Thursday, April 14, 2005

Day 14 - Igoumenitsa

The trip from Ioannina was on a bus with horribly screeching brakes and with a driver who seemed to have trouble finding gears. But we made it here early. Go figure.

Now that Bulgaria and Romania are joining the EU in a couple years, do you think they'll change how they do license plates? I think so. You see, right now, EU countries have letters and numbers on their license plates, but the only letters they use are the fourteen (capital) letters in common between the Latin and Greek alphabets: A, B, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, T, X, Y, Z. This is to make sure that the plates look "normal" to everyone. But Bulgaria has the Cyrillic alphabet, so they're going to have to ditch a few letters if they want to let the Bulgarians have "normal-looking" plates. But they'll still have ten: A, B, E, K, M, H, O, P, T, X. It doesn't really matter that the "H" is pronounced like an "N" in Bulgarian or an "I" in Greek, just so long as it looks right. But now they're down to ten letters. Kinda skimpy pickings. I suppose it'll work though.

Ha ha! No photos this post!

4 comments:

Pedicularis said...

After driving like a mad-man in Greece, the sluggish American drivers are going to drive you nuts! Are you in Bulgaria now?

Pedicularis said...

Nope, sorry, I see it on the map. Igoumenitsa is in far western Greece, on the shores of the Ionian Sea or perhaps the Adriatic Sea.

Anonymous said...

Huh. I didn't know that about the plates. Interesting.

-Reni

Sotosoroto said...

Thanks, Torren. BTW, Pedicularis took that picture.