I'm a bit hazy on some of the details, but the next problem arose when it looked like we might actually be allowed in. The cars that could had gone on ahead. We were hoping for the world's greatest comeback - for Dumball One to arrive in Istanbul (last) despite there bveing blatant laws saying that it was impossible.
Unfortunately, we had made one minor mistake. We had let one of the other cars take our bags - we didn't know how we were gong to Istanbul and wanted to travel as lightly as possible. "Lightly" on the Dumball still includes an extracted car radio, assorted awards and prizes, a tool kit, DVD players, a bottle of spirits from each country, sets of walkies, chargers for everything under the sun and various fluffy toys. In one of the bags we had sent on was... the V5 log book for the car. There was no way we would be entering Turkey in Dumball One, and eventually we were allowed back into Bulgaria.
We had thought that once in Bulgaria we would have to sell or scrap the car somewhere and get on a train or coach to Istanbul. Bulgaria is a bit more lawless than turkey and geting rid of the car without the logbook should have been possible. It was a good 4 hours back to the coach station and maybe 6 to the train station. Buit watching all this with bafflement and a little bit of entertainment was a member of the local Bulgarian council. He offered to take the cars off our hands just the other side of the border and arrange for one of the coachs that was already going this way to stop and pick us up. In return for the cars, he would pay our coach fare. We jumped at the chance. Geary will have to confirm, but I beleive he said the car would be given to needy council employees. So Dumball does more good charity work.
So, there we are, just outside the Turkish border, all our worldly possesions on our backs waiting for a coach we don't really know much about to turn up. We conned another border guard into letting us into the duty free shop in no-mans land and getting some beers so that we would have something to do while we waited. When he realised that we were actually go ahead and drink them he was amazed/impressed/flabergasted/disgusted.
We were, but of course everyone already on the coach had to go through what we had just done at the border with the visa buying etc. That was another long wait. At around 11, 6 hours after we had arrived, we official crossed into Turkey and were on the last leg of the journey.
The last leg for some of course. Some people still had to go back to Bulgaria the next day to get rid of the cars. Of course they wanted an organiser with them. Murray stepped up to the plate and pretty soon after we got to Istanbul he did a Uy and headed straight back out again.
According to "The Computer", we had entered Turkey with a car, and obviously they wouldn't let us out again until the computer said it was OK. But Geary (the registered owner) had no stamp in his passport saying that we had entered with a car, so they couldn't (wouldn't?) give him a stamp out and remove it from the computer.
All this was goging on a oppersite ends of no-mans land. Each kept telling us to go back to the other. "Go and see Borish and tell him I said it was OK" was the kind of thing we had to deal with. The guy on the north end thought the rally was pretty cool and wanted us to get through and carry on. At one point he said "You are free to go. You are going to Istanbul." but he absolutely no right to say that. I was at this point that we spotted that heavily armed military check point. Keeping a very close eye on our game of limbo limbo. Eventually we managed to get them to actually go and talk to each other, decide and sort out what we were gong to do, and let us do it.
It was all very stressfull and a big mess, but it was also obvious that they weren't going to let us live in no-mans land and that they would have to sort something out. Geary (god bless him) was doing most of the fixing and running around, so even I'm a bit hazy on some of the details, but the next problem arose when it looked like we might actually be allowed in. The cars that could had gone on ahead. We were hoping for the world's greatest comeback - for Dumball One to arrive in Istanbul (last) despite there bveing blatant laws saying that it was impossible.
Unfortunately, we had made one minor mistake. We had let one of the other cars take our bags - we didn't know how we were gong to Istanbul and wanted to travel as lightly as possible. "Lightly" on the Dumball still includes an extracted car radio, assorted awards and prizes, a tool kit, DVD players, a bottle of spirits from each country, sets of walkies, chargers for everything under the sun and various fluffy toys. In one of the bags we had sent on was... the V5 log book for the car. There was no way we would be entering Turkey in Dumball One, and eventually we were allowed back into Bulgaria.
We had thought that once in Bulgaria we would have to sell or scrap the car somewhere and get on a train or coach to Istanbul. Bulgaria is a bit more lawless than turkey and geting rid of the car without the logbook should have been possible. It was a good 4 hours back to the coach station and maybe 6 to the train station. Buit watching all this with bafflement and a little bit of entertainment was a member of the local Bulgarian council. He offered to take the cars off our hands just the other side of the border and arrange for one of the coachs that was already going this way to stop and pick us up. In return for the cars, he would pay our coach fare. We jumped at the chance. Geary will have to confirm, but I beleive he said the car would be given to needy council employees. So Dumball does more good charity work.
So, there we are, just outside the Turkish border, all our worldly possesions on our backs waiting for a coach we don't really know much about to turn up. We conned another border guard into letting us into the duty free shop in no-mans land and getting some beers so that we would have something to do while we waited. When he realised that we were actually go ahead and drink them he was amazed/impressed/flabergasted/disgusted.
We were, but of course everyone already on the coach had to go through what we had just done at the border with the visa buying etc. That was another long wait. At around 11, 6 hours after we had arrived, we official crossed into Turkey and were on the last leg of the journey.
The last leg for some of course. Some people still had to go back to Bulgaria the next day to get rid of the cars. Of course they wanted an organiser with them. Murray stepped up to the plate and pretty soon after we got to Istanbul he did a Uy and headed straight back out again.