mushroomman:
KurtMeyer:
One of the questions I have not been able to work out is the location of the restaurant on the Yugoslav/Bulgarian border which was in a river gorge and had a Douglas DC-3 Dakota parked next to it. Can anyone remember where this was and on which route ? I was with a seasoned overland driver and we seemed to stop at all the major watering-holes along the way, so I imagine this was one.Hello Kurt, thanks for sharing your story about your hitch hiking days down through Europe and the Middle East, I found a lot of the information that you wrote about very interesting.
I am sorry to see that you haven’t had much response to all the questions that you have asked but hopefully some of the old guys, sooner or later might read your post and give this middle east thread a bit of a boost.
As soon as you mentioned the Douglas Dakota DC-3 I thought to myself, yes I remember stopping there on a couple of occasions in the early eighties.
It had a large parking area and I seem to remember that there was a two inch water pipe coming out of the hill and filling up a stone horse trough so it was an idea place to stop and have a wash. I never walked up the hill to The Dakota which was supposed to be a restaurant and if you drove past the layby fast enough you wouldn’t expect to see an aeroplane parked on a hill so there was a good chance that you might of missed it.
As far as I can remember the layby was only about five miles from the Bulgarian border post at Gradinje on the right hand side heading East and at the back of my mind there was duty free ‘Dollar Shop’ across the road.
So today I have been doing a bit of research and I am fairly certain that this is the layby where the Dakota was used as a restaurant. If it’s not that layby, then there is another layby about half a mile along the gorge where the railway bridge crosses the road. Sadly I can’t find where the duty free shop was and every where now looks overgrown with trees. Obviously, the building which might of been the restaurant after the Dakota was taken away and the tyre garage were not there in the eighties so I wonder where The Dakota ended up ?
The only photo that I can find at the moment is one that was put on Trucknet a few years ago by one of David Duxberry’s drivers and looking at the place on Google Earth I am beginning to wonder if there might of been another Dakota that was parked up somewhere else near a popular watering hole which Middle East drivers used to use.
Hopefully somebody might remember more than I do and put me right if this is not the same place but it’s a start.0
google.com/maps/@42.978461, … 312!8i6656
This might bring back one or two memories, not many just one or two.
Thank you so much for your information
Hello Kurt, thanks for sharing your story about your hitch hiking days down through Europe and the Middle East, I found a lot of the information that you wrote about very interesting.
I am sorry to see that you haven’t had much response to all the questions that you have asked but hopefully some of the old >guys, sooner or later might read your post and give this middle east thread a bit of a boost.
Don’t worry about the responses in the thread: I don’t think drivers check the thread very often.
As soon as you mentioned the Douglas Dakota DC-3 I thought to myself, yes I remember stopping there on a couple of occasions in >the early eighties.
It had a large parking area and I seem to remember that there was a two inch water pipe coming out of the hill and filling up a >stone horse trough so it was an idea place to stop and have a wash. I never walked up the hill to The Dakota which was supposed >to be a restaurant and if you drove past the layby fast enough you wouldn’t expect to see an aeroplane parked on a hill so >there was a good chance that you might of missed it.
As far as I can remember the layby was only about five miles from the Bulgarian border post at Gradinje on the right hand side >heading East and at the back of my mind there was duty free ‘Dollar Shop’ across the road.
So today I have been doing a bit of research and I am fairly certain that this is the layby where the Dakota was used as a >>restaurant. If it’s not that layby, then there is another layby about half a mile along the gorge where the railway bridge >>crosses the road.
Sadly I can’t find where the duty free shop was and every where now looks overgrown with trees. Obviously, the >building which might of been the restaurant after the Dakota was taken away and the tyre garage were not there in the eighties >so I wonder where The Dakota ended up ?
The only photo that I can find at the moment is one that was put on Trucknet a few years ago by one of David Duxberry’s drivers >and looking at the place on Google Earth I am beginning to wonder if there might of been another Dakota that was parked up >somewhere else near a popular watering hole which Middle East drivers used to use.
Hopefully somebody might remember more than I do and put me right if this is not the same place but it’s a start.
Dakota DC-3 photograph:
MotherOfGod ! So it all really happened then. And I didn’t just dream it.
I wished I had know I was hitch-hiking through legendary times, and I would have taken more photographs. And run the gauntlet of Iranian artillery to Basra. Things like that.
Sounds like the Dakota DC-3 disappeared in the late 1980s.
I spent quite a while trying to figure out the location of the DC-3 but could not find a place with the river on the correct side of the road. The photograph you posted seems to be the same location. I put a side-by-side comparison on the website.
In exactly what order nor how close together I remember (1) looking down at a river gorge and drivers taking a swim (2) A rope footbridge over the gorge (3) A DC-3 Dakota and a restaurant. I think we crossed into Bulgaria at night but this all took place in strong daylight as you can see from the photographs.
As for the Dakota: There was hyper-inflation in prop war-birds in the late 1980s which may explain that it was sold and restored. There was no fatigue-life limit on the Dakotas so it may have been functional as an air-frame.
google.com/maps/@42.978461, … 312!8i6656
This one I struggled with. It’s just inside the Bulgarian border. Well I remember that Arno and I stopped at a restaurant shortly after crossing into Bulgaria. But from what I remember, we parked on the right-hand-side of the road on ■■■■■■■■ and there was thick ‘undergrowth’ in front of us. We crossed back over the road and went to the restaurant. I don’t remember the railway embankment but then I might not have seen it in the dark. That’s all I can think of. I have no memory of an image of the restaurant.
youtube.com/watch?v=9R-kVEgX-Ks
Nis is Yugoslavia to Pirot in Yugoslavia. Very briefly you can see the mountainside in the above photograph of Arno’s Mercedes-Benz at 00:02:01. This means that the route we used was Nis->Pirot->Dimitrovgrad->Dragoman->Sofia (I have put a comparison of the two images up on the webpage)