Ramhostel Sofia

... oops we forgot to tell you the airport is stupidly expensive...cheers dad!

car ride was looong but its quite a nice journey scenerys lovely. you go out of sofia and through the mountains then its through farmers fields and small villages dotted about. notlooking forward to the bus trip back though, the parents don't fancy a 10 hour round trip to take us back to the airport too, damn!!

... nothing ever smelt before!

What a place. The room was massive and beautiful! Booking on some of these websites can be fantastic value for money. We were paying less than 50€ a night and the floor even had carpet! We really felt like it was a scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee!!!

Whilst I registered our passports at Reception so the Police knew we were in town (!) Murray and Bronwyn thought about not letting me into the room ...

... said they are usually sound people and good for a laugh. "Ok then" I smiled, swigging down the rest of my pint. This would be fun. We left the Happy Bar and Grill and soon, after much bickering between Graham the Californian and Dave the Pennsylvanian, came to Daves "English pub". It's the only English pub I've ever been to with an Irish tricolour flag and the words "Irish pub" above the door. "Lemme buy you a beer Tom" Graham cooed as I found myself sitting between ...

Tricia and I took the day to walk around the interesting parts of Sofia. We grabbed a cab over to the big church (Aleksandar Nevski Cathedral) and walked back towards the hotel. We found the little tables of trinkets for sale quite interesting though honestly I can't imagine there are that many nazi and russian artifacts still for sale. I half ...

... sit in the crazy station I was so knackered I had to. I spent three hours drinking coffee and beer, eating chocolate and watching gipsy kids begging/selling stuff/playing with the stray dogs. Oh and watching this guy who was the spitting image of Jonathan have a hilarious conversation. For 2 and a half hours. With himself. I got my luggage back suprisingly complete and went to find my sleeper. Which wasn't there. So I found the train guard and asked him where the ...

Sofia was a very interesting city, what is the most interesting about this city, as most Eastern European cities, is the history of the Soviet Union, and the similarities of many of these cities who were affected by communism and how it has stripped much identity and culture from the land. We all hopped off our train and walked straight into the city center. The crew was going to leave several hours later that same night to go to Transylvania, I wanted to ...

... day and found some beautıful churches and cathedrals lıke the Nevsky and the 500 year old St. Sofia after whıch the cıty ıs named. That night we went for a meal at a local bar wıth some of Karmella's colleagues and sampled some local beers. Alex kindly agreed to let me stay another day and I took full advantage by tourıng the city and treating myself to some good food like quince ice cream. Alex and I went for a meal that night ın an authentic local restaurant.

... will have lesson plans, about 6 movies that deal with trafficking, stuff like that. so after the meeting i went into the center, had a real beer at an irish pub with my friend dan, then checked into my hostel. i had to wait hours for the 2 friends i was rooming with, jamie and allison, because they are the B19 reps to VAC, which is like peace corps student government. their meeting went 4 hours. i'm gladd i'm on ATIP, not VAC. once they got to the hostel we were starving, so we went ...

... my hotel because the online agency I had booked it through had given me fits. They had first told me the original one I booked (center of town, well-reviewed) had told them they couldn't take me because a tour group had grabbed up all the rooms during the e-mail lag time of my request and their confirmation, so the agency offered me two other places for less money but not as central and they didn't have internet. I asked for the more central one ...

... very seriously. We also did what any budget conscience traveller would and went shopping (some of you know we have a wedding in London in mid October). Shaun is now the proud owner of a Bulgarian shirt - although technically the shirt is made in Italy. Our bus trip from Sofia to Belgrade was perhaps one of our most entertaining journeys so far. Obviously it is not a popular tourist route because our bus looked like it was on its last legs ...