The road to Istanbul. Our first tiny taste of bureaucracy. Heading out of Bulgaria at the border, we're stopped at three separate barriers where self-important officials leave us waiting as they pore over our documents in their little dens. We do all the waiting, then figure we're through, only to drive round the corner and find yet another cabin. The barrier's up, so we figure we should just drive through. Don't do that. There's an angry little man inside who will tear strips off you. 'You did not go to the salon!' he barks. I didn't realise having a Vidal Sassoon barnet was a pre-requisite for a smooth border crossing.
We drive back and realise we'd missed out an entire buiding, where you have to get three separate stamps in your passport, for reasons we don't quite understand. All processed by uniformed Turks wearing swine flu masks, for reasons we don't quite understand.
The salon is a green concrete bunker, where the pampering is all done with luxurious amounts of red tape. You have to queue at the second window first, at the first one second, and at the third one third. And it's obligatory to forget to get papers from the car that mean having to trot back while the queue builds and becomes increasingly tuttworthy. Looking down on all this is the portrait of some proud military Willy Wonka-style trickster, whose phenomenal eyebrows quietly state: 'I set all this up'.
In the middle of this process you can easily start feeling like there's no way you'll ever get let in. But when I finally reach the window, the guy keeps asking me really nice questions. 'What does that say on your t-shirt? Oh, you're in a band? Have a wonderful trip.' If the rest of Turkey is this friendly it's going to be ace.
We drive back to that final barrier ready to show the livid bloke how well we've done. Jeff parks close to the window so I can just pass the stuff to him. This annoys the bloke even more, as he wants me to get out. I can't open the door. My spastic sense starts tingling. Jeff reverses for a wider approach, whereupon there's a god-awful panicked honking sound as the bloke in the car behind reacts to the sight of a Punto flying blind towards him. And to think Britain used to have an empire and everything.
As usual we're a little behind schedule. The plan was to get up and be on the road from the Black Sea early to beat the hot part of the day. So we're up at seven, after only five hours' kip. We clean up, go for a dip in the sea in the sparkle of the morning sun, then have a leisurely breakfast to use up the Bulgarian cash we've got left. And finally drive off just as the sun starts getting hot. Perfect.
Gabi had woken up a bit pissy that his mate from work, who was camping next to him, upped sticks and fucked off at six in the morning without saying goodbye. 'Big problems,' he says.
It's sad saying goodbye to Gabi. He's been ace. But he's still preoccupied with our trip:
'Turkmenistan? Big big problems.'
'Oh it'll be ok.'
'No ok.'
'Ok.'
'NO OK.'
We swap addresses. He's well up for showing us Romania. That'd be brilliant. And ridiculous, inevitably involving being manly with weapons, shooting things and skinning stuff. If you're reading this Gabi, we'd really like to thank you and your lovely family for being so friendly, helpful and entertaining. It was great to meet you, and if you're ever in England you have to come and stay with us. Idiot vacation.
The mountain road out of Bulgaria into Turkey is the worst we've driven on yet - unbelievably twisty, and riddled with pot-holes. Jeff describes it as 'an impressively fucked road'. At least the sun's still shining, and it's quiet. We don't see any traffic until a minibus comes round a bend - hammering it towards us on our side of the road.
Typing on these roads is a nightmare. Driving on them is no easier. Jeff's driving. He's saying it keeps you focused, like caning it down a mountain-bike track - you have to scan the road all the time for hazards to dodge, looking far ahead and straight in front of you at the same time. With my eyes are down at the screen, I can just feel the car tipping and swerving erratically, and every now and again I hear Jeff burst into loud hysterics.
After crossing the border I take over the driving, at which point the road goes from being a pot-holed death trap to a seemingly endless stretch of brand new smooth empty motorway. We're still in the mountains, but the verdant forest has suddenly turned dustier and scrubbier. We cruise through villages full of people with beaten up trucks and chickens. Stop at a petrol station and everyone's unbelievably friendly. We're getting waves and toots everywhere. This is brilliant. Even taking a leak in a bush gets a nod of approval and shout of 'no problem!' from the petrol attendant. Turkey's ace already.
After a few quiet days on the purile place-name front, we have a new contender. Kumburgaz. We laugh a lot at that one.
Steve takes over for his first drive in several days, guiding us into the heart of Istanbul. We figure this is going to be an utterly stupid experience but it works out really well. We drive past huge Turkey flags, and start seeing the first minarets and mosques of the trip. The Med simmers to our right the whole time. Steve points out the window at all the levels of madness going on, on multi-layered roads weaving underneath the one we're on. It looks hectic.
The Punto's still getting toots and waves, from cars squashed full of moustached men. This is something we'd wondered about - M Waller's on the back window giving the double thumbs up, and I know from being in Israel that in some countries this is the equivalent of sticking your finger up at someone. So when we're overtaken by a car-full of blokes giving our car the thumbs up, I'm paying special attention to the look on their faces. Seems like they're smiling, which suggests we're in the clear. Either that or showing your teeth is Turkish motorist for 'I'm going to ram you and your stinky Italian sweatbox into the wall of that post office'.
Soon we're flying from three-lane motorway to roundabouts, where little kids start washing the windscreen in a desperate scrounge for cash, and then up into tiny cobbled streets lined with people lounging under large moustaches, and straight to the hostel, which is in the Sultanahmet section of the city, the old town, near the Aya Sophia. Should never have been that easy.
And suddenly we're in backpacker land. We check in with the studiously hip multilingual dudes behind the desk, behind posters offering pub crawls and turkish bath experiences.Young lads with massive sacks ask about shuttle buses. Others look slightly bored.
Then we're on the roof of the hostel eating a sublime dinner of lamb and aubergine, a view of the ocean and sprawling city on one side, and a chuffing great mosque on the other looming over a panorama of ramshackle roofs. Ice-cold beer in hand. The call to prayer going off all around us. A Bulgarian campsite this morning, now it's the gateway to Asia.
Dinner done we express no interest in sitting around in backpacker bars - exactly, we're waaay to real for that - so we go for an amble, again employing Zen navigation, and end up walking through amazing dark streets full of locals hanging out, and stray cats getting all scrappy.
On the way we pass a rug shop. They look amazing, and Jeff starts a long excited description of how the rugs are made, saying how each one is bacically a full-time job for a team of people for ages. That's what makes it so unique. Then he turns around and sees the same rug in the shop opposite. 'I'm a dick,' he says.
We stumble upon a cool smoking lounge thing covered floor to ceiling in old rugs, and full of old dudes with pipes playing backgammon. We sit at a balcony table, overlooking the ocean. This is exactly what we wanted from a couple of nights in Istanbul.
The owner gives a quick refresher in how to play backgammon, then we sit drinking far too much Turkish coffee, busitng out a few hard rounds of backgammon while tugging on a shisha pipe the size of an equine phallus.
We like Turkey.
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