Sunday. We know that the nearby control post in Svilengrad is full of trucks, so we expect today or tomorrow morning to be very busy. Today, we only see cattle transported, and the temperature remains very high: already before 10am it is 33 degrees. Later during the day, we document temperature inside trucks exceeding 37 degrees, and yet not every driver sees the need to switch on ventilators to help the animals cope. We see animals with nasal discharge, some coughing, and one case of a badly bleeding broken horn. The line-up to the border is extremely long and grows throughout the day. Animal transporters have problem making their way through, with one lane taken by all other trucks, and the other blocked every now and then by drivers who park their trucks there and sleep. Few livestock drivers manage to manoeuvre through the line-up in half an hour, others are stuck for much longer, up to two hours – and we are only talking about time needed to enter the Bulgarian border. Afterwards animals have to wait several hours more before they continue the journey in Turkey.
