Kervan Hostel Sofia

got to the airport at half 4 in the morning, flight left on time at half 6, 3 seats between the two of us wohoo i can stretch out!

Got off the plane and was sooo excited I was going to see my dad in the next half hour I wanted to just leave the bas and get outside and meet him!! gray had to calm me down a bit!

Once we had bags we went to the entrance and turned the mobile on...argh it ...

... hired muscle. This even fits with the empty club - clearly they had reserved the entire club for themselves, and only the stupid tourists were dumb enough to intrude. I quietly gave thanks that I was in the seat nearest the exit in case things went Joe Pesci <goodfellas clip: i make you laugh, how? am i here for your enjoyment>.

We noticed a few more people show up near the door, some even dancing energetically in spite of the giant vacuum on the ...

... over someones bed on the floor and then later on went to urinate all over the floor of the bathroom floor and then manage to fall into bed with a couple who were his friends, they tried to move him but he was just to fat and passed out that was quite funny, from then me and the 4 Aussies were up at around 6 and couldn't get back to sleep, life of living in a dorm hey! what you going to do? Anyway I managed to again assit myself very nicely on ...

Alright, we are in Sofia, but what now? Good question. Having been on the train for close to a day, everyone was famished so food was priority number one. We decided to wander around and see what we could find. Walking along the streets we saw many fruit vendors and book sellers as well as kiosks that are on every corner where you can buy victory cigarettes and cheep alcohol. It is strange to go from a Muslim country to an eastern orthodox country. Most notably is the lack of mosques and ...

... so long! We managed to get some cold pasta but decided that it would make a much better lunch so we sneakily packed that in the lunch box and had a little kebab shop dinner of beef and eggplant stew and burger patty with mash & melted cheese on top. Pretty good stuff but could have done with a few more degrees. Up for a big walk today. Tried to catch the 10:00 mini bus up the hill to vitosha mountains - zlatni mostave (aka golden bridges ...

... Tam czekalismy na niego przez 2,5 h, bo ciezarowka musiala przejsc przez odprawe. Zatrzymalismy sie na nocleg kilkanascie km za granica serbska. Chcialam z Marcinem rozbic nasz namiot, tuz przy parkingu i tirach, ale nasz Turek - Jaser, nam nie pozwolil. Stwierdzil, ze bedziemy spac na jednym z jego dwoch lozek w kabinie i nie pozwolil ze soba dyskutowac. Polozylismy sie spac zaraz po 22giej, bylismy wykonczeni poprzednia noca w autokarze ...

... next day. Now there's probably six Bulgarians walking around with mine and Brittany's identities. But apparently it's the law. Welcome to Eastern Europe. From the outside, our hotel looked pretty nice...3 stars. Heck, the Delta Bessborough is only a four star! It didn't take long for us to realize that there is a totally different ranking standard for hotels in Eastern Europe. Our hotel makes the HoJo look ...

... bare feet is much easier. anyway, we made it to a point at which we all decided there was absolutely nothing more to see, and then had to negotiate our way back down. they laughed at me when i started descending on my bum, but eventually everyone came around - we had a line of us all going down the side of the mountain on our ***** - must have looked pretty ridiculous, but it was SO steep. when we got down we were completely covered in ...

... to a pretty damnable race. It was funny - stereotype or not, he was getting more Irish by the drink. Also, we didn't really pick up on it at the time, but we agree in retrospect that Bryan the American was starting to show signs that he was a little naive - We were talking about the South Park episode on Alcohol Anonomous being a religious cult, and his defence was that you didn't have to believe in God, it was just whatever higher power you look to ...

From Istanbul I took a night bus to Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria. Hanging out at the Turkey-Bulgaria border crossing at 2:30 in the morning was certainly an interesting experience. The whole process of leaving Turkey and entering Bulgaria took over two hours, two hours that I will likely never forget. Our bus driver was giving all the instructions in Bulgarian, so of course I couldn't understand a word of what was going on and just had to follow the rest of the bus ...