After an easy six nights in Romania’s capital Bucharest, we set our sights for Varna in Bulgaria. In this part of the world, one cannot always count on a reliable, Deutsche Bahn-style, railway that will take you pretty much wherever you want to go on time and on budget. Nor was it practical to take a, less than perfect but in our experience reliable, Flixbus as that one would have rolled into Varna around 3.30 in the morning.

Instead and much to my initial discomfort, we bought our tickets online from a, for us, unknown operator: Pegasus. I was concerned because we wouldn’t be going to the Bucharest Bus station to get on the bus, but rather hope that they would see us at this hotel that they ostensibly would be swinging by on the way from the airport. We just had to trust them. I mean, they had a facebook page and all so they had to be for real, right? Of course, they did show. After a delicious lunch at Augerine in Bucharest, we head on over the the hotel in question and presto! We were even on the list so we didn’t  have to flash our Cyrillic confirmation email that we had at the ready.

Neither Romania nor Bulgaria are members of the Schengen so old-school passport controls are still how they operate. Close the Bulgarian town of Ruse, we crossed the Danube to enter Bulgaria. The driver at that point yelled something out over his shoulder to the passengers in the 20 or so seat mini bus. After a few seconds of our brains going into overdrive to comprehend what he could have meant, we realize that the border control we passed before entering the bridge over the river was simply us leaving Romania. We needed to go through a Bulgarian official point of entry, too. We should have grasped this as this is exactly what happened when we took the train from Budapest in Hungary to Brasov in Romania not two weeks earlier. Oh well.

Which traveller hasn’t had it ingrained in them to always hold on to their passport. Keep it close, keep it safe. Well, that went out the window as the process at the border dawned on us. We simply hand over our precious and basically irreplaceable travel documents to fellow passengers in a bucket brigade style down the centre of the bus towards the driver, who then vanishes for 10-15 nail-biting minutes. Thankfully, being the gentleman that he is, he not only returns to the bus, he also brought our passports back with him. Hours later, daylight having escaped across the horizon, we roll into Varna, Bulgaria.

The morning after arriving in Varna, I realize to my horror that I have lost my sun glasses. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t for them being prescription sun glasses. I was not looking forward to squinting through the rest of the summer while being on the road. Considering how bright the sun was shining from a clear blue and cloudless sky, I was in a very dark place. I made a feeble attempt at calling Pegasus, but the woman answering the phone could help you book tickets in English, but the delicate art of lost and found was a bridge too far. Luckily, the woman I married prevailed with a cooler head and unbeknownst to me, emailed them instead. Turns out that, yes, they did find the sun-glasses and while they had joy-ridden back to Ruse again, I was able to make my way back to the bus station that evening to pick them up from the driver while grinning like a sheep eating thistles. Moral of the story, Pegasus may be a small unassuming bus company out of Bulgaria, but they had hearts as big as all outdoors.