"How you like Bulgaria train, huh?” The question hung awkwardly in the cold air, blending into the strata of grey smoke idly drifting around the compartment. I could only answer with “they’re unique,” which, ironically, or perhaps thankfully, the guard didn’t understand. Patting his rotund, waistcoated belly, he just grunted and handed my ticket and passport back.
Just as he left, a large, burly man in sunglasses appeared with a dozen bright yellow, biscuit tin sized boxes and stashed them under our seats, on the luggage racks and on any other available surface. He came and went several times, impervious to the guard and shouting all along the carriage as his team loaded each compartment with hundreds of boxes. Bemused, I watched another man, dressed entirely in furs, stuffing mysterious, sock-wrapped parcels into the walls of the corridor, removing the light fixtures or simply cutting a hole with a knife.
As the train rolled out of Sofia the burly man in sunglasses appeared again, this time with three sacks full of fireworks, each rocket carefully slotted inside the framework of the luggage rack above. Silvija, the petite, blonde Croatian sat opposite me, plucked up the courage to ask him what he was doing. He laughed.
The boxes were filled with cheeses and the fireworks were for his son, all bound for Nis in southern Serbia. Once he finished stowing his cargo and insulating the train with mild explosives, he lit a filterless roll-up, pushed his sunglasses up onto his shaven head and slumped into the seat beside me. His jeans were covered in oil smears and it looked as if he’d been playing with an engine. Silvija, now acting as translator, explained where all the cheese had come from: “They hijack truck, like in film, probably.”
He had introduced himself to us as Gahgar and when I gave my name in return, he grinned, showing off a row of gold teeth.
“You are Hendry,” he said, more as a statement than a question. “One, two, dre, five, six, seven, eight! You are like Hendry eight” and he gave me an awkward, oily high-five.
As midnight neared the train juddered to a halt in a bleak railway cutting surrounded by watchtowers, razor-wire and floodlights. Stony faced guards stood on the gantry above, machine guns in hand and clad in full combat gear and balaclavas. German Shepherds panting obediently beside them. It didn’t feel like we were entering a country vying for EU membership.
Sniffer dogs and heavily armed police searched the train with torches, storming into the compartment, pulling bags off the racks and demanding passports. Gahgar seemed to know them well and laughed when they suggested looking under the seats. He called their bluff, jumping up to make a space. No guard moved, even the dog didn’t seem bothered, it just carried on panting.
Afterward, Gahgar revealed his father had been in Tito’s government, but the wars of the ‘90s had left him, as Silvija put it, “part of lost generation.” He showed me a shrapnel scar on his neck. For him, smuggling was the only way to earn money for his family, adding ruefully: “EU make it now harder for smuggler.”
Silvija pulled out a bottle of Rakia, widely drank in the Balkans but limited to one bottle per traveller. She had seven in her bag. A former journalism student fluent in four languages, she explained she was setting up a hostel called Backpackers’ Fairy Tale: “A silly name, you think? But I like it. Tourism is only industry making money now in Croatia.”
This article was originally published in 2012
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