Park Moskva Sofia

Due to a different perception of time we only travelled 13 instead of 18 hours from Vienna to Sofia which "enabled" us to spend 5 more valuable hours out in the freezing cold of Sofia, yeah!! Sometimes it's hard to believe that Bulgaria is a EU member... street conditions for cars and pedestrians are hazardous since there are many holes. The favourite food of Bulgarians seems to be pizza and we even met Mr. Flavio Ravioli alias Silvio Berlusconi who visited Sofia ...

... on his computer. So I asked him if he needed anything out of there because we're going to bed. He said no, that the rooms was ours. Lucky. But the weird thing was that I'm pretty sure he didn't go anywhere, I think he sat in the stairwell all night! After all, we were in his bedroom. It was awkward when I went to the bathroom at 4am and he was sitting at his little desk staring off into space. Talk about feeling like your in someone's way.
We woke up early to get a train to ...

... I was rather less optimistic upon finding my co-travellers of the drugged up axe murder variety. Second class (forever remembered as dodgy axe-murderer class) was a shameful collection of dirty ragged seats and broken arm rest, so you can imagine my indignation when I was awoken at 3am only to be told that the seat, which was actually doing my boots a disservice, was not to be tempered with. It is a shame that a ...

... social values have been distorted beyond recognition. From the Mercedes owner who believes the tram lane was designed for him, to the young girl (the high heels, short skirt, supermodel sunglasses, bleached hair and pink lipstick type, in case you are wondering) who is too busy talking on her cell phone to give her seat to an older person. From the all-important businessman who thinks tax laws exist only to be evaded, to the store keeper who snaps at you impatiently when ...

... in the sun. The no-car island is picturesque and we enjoy the views from the ferry rides in and out of the city. After saying our so longs to Debra and Kim, Phin and I head to the train station and hop on an overnight to Sofia to start a 3-day train adventure through what would turn out to be some very interesting landscapes...

I arrived in Sofia two hours late and, having forgotten about the extra hour lost for the time-zone change, it was already a dark and cold evening by the time I left the station. I headed in search of the hostel IŽd picked out and, despite Cyrillic sign posts that were infinitely more indecipherable than those of Belgrade, I found the road of the hostel with surprising ease. The hostel, however, was nowhere to be seen. I wandered around for what seemed an age, circling ...

... out that the train was leaving ASAP so we basically grabbed our stuff and ran we were in our daggy sleeping clothes and looked amazing the old men in the train enjoyed the show.... we got on the train found the first available seats and i said to Tash do you have our passports she said no you do we realised that in the rush to get off we may have left them on one of the couchettes so i dashed of the train and rain to the other ...

... in 1981. Now it houses several restaurants, cinemas, and concert halls. Its origin and function are quite similar to the Palace of Culture in Warsaw. However, this "palace" looks very bland and not even half as interesting as its counterpart in Warsaw. However, the park surrounding the Palace is nice and joyful. In addition, ice cream from the parlor just outside of the Palace is tasty (0.5 Euro). Because Bulgaria has ...

... someone else and threw him into his old seat. The conversation was in Serbian, but it went something like this - "Sit here. These are your bags. Good luck getting through customs". "But boss........" "Shut up". So then the inspection came. The cops come to our compartment, ask the two old dears who had been crossing themselves for the last ten minutes where they're from... "Bulgaria" they say in unison. "OK", the guy says.... Then to me. "British", say I. "WHAT ...

... there are probably a 100,000+ reminders of this isolation still in place--in the form of concrete bunkers that look oh-so-like R2D2 heads (from the movie "Star Wars") popping up from the beach and on surrounding hillsides--Albania was fearful of invasion from the former Soviet Union... The more-recent history of Albania is equally-turbulent. As the world welcomed the end to Communism(1990)...the people of Albania tried to ...