Santa the Dog Smuggler and the Giant X-Ray Machine
I ignore how I ended up standing by the side of the road at the outskirts of Istanbul on December 6th with a Santa hat and a red jumper. With my old lady's orange shopping bag, feeling a little bit out of place (lost in my reminiscence of the white snow covers and the warm wood fire of my home in the North Pole); there I was lifting my arm with my thumb up waiting to get a lift. With me, a 1.83m tall Croatian girl and her little black dog named Aslan (it means lion in Turkish, very fitting to her affective and feminine personality :)).
It all started with a lost towel. Left behind in Adana and desperate to get back to its owner, it sneaked into Marijana's backpack and reached Istanbul on a truck. I was hoping to skip this enormous city, but my towel's suicide threats (she was very attached to me) drove me all the way to Marijana's apartment. There, after having managed to contain my towel's outburst of joy and tears I got introduced to the fuzzy haired girl. It didn't take this travelling maniac a long time to convince me that hitchhiking to Europe dressed as Santa Claus was the best idea one could ever have, and we started planning our departure. It started with a few failures; failure to get the correct stamps on the dog's Turkish passport (which meant that it had no right to exit Turkey), failure to get complete Santa outfits, and failure to buy extra supplies of Pepper Spray. On top of this, Marijana was aware that she had largely overstayed her Turkish visa, and that this meant that she would most likely get a fine when exiting the country, and even probably be banned entry on Turkish soil for up to 5 years. But as real adventurers are not afraid of anything, we left our plans unchanged. The only difference would be that besides being hippy reincarnations of Santa Claus, we would have to be proficient dog smugglers and bet on our hopeless blond acting skills to avoid paying the fine. At 7 am the next day, with our red hats and sparkles in our eyes, we were on our way.
We decided to avoid the main border since we expected the police to be less lenient concerning overstays and clandestine dogs there. Instead, we made our way towards a smaller border. It is when we got stuck on a petrol station, 1 km before the border with no one offering to give us a lift through that we started doubting our genius plan. However, after a while waiting, and having abandoned our hopes to reach our destination in the west of Bulgaria by night, a kind Turkish truck driver offered to drive us to the other side of the border. We were glad to get a ride from a truck, believing that it would be the best place to hide a dog as truck cabins are generally not checked at customs. We were at this point quite confident that we would be able to persuade the border guards to let Marijana out without a fine, but we were nervous that the dog would be discovered. In that case, we would be stuck between two borders, as Marijana wouldn't be allowed to go back to Turkey and we had no intention to leave the dog behind. What they would do with two Santa's and a dog between two countries we didn't really know.
Our hopes to discreetly leave the dog in the cabin during the border crossing to avoid it being discovered were soon disappointed. The truck had to pass into a giant X ray machine (lacking a better name for it), and we had to take the dog out to keep it from being ionized, or whatever giant X-ray machines do to little dogs. As we were walking around with Aslan, a police officer asked if it had a passport, checked it and didn't notice the missing stamp. But while the dog was allowed to exit Turkey, it wasn't as easy for Marijana as the police soon realised that she had overstayed her visa by one and a half month. In the police station, despite crying, acting completely desperate and explaining that it really wasn't her fault, she had no choice but to pay about 600 Turkish Liras (about 240 Euros). That's all she had on her account plus a little help from our truck driver.
2 hours later, we finally made it back to the truck. It was dark, Marijana was totally broke, we were all hungry (the dog included) and worn out. But it wasn't over for us, as the most difficult thing would be to pass the Bulgarian border without Aslan being discovered. Our fantastic driver was by then our accomplice; he had understood that we weren't sure about the validity of the dog's documents and preferred to hide him from the Bulgarian authorities. At the passport control point, he started bribing the police with olives, cigarettes and cookies (apparently a normal thing to do at Bulgarian borders for Turkish truck drivers... it makes crossing faster). The woman inside the cabin looked at our faces carefully, and then a man with a yellow jacket walked around the truck. My heart was beating fast, and I could smell Marijana's fear (literally...). Then what we dreaded occurred, the man opened the truck's door on Marijana's side, the side where Aslan was lying on the floor. There was no way that he wouldn't see the dog, she was going to move, or bark and we would have to cry and beg them to let her pass.
But none of this happened, it was dark and Aslan didn't move. She stayed there, quietly sleeping at Marijana's feet while the man looked around the cabin, shuffled things around to check if there was anything under the bed, and even looked right were she was. He just didn't notice her, her black body in a dark background had made her invisible! Dog power! Satisfied, he walked down and shut the door behind him. It is hard to describe the feeling of relief and excitement that got into the little truck cabin at that moment. Marijana and I looked at each other's eyes, I said 'is it over?' and she answered 'wait a couple kilometres and I'll be able to breath!’ There were a few more bribes, but no more cabin checks. We felt safe, and exhilarated by the thought that we had made it, we had reached the other side of the border with the dog! Exhausted, we fell asleep until we reached our final destination for the day. Our driver had driven us to a truck station were we could wait until the next day. We thanked him with all of our heart and wished to meet him again someday. Without him, we wouldn't have made it, and he was one of the kindest persons I had ever met.
In the truck station we had to face the harsh reality that not everybody is as kind as Turkish truck drivers. The only answers we got when kindly asking whether there was any indoors place we could put our sleeping bags on the floor were, 'no, you can sleep on the parking'. It was dark, and no one was going to help us. We sat in the restaurant for hours, laughing in a tired after-shock high. Finally, at 3am, when we were getting ready to sleep on the parking, a kind young Turkish driver (who else!?) offered us his warm truck cabin :)
This movie was made in the truck station's restaurant, broke, tired, but still smiling!
A good start for the Santa hitchhikers... Soon more on how we met two of the all times greatest Albanian singers!