RUSALKA Plovdiv

I am going to start with the gawry bits first as a warning to anyone who reads this.<br><br>1. Be wary of hotels.com as they told us we had paid for our room when we booked and we subsequently got chased by the Guesthouse after we had left - for nonpayment! Thankfully they had our email address so did not have to call the Police to track us down! Everything seemed to be resolved but took several days, lots of emails and many hours until we found it wasn't and ...

... Bulgarian culture and religion were preserved during 500 years of Ottoman rule, so most of them are located in some out-of-the-way, mountainous region, and this monastery is one of the major ones. Inside its chapel is a 500 years old icon of St. Mary which is said to have healing power so there was a line of people waiting to pray in front of it and touch it. <br><br>I went back to the city and ...

... too much trouble then headed into Plovdiv with our trusty tourist map. It has nice wide boulevardes with some modern stores, lovely parks, outdoor cafes and also an Old Town area. The Old Town was fairly spread out and walking was quite difficult on the large stones of the cobbled lanes. There were some interesting buildings and also some Roman ruins, the usual ...

... Prison Breaks; on the laptop - it really is a bonus to have it in times like these. For diner we splashed out eating at a restaurant although Bulgaria is so cheap that it wasn't much of a splash! We had beer, pasta and a gigantic greek salad for NZ$20, Cesca says its the best salad she has had outside Greece itself. On the way to the station we spent our remaining Lev on huge ice creams. Our train arrived on time and we crammed into our tight sleeper cabin for the hop over the border into Turkey.

... had no green card insurance. As our paper work from the rental company was not green we had to pay 100 euros to cross into Serbia. Ouch! As we were unable to go any other route we were stuck with paying it. Grumpily we drove through and found the roads poorer than anywhere so far. Not wanting to spend time here we drove through the day on towards Bulgaria where we passed the border without problems. However the roads were dreadful, full of potholes, uneven and slow ...

... pass Plodiv and that it was 20 minutes away. He was not lying, and we were indeed in Plodiv (albeit 2 hours late)! Yay! All the signs were in Cyrillic! Hurrah? I knew nothing about Bulgaria other than the fact it is old and has a lot of old churches and monasteries, namely Rila Monastery. It was a convenient place to stop by on the way to the main course: Romania, Austria and Germany. Similarly, our first stop was a ...

bus to plovdiv. good idea! very pretty old city, and while looking for the hostel of my choice (sports nastrovje something like this or other), i met a crew of bulgarian musicians from the austrian symphony orchestra or so. they were all here to attend the marriage of one of them. they all ...

... for making sculptures. "Katja that's how I'm going to tell you...It doesn't matter where a man lives, but what's inside here," and he knocked his head. "Considering your ideals, ideas, goals and a picture about what you're capable of; that's what is a measure of a good or bad life. I could have worked every day, 24/7; i could have enjoyed afternoon siesta. So how can you measure a good life?"

... I guess it's just this oddly whimsical sensibility that sets it apart for me, found in the smallest details.  Take ice cream for instance: a Seussian mound, piled foot-high, marvelously whipped into a beehive; or the way ketchup is splattered with abandon across pizza slices. The quirkiest Bulgarian oddity of all has to be Azis; an androgynous, silver-bearded Roma singer whose glossy Mugatu-lookalike mug can be seen splayed ...

... These are painted in a traditional style made famous by Zahary Zograf (mid 19C) and sometimes feature saints and angels, whilst others depict gory scenes of punishment and torture in the underworld. Probably fair enough considering that this part of the world has had a torrid past. Within a couple of hours you can see most of the architectural ...