I decided kind of late in the game to travel to Bulgaria before heading to Serbia for the Guča Trumpet Festival. I had heard about a Bulgarian Bagpipe Festival in Gela and I kind of have a thing for Bulgarian Bagpipes so I had to go. Or maybe not!

Gela is a small village in the Rhodope Mountains, throughout the year the village only has about 98 residents so it’s pretty small. The festival is held each year on the first weekend of August in a meadow above the village. The festival lasts for 2 days and includes a competition on the first day. There aren’t many accommodations in Gela itself and many people camp for the festival. Since I made the decision to go late, I couldn’t find anywhere to stay in the area. I considered camping but I’m not really the camping type and I couldn’t see dragging around a tent and stuff for just one night so I made the decision to stay in Smolyan about 20 miles away through the mountains. I had a feeling this wasn’t the best idea but it was the best I could come up with.

I guess the problems started at the bus station in Plovdiv. The “buses” ran every hour on the hour and I just missed the 9:00am bus. I went to the ticket counter to buy a ticket for the 10:00 bus but she told me to buy it on the bus so I waited. When the “mini-van” arrived at 10:00, I knew I was in trouble as there were several people waiting and they all appeared to have tickets. So yeah, you do have to buy the ticket beforehand at a kiosk outside of the bus station.

Kiosk outside the station where you buy tickets to Smolyan

However, not all buses to Smolyan are run through this company, the next bus at 11:00 was run through the bus station so then I had to buy my ticket for the this bus inside the station, confusing, right? I get on the 11:00 bus which is also a mini-van and settle in for the 2.5-3 hour drive.

Finally my minibus to Smolyan

Now I don’t normally get sick on buses in the mountains but I’ve started to notice that I don’t do so well in a mini-van. The nausea was made worse by the anxiety of not having anything to puke into if it happened (note to self-always bring a plastic bag!). At the rest stop half way through the trip I acted out throwing up to the shop owners to ask for plastic bags!

When I arrived in Smolyan I didn’t exactly know how to get to my hotel as my Google Maps wasn’t working. A taxi finally came and I asked him to take me, he spoke English which was great because I was already having a hard enough time learning to read Cyrillic that I couldn’t muster a word of Bulgarian at that point. Perhaps he gave me a false hope that other drivers would also speak some English and that I would have no problem arranging my taxi to Gela-WRONG!

At the hotel when I reached in my purse to grab my passport I realized that my entire bottle of sunscreen had leaked all over my purse. I quickly checked in and spent a good hour of so washing everything in my purse, luckily my passport was in a protective sleeve so it wasn’t damaged.

After my long day, I thought about going to the festival and suddenly became very anxious—what if I got there but couldn’t get back, would I be stuck outside in the mountains. What if I couldn’t find a taxi, what if my phone didn’t work and I couldn’t call the hotel, and so on and so on. At this point I was exhausted and hungry and I had already missed most of the day so I decided that I would go to the festival the next day.

I have no pictures of Gela so here’s a picture of Smolyan

The next day came but I still didn’t make it to the festival. I went to the taxi stand and asked several drivers to take me but they didn’t understand that I wanted someone to take me and then pick me up later, they didn’t understand where I wanted to go. I could have kept trying, I could have had the hotel help me but at this point I felt defeated and tired.

Things don’t always work out the way you planned them. Sometimes your own fears can get in the way when you don’t speak the language and you can’t even read the signs and you’ve already had a trying day. Sometimes events like this can be difficult to maneuver when you’re alone and you don’t drive. I’m disappointed and regret some of the decisions I made but regardless, I really enjoyed the time I spent in Bulgaria. I’ll definitely be back and hopefully bagpipes will be involved!