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| no partners | | A fair warning to those who attempt Midzor from the Bulgarian side:
My dad and I attempted this peak from Bulgaria in June 2011 because our rental car company would not allow us to take the vehicle outside the EU. Midzor is the highpoint of Serbia at 2169 m.
We got up at 5 am and began driving to Gorni Lom, where we hoped to find the trail to climb Midzor, the Serbian highpoint. It took awhile to drive to Gorni Lom, but we got there by 7 am. We were looking for the "eco trail," as our hiking guidebook described. We drove into, out of, around and through the town. We could not find the trailhead, trail markings or signs. There were many dirt roads going around the town, but most were too rough to take the rental car on. We decided to head back into town for help.
From spending a lot of time in the Czech Republic, I am weary of asking for help in small towns where the chances of finding someone who can speak a common language is rare. At this point we figured that our hopes of climbing Midzor were done and we were making one final effort to climb the mountain.
We parked the car in the town square, which was just a convenience store and bus stop surrounded by houses. A few men were outside drinking Turkish coffee and we asked them, in English, whether they knew how to get to Midzor. None of them spoke English, German or Spanish. We used a lot of hand signals and tried to say things in various languages to try to explain that we wanted to climb the peak. We were getting nowhere with this, and we were trying to leave, when we were ushered inside the convenience store. It was dark inside the store because the lights were off, and the only lights came from the refrigerators and the open door at the front. One of the men pulled me over to a man in a corner with a coffee and some fresh bread. The first thing he said was ?Hablas espanol?
I have taken three years of Spanish so far is high school, and it was tough to actually speak Spanish--all we do in class is write. The good fortune of meeting this nice man from Vidin, who worked in Spain for a couple years, allowed us to get the details on what was going on. The men who had been talking to us, one was trying to rent out his guest house, one was trying to tell us that if we stayed in the guest house that he would drive us to the trailhead in his jeep, another had phoned the border police, and they were all saying the hike was not possible. A border policeman in a t-shirt, sweatpants and flip-flops walked up to the group of us talking. The border policeman would ask questions and then the Spanish-speaking man would translate for me, and I would translate for my dad. It took awhile.
The men who were left (a few walked away after we informed them that we didn't need a guesthouse) were informing us of a number of problems with our attempt. They found it quite amusing that an Australian and and Australian-American had come all the way from the USA to hike Midzor. The problems that we were informed of were like this:
1. The road to the trailhead is rough and the rental car will not make it. We would need to hire another car.
2. Even if the road was not bad, the it is raining heavily and so the peak is unclimbable.
3. Even if the road was good and there was good weather, we would need permission from the capital (Sofia) to climb the peak.
4. This permission cannot be obtained because it is a weekend and all of the government officials are on holiday.
5. Even if we had permission and good roads and weather, we need a guide.
6. There are no guides available.
7. There are landmines to negotiate, and even with a guide it would be dangerous to climb the peak. My Spanish knowledge failed me here, and I was forced to interpret hand signals of explosions and the word "explosiva."
8. We may be able to bypass problems 1-6 by returning in good weather with a bribe for the border police, though it is risky whether he will accept it.
9. If the bribe is not accepted, Bulgarian prisons are not very fun.
We thanked everyone for their help, shook hands and told them we would return the next day with a permit after getting a permit in Sofia. We never did. |
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