Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria and Thessaloniki, Greece lie 154 kilometers apart, from the point of view of a pigeon. But a mountain range bestrides the route, which stretches the driving distance to 194 kilometers, or just over 120 miles. The trip takes two and a half hours, including a stop at the border.

I recently had a chance to ride down with two colleagues and enjoy the scenery along the way. The most beautiful part of the trip is through Kresna Gorge, a path carved by the Struma River on its way to Mediterranean Sea, and now under threat from the construction of a four-lane highway closing in from both sides.

The Struma Motorway – Americans would call it a freeway or a turnpike, depending on what part of the country they live in and whether or not they pay tolls – is under construction as I write this. When completed, it will link Sofia and Thessaloniki, and provide a high-speed route that will cut down the driving time by perhaps half an hour. The price European drivers will likely pay is the loss of a historical site just outside of Blagoevgrad, and the destruction of Kresna Gorge.

Kresna Gorge is home to bears, wolves, otters, and many species of bats, birds, butterflies, reptiles and amphibians. It’s also a Natura 2000 site – an area set up under a program by the European Union to protect the habitats of threatened species.

But sadly, Europeans seem just as willing as Americans to trash their environment in the name of expediency.

The winding, two-lane road through the gorge is notorious as one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in Bulgaria. Big trucks go through there, and so did the bus I took back from Thessaloniki. In the winter when it snows, the passage can be particularly treacherous.

This drug ought to be considered daily not less than 2-3 many weeks in order to making a last determination as to whether click to read more generico viagra on line it’s worth continuous. By just snapping your iPad right into the bin, in front of you. raindogscine.com viagra sans prescription With stress and hurried lifestyle marked with inadequate and wrong food types slowly taking their viagra for sale cheap toll on our life, the same has started to show on our love life too, as they could be psychological and physical triggers to result in a male impotence. Kamagra soft tabs are also soft chewable and easily soluble soft tabs. low cost viagra raindogscine.com There’s no easy way around the mountains, and the only way through is a costly and time-consuming series of tunnels. It now appears that officials in both Bulgaria and the EU are leaning toward a plan that will route the motorway at least partially through Kresna Gorge in one direction. As construction crews close in from both ends, the options for saving the gorge are narrowing.

The motorway has already caused one major controversy, when the ruins of an ancient Thracian settlement were unearthed during construction near Blagoevgrad.

South of the gorge, the road links up with the divided highway that continues across the border and all the way into Thessaloniki. To my American eyes it seems almost empty. I’m used to our “if you build it, they will come” interstate highway system. But most of the traffic seems to be trucks, and the same is true of the completed section between Blagoevgrad and Sofia to the north.

A rail line also runs through the gorge, when made me wonder out loud why the highway is needed at all. Rail is, after all, a more efficient way to move freight and people. But I was told that the Greek government stopped funding international trains a few years ago, in accordance with EU demands that it reduce spending. So now if you want to travel by train between the two countries, you must get off at the last station in Bulgaria and take a bus to the first station in Greece, which can add hours to the trip. Meanwhile, the trucks keep rolling through Kresna Gorge.

After three months here, I’ve concluded that Europeans are every bit as car-happy as Americans (though perhaps less arrogant about it), and every bit as willing to compromise natural habitat to accommodate motor vehicles. Thessaloniki is a cluster of cars and motorbikes and overcrowded buses. Sofia has a beautiful, modern, clean subway system, and still the streets are choked with cars. I’m told that Thessaloniki made a few attempts at building a subway, but wherever they dug into the earth, they found an archaeological site. Such is the price, I guess, of living in a land over which wheels have rolled for millennia. Did Alexander the Great recycle his trash?

The stores here charge for plastic bags, and I see a few other signs of environmental awareness in a land that has had more time and less space to learn from it mistakes. But as always, change starts from the bottom up. It’s why I gave up owning cars, and why I started this blog. It may be too late to stop the Struma Motorway, but if enough of us move our lives away from car dependence, someone, somewhere, may think twice before building the next one.

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