Bulgaria was beautiful, but the roads were either shit or closed, and I ended up dragging my big ol’ truck around the back area hills and villages as we tried, and failed for a while, to find the city of Sofia.

It’s a very interesting city and I had a good walk around, finding a bookstore in a park that seems to be common in some countries in Europe. I’ve seen similar in Italy. A shame I can’t think of any back home.

Loading out after the show took a lot longer than it should, because of a mixture of bad access and drunk loaders. They’d been sitting around all day, chugging beer in their closed off section. Some were even partying while we waiting for them to come and help us, and when they did “help” us, they were so fucking useless I was almost crushed. Twice.

We left late, finding a better, smoother way out of Bulgaria then the shit way in, passing laybys where the local gypsy hookers sold themselves. There were a lot of these ladies, good and bad, and almost a truck or car at every stop, door open to welcome them.

We arrived at the border and Ollie was just ahead of me. There were a lot of border police around, and they had him out of his truck. They got in his cab to search it, as they did one of our other trucks alongside us. And then I remembered two things:

1/ I had a small bag of weed I’d almost forgotten about.

2/ Ollie’s words of, “weed is considered a class A drug here” after he had a quick Google.

My arsehole tightened. I don’t think I’m too pretty for prison but I definitely didn’t want to find out.

A guard came to my truck, went to my passenger door and opened it without saying anything.

Now, I’d expected this, because I’m in a right hand drive truck and he would assume the passenger side was my driver side, so I had dumped all my dirty washing on the seat before he opened the door. And when he did open it, some of my pants fell out.

“Hello,” I said, playing cool. Or trying to, at least.

He looked at my pants on the floor, ignored them and got up in my cab. He looked at me hard. I still love my face tattoo, but I had a feeling right now it was giving off a vibe I didn’t need it to. Like, yes officer I have drugs in my truck.

He didn’t really search my cab, thankfully and he gave the trailer a cursory look.

Then told me to follow him into a small room. I notice no one else had been called into one. This didn’t look good.

He sat in a chair and smiled at me.

“Are you a rockstar?” he asked.

This is the second time I’ve been asked this question this summer. The other time was on Coldplay when someone thought I was in the band. Not the taxi driver, if you recall that blog.

“No, man,” I said, “I’m just a truck driver.”

He laughed. “Cool,” he said, and then spent five minutes talking about my tattoos. That was all he’d asked me into the room for! He wanted to know how much they cost, where I’d got them, what they meant. I was still a little uneasy but I answered him, and when he gave me my passport and paperwork back, he said goodbye to me like I was an old friend.

Moral of this story? Don’t carry weed across eastern european borders.

Smoke it first.