Alexander Palace Sofia

... typical battle through Sofia traffic to reach our warehouse (big thanks here to Bulgaria Baptist Union for letting us use some of their space) to unload the truck. The trick with driving in Sofia is to take everything that is bad about UK driving behaviour and embrace it as your friend and ally. Going with the flow is the order of the day and as long as you remember that every motorcyclist that you see has absolutely no sense of self preservation and will attempt to make that ...

... know I guess. He took us back to his apartment and we hardly saw him again for the next couple of nights because he was so busy at work. He did however have time to take us to an amazingly interesting bar called "the apartement". It was basically set up like many different styled apartment rooms, each one with a computer so whoever was in the room could control the music and mood. Calling it a bar is a bit of a stretch as it doesn't sell ...

... fully understood where I get those carlsbergs from, I must have hidden a crate somewhere when I was really drunk and can only remember the location when in a similar state). Luckily Sofia is one of the pizza capitals of the world and I spent the last of my Levs on a Pizza and water. Pizza is only fully appreciated after a few beers. Eventually ten thirty rolled around and I strolled across to the bus sitting in the far corner of the station with "Istanbul" written in ...

We spent the whole day heading to Sofia. Two plane trips and lots of weariness. When we got to the airport in Amsterdam, we noticed our flight was delayed which would have forced us to miss our connection. So the staff switched us to flights through Frankfurt instead. In Frankfurt, the airport was crazy. We headed down the terminal to switch from the C to the B terminal and it was clearly the longest airport terminal i've ever been though...was enormous ...

... I've been to and are generally worth going to get a feel of the country and its people, its traditions etc. But it was closed for renovation - there's also one in Plovdiv so I'll go to that one instead. I didn't go to any other museums, I mostly just enjoyed wandering around the side streets taking in the atmosphere. Sofia is basically on a grid system with main boulevards and then lovely little cobbled dusty side streets with pavement cafes that you can while away ...

... the mention of the word "watermelon" they new exactly the ad I was referring to. In addition, they tell me that if I think the print ad is interesting, the televised ad is even more so. Apparently the televised ad says something about them being juicy. What do you think? I doubt we'd see this ad in US print. Oh, BTW: It is an ad for a watermelon-flavored liquor like Ouzo. Think they'll get young (or old) men to buy a watermelon flavored liquor?

... there, at which point they decided to turn off the lights and heating in the carriage. After clearing the border the people in my carriage left, only to be replaced by another group, which included an older woman with about 500 Euros stuffed down her shirt, more people came in and started removing cigarettes from their clothing, chain smoking and having very animated discussions with each other ...

... made it sound like everyone stays several days. An older kiwi guy was going off on how he can't understand why people only stay in a town one or two days 'cuz they can't possibly get to know it in that time (he was staying 10). I should've pointed out to him that you can't possibly get to know a town in two weeks or a month either, but I kept my mouth shut (I've lived in Portland 7 years and there's still lots I haven't seen and done). And the fact that he was spending ...

... train stopped at least every half an hour, the tickets were checked at least 5 times and crossing the boarder took an agonizing two hours. So after a distinct lack of sleep and the need for a good shower we arrived in Sofia. This was merely a stop over and we were aware that we would have to wait till later in the afternoon to take the bus. Having been given a price guide by the trusty bible of travel we were a little shocked to learn that the price was double what we ...

... that my reservation hadn't appeared in her files the night before. Nonetheless, she was very accommodating and found a fold-out bed for me and made space in the dorm (my info arrived belatedly, for some reason). I quickly made some new friends, including an outgoing Czech guy (Peter, or Petre, I think), and an awesome local student named Ven, who Peter (we'll stick with that name) met on the train. As soon as I was settled the beer and Rakia (schnapps-ish moonshine) started ...