Metropolitan Hotel Sofia

... very day (the Italian prime minister came for a political visit and we saw him while he watched a military parade). The country is cheap though and we only spent 7 euros for 2 people for an entire day.

Special thanks to Bernhard for letting us use his shower before we got on the evening bus to Istanbul. We are not necessarily looking forward to the 2nd night on the bus in a row, but we are hardcore backpackers and that's the way a world trip should start!! ;)

... was a small market so we got 2 cans of beers and enjoyed them on our way down. Quick trip to the top, but worth it. On our hike down, we stopped at a picnic table and a local woman came up to me (real close) and starting talking to me really fast in Bulgarian. I shook my head and she grabbed my drink from my hands, examined it and gave it back. Then she opened her big backpack and pulled out a crate of mushrooms. She had just been mushroom hunting and was very proud of her findings ...

... the underground, convoluted tram entrance ways. Once we made it to our hotel, we got some bad news - they hadn't kept our reservation and were full. Not convenient, but considering it was 8:30 in the morning, neither of us thought it would be very hard to find another room. Wrong. For some reason, every place we walked to was full! After going to three hotels, we finally got lucky. A room was available, but not until ...

... bad exchange rate, around 65% of our lira to the Bulgarian Lava. Exchange spots get away with this by not posting their sell rate, which I failed to notice. They post a buy rate of 90% which was what I was looking at. Luckily we only exchanged 200 lira and a majority of our money we were able to get a much fairer rate. The walk to the apartment was pretty unremarkable. We got turned around a few times, and got there after a few hours. Everyone was in need of a ...

... There were some very cool people that worked there and they even offered me a job but it was not the cleanest hostile--the bedbugs were biting. After walking around Sofia for a day, I decided it was time to move on to the Black Sea coast while the weather was still nice. So I boarded a train to Varna, Bulgaria at 1:15 after being in Sofia for about 25 hours.

(S) Pulling into Sofia at 8 in the morning, we were impressed with the modernity of the train station. We were soon less impressed with the international ticket office where we were not sure if we had a ticket to Istanbul or Kiev. Fingers crossed for Istanbul. Next was finding the Avis office, which was somewhere ...

... till Wednesday (although the lonely planet states different) we now make the decision to head straight to Turkey as we were speaking to a couple who tried to do what we had plan to do island hop to Turkey but on the winter time table that is a no go and we would have ended back in Thessaloniki to catch the train to Istanbul, thankfully we were able to get seats or should i say very expensive sleepers to Istanbul.

... to Sofia city center. Though it is a capital city and has more than 1 million residents, Sofia felt smaller than I expected. Maybe because it was Sunday, there was not that much traffic on the main streets, Boulevard Mariya Luiza and Boulevard Vitosha. Hostel Mostel lies just 2 to 3 blocks from Boulevard Vitosha and an easy walk to most of the interesting sites in the Center. When I checked in, I was told that not only ...

... then joined by a nice Serbian chap who deposited several bags under the seats and then left. Every ten minutes or so he would come back, make some polite conversation, say "Don't worry, be happy", and then leave again. Literally everyone in the whole car is doing it. There was one rather hairy moment when, due to a communications error, he became convinced that Vinny was an English Government Official and I was a Catholic Minister. As I'm sure you can imagine, this gave ...

... noch ein bisschen warten. Das verblueffendste aber an Bulgarien war fuer mich: Das ist ja bergig! Und war mal viel groesser, in der Geschichte. Und man kann mit gutem Russisch ganz einfach ueberleben (allerdings kamen die kyrillischen Buchstaben von Bulgarien nach Russland, nicht umgekehrt, wie das der Sozialismus die Bulgaren lehren wollte!). Und das Essen ist echt klasse! Von mir war's das fuer's erste, ich hoffe mein heutiger Nachtzug ist sicher... Bis bald, euer Maddin