Travel Guide, Travel Destinations

I live in Sofia – Bulgaria but travel a lot around the country. Together with some friends we bought a nice villa near the town of Sandanski -about 18 kilometers away, and only 2 kilometers from the historical and tourist place Melnik. The villa is located in the village of Lozenitsa and is about 20 km from the Greek border.

My girlfriend, me and a couple of friends decided to go for the weekend at the villa. After playing cards, watching TV and wasting time for the whole Saturday we decided to go to the Greek town – Thessaloniki to check what’s up there and how is the life there.

Around 10:00 am on Sunday morning we left to Thessaloniki. In about 15 minutes time we are at the Kulata check point – that is the check point between Bulgaria and Greece. Passing the Bulgarian side was much harder than passing the Greek check point, although we are Bulgarians. The Bulgarians asked us to open the trunk, to give them our documents for the car for the passengers and anything else that they could possibly think of. It was like we are immigrants in our own country. The Greek on the other hand were very friendly and nice, they just asked to see our IDs and that was it.

After entering into Greece we felt the difference right away. The narrow road on the Bulgarian side became a large and wide highway on the Greek side. At that time, as far as I remember it was 8th of March, they were making the final parts of it, which means that it should be finished completely by now. I noticed a major difference in the infrastructure in Bulgaria and the one in Greece immediately. We were driving on a proper road and the feeling was different as we do not have such roads in Bulgaria.

Another thing that I noticed and made a good impression to me was the perfectly arranged villages. All of the houses were with straight roofs, there was not a single ruined property at least from the ones that I have seen. For me that is very unusual as in Bulgaria a normal village would have only few renovated houses all the others would be ruined. I have visited other places like the USA, the UK, Spain, France and others and I know what well arranged means. What impressed me is that the Greek and the Bulgarian villages are just a few kilometers apart and still there is a major difference.

Anyways ….  we continued traveling on the good Greek roads to Thessaloniki and in about 1 hour time we were in Thessaloniki… I am running late now so I will continue the story later…