ismet ŞAHİN | Tours

There was a conference in Sofia for 3 days. I decided to got to this conference on my bike. So I could combine business with a short holiday. My friend, Oguzhan Bahadır Demir decided to come with me. So two people with two bikes planned a riding holiday for 7 days. This time I wanted to make a different route to Sofia to see new places. We planned a route from Burgaz, Sliven, Kazanlik, Buzludzha, Shipka, Sofia, Skopje, Thessaloniki and back home. We stayed one night in Kazanlik , 2 nights In Sofia, 1 night in Skopje, 1 night in Thessaloniki and 1 night in Kavala. Our route can be seen on the map on right side.

In a museum, we met Tsar the 3rd Boris and his beloved wife. They let us for a selfie. I don’t know why but I stood near The Tsar Boris, I would of course prefer to stand near his beautiful wife. It was my second visit to Sofia. We spent 2 days in Sofia and rode to Skopje, Macedonia. In the border, it was written “Former Republic of Yugoslavia Macedonia”. I think it was because they want to distinguish their country from the Macedonia region in Greece.

Skopje is not a very big city and the places to see are generally in the center. Particularly, the buildings that were built afterwards were given a historical image and there are plenty of large sculptures. In the city center there is a statue of Alexander the Great. In addition, the ships built into the river bed and decorated with wood work as a hotel and cafe and they have created a pleasant image. On the other hand, there are branches or fake copies of the world famous places. I liked Casa Cubana the most. Visitors have written their names in various places of the cafe. we also wrote our names on the ceiling.

The following year I went to Skopje again with Erhan Metin and

I wrote my name on the same ceiling once more. In skopje, Sultan Murad built the big stone bridge. There are a lot of Turkish tourists because no visa is required for Macedonia. When the owners of the shops see a stranger, they immediately start to speak Turkish. Meanwhile, I met an Albanian, He said to us, ” For your culture, the best Albanian is a skinned one hanged on a rope”. I was surprised. I hadn’t heard such saying before.

After a long ride from Burgaz, we arrived at Kazanlık. After resting in the hotel we rent for a while, we met Ibrahim Tuncer who is the father in law of Ebru Tuncer, one of my students in Gebze. We had a nice dinner and chat with İbrahim in Magnolia Restaurant in Kazanlık.

One of the most important and interesting place for me in this trip was Buzludzha monument which was once the Memorial House of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The monument is on Balkan Mountain. “The mountain is located to the east of the Shipka Pass near the town of Kazanlak and is a site of historical importance. The peak is 1,441 metres high. it was the place of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels led by Hadzhi Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and forces of the Ottoman Empire” is wriiten in wikipedia about the hill. It was built like a flying saucer. But today only ruins of the building and graffiti writing on it against communism can be seen. The most engrossing writing for me is “Never Forget Your Past” because it reflects a paradox. For some it may be mean missing old good days whereas for some terrible past. But I think who wrote the writing meant never forget the pressure, torture and sadness of old days. I felt sorrow because for me a valuable idea was messed by wrong leaders in wrong time. I want to make a note here that in time, evolution of human race will make capitalist way of life rotten and new ideologies will pop up in which human and society will have more value rooting from old ideas

We rode to the top of the Buzludzha hill very early morning. There was nobody around. But then we realized that there is another person with us. Cristian Blascu. A week ago, he quit his job and jumped onto his motorcycle started a balkan tour. He was from Brasov in Romania. Our friendship started there and then he and his friends visited us in Turkey two years later.

We rode on a mountain pass between Tırnovacık and Tsarevo. It was passing through a nice forest and we rode on a road with old asphalt with many holes on it . The roads was bendy and tiring but the scenery was impressive. The region looked poor to me.

Villages, road and people looked very old and poor. After

Tsarevodan the road got better. We rode by the black sea side for sometime and came to Burgaz. The video on the right side displays our journey to Burgaz.

Our next visit was the Shipka hill and the monument, just 12 km away. It is the peak where the Ottoman Empire defeated the Russian war and caused almost all the Balkans to lose. The Russians and Bulgarians erected monuments here and remembered their victories. In the pictures they drew, the Russians and Bulgarians are killing the Ottoman soldiers trying to climb to the top with stones and guns. It was a sad experience for us. Then we rode to Sofia.

In the afternoon, as we entered in Sofia under light rain, my companion Oguzhan was pouring cold sweat. Wet asphalt phobia was quite worn him out. After a long search, we found our pension and we parked our motorcycles in the parking lot on the minus 2 floor of a building for security reasons, we couldn't trust the closed garage and chained our bikes from the rear wheels and we installed the Abus alarm on the front wheels and we covered our tents so that our bikes could not be dusted. :D

Later we went to city center and walked around the city. We listened to concerts, museums were free for that night and we visited museums. We had dinner and rested. While walking around Vitosha street, the injustice in the income distribution was clearly visible. 70 years old cleaning workers and young people driving very expensive cars were all around.

When passing from Skopje to Thessaloniki, The road is full of slight bends on Mayadağ on the edge of the Vardar plain and riding is a pleasure there. I couldn’t stop singing the song “Vardar Ovası” while passing through the plain. Play the song and start the video below at the same time and Imagine that you are riding the motorcyle.

In the evening we had dinner in the popular place called Full tou Meze. Of course we've ordered Greek salad and fish. We cook and eat the same fish, but the method and the spices we use vary. Certainly more delicious fish is served in our restaurants. Moreover, our appetizers are much more delicious. They have pumpkin fry “kabbaki” and eggplant fry just the same in our country but they first put in soda and then fry it. It makes it a little more crunchy. They also have calamari but they're slicing very thick, and I think they don't clean up as much as we do. The taste is a bit raw and the appearance is not very elegant. What they serve as Baby Calamari doesn’t worth eating at all. The Greek salad was absolutely delicious. The reason I put the name “the lazy lady salad” was that everything was sliced very thick. However, the cheese on it looks very elegant and the olive oil they use is very delicious. They have Caciki, as we call Cacık the same but they put mayonnaise in yogurt that makes it a little oily.

We came from Skopje to Thessellonika. We settled in the historical Tourist Hotel. At first glance, Thessaloniki is similar to Mersin. Only the spoken language and the places of worship are different. We wandered the city. Of course, we first visited Atatürk’s house.