Bulgaria

Bulgaria is a fascinating country, beaches, old buildings, gypsies and a culture caught between its new acceptance to the EU and the old communist ways. My first stop in Bulgaria was Sofia. After a long bus ride where I was able to chat with 2 serbians for most of the trip, one a young guy going to try out for a Bulgarian football team and another lady who was visiting her auntie. They showed me pictures of their families and told me about their opinions on the war and of their country which were both quite negative, but they have hope for their kids future.

I turned up at the Smokin Pig, a hostel run by a crazy Irish guy who missed a flight home and decided to stay in Sofia and open a hostel. The irish guy had gone on holidays for the weekend and left Dan (who just started a few days before that) in charge. Unfortunately he forgot to leave the bookings passwords so poor Dan had so many people turn up on his doorstep, many who had booked and he had given their beds away (luckily not mine). Was a bit of a laugh really.

This city is slightly dodgy, in a country which was once ruled by the mafia, guns and murders were common place it has cleaned up its act somewhat and now only 1 in 2 people have guns and the police are now less corrupt. In the hostel here I met an awesome bunch of guys including Alana and Simon from AUS, Jason from NZ and Peter from Melbourne (a cop from Colac). We explored the town and then at night ventured out into the various pubs and clubs the city had to offer..

After Sofia I headed to Veliko Tarnovo, a quiet student town in a valley. This town was dead quiet as the students were on holidays and like many places in Europe a lot of city restaurants and bars close up for summer and take their business to the coast. After a day looking around this town and visiting the fortress on the hill overlooking the town I headed to Varna.

Not much can be said about Varna, it was relaxing, nice sandy beaches, a good parties both at the hostel and in the many beach bars and a good laugh. Stayed at Gregory´s Backpackers and met an awesome bunch of people including a couple of crazy Germans and some Austrian girls. Met up again with Jason here and we decided to travel to Romania together.

This was an interesting story in itself.. trains and the buying of train tickets in Bulgaria is an exercise in anyone´s patience. First of all the ticket place is not at the train station but down some little street which you have to find. The hours they open vary from day to day and the staff are definitely trained in communistic beuracracy. One ladies job is soley to count the money and cannot serve customers, the other ladies job is to be as inefficient as possible. She added, subtracted and readded about 10 times on her calculator before coming to a a total for us. After we handed over our money this all went again and finally we recieved our change and tickets after she had gone through reams of paper on her electronic calculator.

The train was a great experience though. It was on its way to Moscow but our final destination was Bucharest. The train looked and I think was out of the 50´s but with everything communist was clean and comfortable.. The time was well passed by drinking a 2L bottle of beer each and talking with some Aussie who were in the cabin next door. After a good nights sleep we arrived in Bucharest!

For pictures click here