Strumica, Macedonia
I was up early and at 7 a.m., I was already outside with my backpack. I shut the door of the apartment leaving the key inside as it was agreed with the owner, Dragan. I heard nothing from him the night before and, running ahead of the story, I can tell that Dragan never contacted me. So, it was the right decision not to rely on his help with a ride to Bulgaria. A taxi driver asked for 1,000 denars to the border. I showed him all my remaining Macedonian money, 750 denars ($12). The driver nodded, scooped the money from my hand and indicated that I should get in the car.
It is less than half an hour to the border from Strumica. The border crossing in Novo Selo is the southmost and the least popular out of the three border crossings between Macedonia and Bulgaria. Besides me and two trucks, there was no one there. I walked through both checkpoints, my passport was stamped and no questions asked. Nobody cared to know why a woman of the advanced age with a backpack was going from one country to the other.
On the Bulgarian side of the border, there was one single private car. Upon seeing me, the car owner declared himself a taxi driver. We negotiated the price and agreed on 70 Bulgarian levs ($35) which was rather too much for the same half an hour drive. However, the owner, Georgy had no competitors there and walking to Petrich was hardly possible. Georgy talked non-stop in Russian all the way to Petrich; he wanted to be my personal driver during my stay. I declined his services and asked to drop me off in the city center where I easily found a wonderful hotel Provence for $50/night.
For those who never heard about Vanga, she was a Bulgarian clairvoyant who told people their future. She was known as Nostradamus of the Balkans. People waited for hours at her house to talk to Vanga. Even Soviet leaders came to consult her. She also left a list of predictions for hundreds of years. Here are some of them including for 2022 and they are not pretty.
When Vanga was 12, a storm hit and flung her into the air, causing her to get lost in the chaos and lose her eyesight. She was found a few days later. Vanga claimed that she had her first vision in the days she was missing, and later stated that her ability to see had been replaced with a clairvoyant ability to see the future.
She died in 1996 at the age of 85.
