A field guide to roads in Bulgaria.

A mapping app draws a thick stroke for several different things. In Bulgaria that stroke can be a motorway with a general car limit of 140 km/h and green direction signs, an express road at 120, or a first-class road that still runs through villages at 90 outside the town sign and 50 inside it. The stroke does not change when the class changes. The sign at the side of the road does.

That is the habit this publication is built around. Trakia can carry a car from the Sofia side toward Burgas for most of the distance, on the order of 360 kilometres of motorway, with repairs reported along a long stretch of it. Hemus cannot do the same job toward Varna: the motorway is still interrupted, and the ordinary road in the gap sets the pace. Struma toward Kulata meets the same kind of interruption in the Kresna gorge, where the companion road is I-1, not a motorway. Maritsa runs from the Chirpan and Orizovo area toward Kapitan Andreevo. Europe runs toward Kalotina. Cherno More, between Varna and Burgas, is a plan, and the road that exists on that coast is I-9.

Charges sit on top of that geography and do not follow the same line. A car, and other vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes with at least four wheels, are in the time-based e-vignette. A motorcycle, with fewer than four wheels, is outside that fee on the government description. A vehicle whose technically permissible mass is over 3.5 tonnes is in the distance toll, whether or not it is fully loaded today. A vignette is not insurance, and a route that looks short can still cross charged road.

Use the pages as a desk before you leave, then let the sign, the weather, and the current text of the rules finish the job. bgtol cannot see a plate, sell a period, or tell you that a pass is open this morning.