Serdika Sofia

... indicated a number of clubs in the downtown vicinity of our hostel, but when we arrived it made sense. The Plaza feels almost like a miniature Vegas, with a dozen places stacked side by side around a central driveway.<br><br>In any case, Matt led the way to Avenue, which on Tuesday had a better crowd than its neighboring Jim Bean. After negotiating the 3 lev (1.5 eur) entry, we stepped in at the strike of midnight and found an absolutely empty dance floor. I'm ...

... util the early hours and she tells me about Christianland where she and her dad lived for a bit. She's also interested in doing Glasto so we swap details. She also tells me that a relationship finished about six months ago when her boyfriend decided that his increasing disability was no longer worth fighting. She's 20, he was 72 and the relationship lasted four and a half years. As you can imagine it was an interesting chat.

... Esimene õhtu kujunes üsna tormiliseks. Kõku iisraeli kolleegid ja sõbrad tulid läbi ning kuna ka Marek ei olnud neid ammu näinud, tõusid tuurid kiiresti lakke. Osa meist läks ööklubitiirule, teine osa (mina ja Risto) otsustas puhata. Kell oli aga selles hetkeks saanud juba üle kolme - Eestis täitsa paras aeg peolt koju naasmiseks. Seltskond laekus tagasi alles üheksast ja pidu kestis veel poolteist tundi. Uskumatu vastupidavus! Otsustasime linna peale minna ...

... is staring at us and worrying.. Someone translates for us and its all on! The ticket lady calls ahead to Sofia and gets our platform number for us and the conductor starts getting passengers on the train a while lot quicker... The train pussk in 5 minutes early, our carriage friends with us luck with cheers and we run, shortly followed by a quck walk (we're by no means athletic at all)... Bills on Bags, Leonie's on finding the platform. Meet at the stairs!!!

We are all here in Sofia. Iva greeted each one of us at the Sofia airport with beautiful flowers. It was such a lovely warm welcome after hours of travel. Today we rowed from 7:30 to 9 on a beautiful lake north of Sofia. Lots of wooden boats and wood seats but it was so very beautiful. The junior rowers looked at us with curiosity and the coaches were not quite sure about us Masters rowers ...

... the taxi was inflating at an exponential rate. Rich called the taxi driver's bluff and told him we weren't tourists. The man became indignant. "Meter, no meter, no problem," he said. He knew that we had no recourse on the interstate but to stop here, go ahead, or turn around. He switched off the meter, which is illegal for a taxi driver to do. "Twenty-five," he said, quoting us a price that would have taken us more than double the ...

... it to mean no. which basically means that all lines of communication are cut for me, because you can't even communicate yes or no without serious confusion. so i can only eat or buy things that i can point to. which is working out alright. i am living of street vendors - lots of sausages with pickles in bread, bulgarian donuts and sheep milk yoghurt - those are the favourite snacks, and thus the easiest thing to point to :) today i went out ...

... the word ¡§Baggage¡¨ ¡§YES!! YES!!!¡¨ We cried and followed the man around the corner to a little room where sat all of our bags smiling at us as if to say, what the heck took you guys so long? As it turned out the men at the Turkish train station had called the train and told them to get our baggage off, which they had done promptly. The reunion with our baggage was a joyous one, knowing our prayers had been answered. From there ...

... wafting over to neighbouring tables. 5-months pregnant Lily, (suffering a little from her decision to wear all black on the hottest day of the year!) was the perfect hostess, pointing us in the direction of Sofia's must-sees (ornate cathedrals and churches hiding behind the parliamentary buildings and striking out from soviet surroundings, their sweeping cobbled squares defiantly resisting urban creep). On our one full day we explored the Vitosha hills on ...

We headed from Istanbul into Bulgaria which was a bit of an unknown destination as we hadn't meet too many people who had ventured into this country and again once we arrived in Sofia there was next to no tourists about. We had definitely also turned a corner in terms of weather as well with a very definite switch to autumn ...