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Thursday, October 10th - Petrich to Blageovgrad, 13,091 km
My hotel provides bread rolls and jam but no coffee. Water is fine enough for me today. There is a small kitchen-dining room area for guest dining purposes. It feels
very homey. The proprietress smiles at me as I eat my bread self-consciously. There are no other guests to smile at at this early hour. Perhaps I am the only guest, or maybe just the most unusual one, traveling on a bicycle. I don’t know. 
On the 11 km route back from Petrich to Hwy 1, I stop by the road to photograph St. Mary’s Church, a small church in good repair set down in a gully below the road near the Struma River. It is accessed by a steep path. It looks new but it was probably built before this road was or it would be easier to get too.
When I reach Hwy 1, I turn north towards Sofia. The highway pulls away from the river over low rolling hills to get to the first town, Sandanski, an hour’s ride north of the junction. Sandanski is on a hill at the foot of Mt Vihren, the highest peak in the Pirin Mountains. I don’t have a guide book for Bulgaria but I have a good map I found in Thessaloniki. Sandanski looks like it has about 30,000 people and it looks better off than Petrich. There are hot springs and a nation park near here so it probably has a tourism economy. There is nothing much to see here but I do stop to pick up some apples for my trip. The stores here actually have real signs.
After Sandanski, the road drops down to the river again and follows the bottom of the valley for the most part. The scenery in compelling here, not as dramatic as southern Austria but similar. There are high mountains on this side of the river to my right, though the peaks are often obscured by ridges and foothills. There are smaller mountains to the west on the other side of the river, and occasionally small village on the other side too, but there are not many bridges to get to the other side.
The next town is Strumyani. It is much smaller than Sandanski but less commercial too, which I like. The traffic is quite light and the breeze from the west is light so it is a great day for cycling. I don’t stop here.
The next town is Kresna, also on the east side and also on a slope at the base of a mountain. It is 12:30 now and I stop for lunch. I eat from my supply of groceries in
my panniers, supplemented by cheese I buy here in town. The valley floor tightens up to a V-shape past Kresna, as the river enters a gorge. It is not spectacular, but I always feel a rush of excitement as I feel the mountains closing in around me. I am at home in mountains. In a crazy way, I feel they are like giant parental beings watching over me. Of course the views are much better in the mountains too.
The road crosses to the west bank as the sides of the gorge close in. The road does not climb much in spite of the mountains. It stays almost level with the river. I feel its coolness in the air as I am riding beside it. The canyon ends and the landscape opens up again for the next ten kilometres. The hills close in again, though not a steeply as before. At one point, the road climbs 100 m to avoid a bend in the river, but mostly the route remains flat.
As I am emerging from this second canyon, dark clouds are amassing overhead. There is a sunburst to the west over the river, which I pause to take a picture of but I
cannot pause for long. I am in a race to get to Blagoevgrad before the storm hits. The road now becomes a highway, raised above the surrounding land with high-rise apartment buildings set below the road on either side. I have reached the suburbs of this city of 70,000 people.Just then the storm hits. It is a hail storm. I have often heard about hail storms with hail the size of golf balls and wondered how anyone could survive such a pummeling if they didn't have shelter. Fortunately, the stones are only the size of marbles, but they come fast and hit hard. I am grateful for my helmet too, as it protects most of my head, but when they hit my ears and my hands it really hurts. I would dash for cover but the embankments are tall and steep. The access roads are half a kilometre away and I am climbing a long hill into the city which slopes up from the valley floor.
By the time I get to the access road to the high-rises, the hail has been replaced by heavy rain. I am already wet and I only have another kilometre or so to reach the city centre so I push onto towards it. The rain is already slowing when I arrive, but the city centre is in a slight depression and the streets are flooded. How it flooded this fast I don’t know. Brown rivers flow down every side street, washing mud down from their unpaved surfaces. I stop at the edge of the centre to survey the sea of water that confronts me.
The nearest big hotels are a quarter kilometre away. Cars are pushing their way across the main square, which has become a lake, and their hubcaps are half-submerged. The city looks a big like Venice at the moment. I decide I can push through the lake to get to the first hotel, but it isn't easy. My front panniers are half-submerged and impeding my progress, and with each rotation of my pedals one foot goes under water and then the next.
It is a struggle but I reach the hotel and pull my bike up onto the curb out of the lake. I lock it up near the door and step into the lobby, my cycling shoes still gushing water. They squeak and slurp and leave a trail of water on the carpet as I cross to the reception desk. I ask about economy hotels in town, since this is a 4-star. The clerk, speaking in distinguished English and glancing out of the corner of his eye at the trail of water, suggests that I would want the youth hostel three blocks away.
The youth hostel is uphill above the lake. I only need to fight the river of muddy water flowing towards me. There is a storeroom for my muddy bicycle and a plenty of free beds. My room is on the third floor. I haul my dripping bags up the stairs and change into dry clothes. I keep everything in my panniers in plastic bags for occasions like this. Some water has leaked into my bags and there are spots of water on some of my clothes, but they are much drier than I am at the moment. My cycling shoes will take hours to dry out but I have dry walking shoes.
"Ha ha, I see you are in the rain shower," a cheery lad with a German accent greets me as I enter my dorm room. "No, actually I am evolving and I have just crawled out of the sea," I joke with him. He is a big-framed Aryan boy with blond hair named Gerhardt and he likes my sense of humour. He asks me where I have come from and how long I have been traveling.
While we are talking other guests sharing our dorm room come in. One is a Dutch fellow named Heiko, and the other guys are from Switzerland and Australia. We start sharing with each other our experiences in Bulgaria. As we are speaking, a rally begins on the street half a block outside of window. The speaker has a megaphone and the crowd keeps cheering loudly. The others tell me there is an election coming up and this is a political rally for one of the 32 parties running. It is the first serious election since the fall of communism here.
One of the parties hopes to re-establish a constitutional monarchy under Stephen, the heir of King Simeon II, dethroned by the Communists in 1944. "That's crazy," Gerhardt blurts out. "Why would a country be so stupid to bring back an archaic system like a constitutional monarchy once it has been abolished?" Heiko's face flushes red with anger. If anyone else had said this it might have led to a discussion, but Holland has a constitutional monarchy and the ancient wounds between Germany and Holland boil to the surface so easily when an insult is perceived.
Germans sometimes have a reputation of being bombastic and insensitive, though I don't usually find them to be this way. I have found they hate generalizations about other people and often call me on it if I make one. 'Yes, I know Germans don't like generalizations,' I say, just to tease them.
Anyway, our conservation is reduced to a smoldering silence since any comment, other than an apology, could deepen the wounds. Heiko leaves the room. Gerhardt is seriously miffed too, though he cannot see what he has done wrong or why he should apologize. Soon he leaves the room too. I am alone now, looking out the window at the rain-soaked streets. Until tonight, Bulgaria has looked and felt very different but now I see it as being as European as the other countries I have already visited, still stewing in its history of rivalries and injustices. I feel I haven't moved far away from the start of my trip at all.
PHOTO 1: Petrich street below my hotel window
PHOTO 2: St Mary's Church, outside of Petrich
PHOTO 3: city of Sandanski
PHOTO 4: town of Strumyani
PHOTO 5: Kresna, at the entrance of the canyon
PHOTO 6: Struma River gorge
PHOTO 7: Vihren Mountain, Pirin National Park
PHOTO 8: hail storm approaching as sun is setting
PHOTO 9: "Lake Blageovgrad" in the city's main square
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