The incident happened around 100 meters after the exit of Zverino village towards Svoge. At the beginning, the road welcomes you with small holes. Even though the prelude is quite long, the intercourse comes fast, hard, and merciless. It is as fast as a split second and after that you’re disappointed. It feels like the whole prelude was worthless. The car is not a virgin anymore and the 2 right side tires are flat as a pancake. 10 more meters and you find a place where you can park your exhausted car. You get out of the car, you see the broken rims and tires, you put your hands on your head, and there is only one thing that you can think about: Lots of oral love to the people responsible for the road!
Leaving aside the feelings there are a couple of things I learned last night:
1. Even though your extra car insurance provides you with free Road Assistance they won’t come as long as you don’t call the police and report this as an accident. Police comes, investigates what happened, you do the paper work, and after that you can call the Road Assistance so they can come pick you up. They will tow your car free of charge till the next bigger city; after that point you pay for every extra kilometer your car is towed. (we didn’t go for this option – too much trouble for 2 wheels)
2. Always have a flashlight in your car (or a phone equipped with a flashlight – Nokia 1208 did the job for me)
3. It’s good to carry a pepper-spray in your car. While I was fixing the tires in the near-by village, 2 of our friends (girls) had to wait in the car. While it was dark and almost in the middle of nowhere, the pepper-spray gave them more confidence.
4. I recommend you carry a small pump or even a small air-compressor. If the rims are not totaled you can try fixing them by yourself.
5. When you drive on a road that looks like it hasn’t been repaired since the second world war, a good thing to do is to slow down. The hole I lost my car’s virginity into didn’t look deep at all. It proved to be different. The sad part is that while I was fixing my tires another car went through the same process. And apparently there was another one before us. The local guy that helped me fix the tires told us that during the weekend there are on average 6 cars going through the same hole. He was joking and saying that he could open a Tire center right next to it. I told him that would be a good business (the place is perfect, and as long as there is a hole in that place he shouldn’t worry about clients).
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Conclusion: Bulgaria is a country where the state thinks of its people. The state encourages entrepreneurship. They won’t fix the village roads so that people in those villages have some extra income. Leaving the joke aside, I am grateful to the guy that stopped to help us (not too many people would do this) and to the owner of the tire service that opened the place on a Sunday night to fix our tires. I am pretty happy with the ones I use – Kumho Solis. Even though the rims were quite damaged and I was recommended to buy new ones, the tires can still be used.
