Serdika 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 ...

... all night, I might have described as dancing. The music was punctuated by 2 guys playing small triple drums which they would occasionally pick up to move to another section of the dance floor. It was all pretty cool until the music halted for an emcee, who led the crowd in a song of happy birthday for someone I couldn't spot, and the continued singing to the music for the rest of the evening.

Dan, Matt and Aussie-Mormon had barely danced at all so Sam, Jo and ...

... as more modern and developed than Romania as well. There seems to be less rubbish around but still lots of graffiti. Other things you notice is how good looking the women are here and how ugly the guys are. I have noticed it all through eastern Europe you see these beautiful petite dressed up women walking around with these meat heads in tracksuits its a bit weird, but its everywhere! also you notice how the young generation are so different ...

... ago. Anyways, back to Sophia. The fruit vendors to not shout out as they do in Turkey, but they do have many of the same fruits. I was surprised to see strawberries, avocados, kiwis, oranges, nectarines, and fresh berries. I am not sure where they get their produce from, as it was snowing in Sofia and long past a growing season. The second day was much the same as the first. We slept in late, drank coffee, and enjoyed the view of the mountain. Rachel and Barbra wanted to go shopping, so ...

... were not impressed. We then arrived at the train station to find we had missed the 7pm bus and there wasn't another one until 2230 (they go every hour or half an hour said our hostel guy) but maybe not after 7. We waited around in the bus station popping out to get a burger but mostly just waiting before we got on the bus at 2230. The bus was good though as they gave us all a free chocolate biscuit that could best be described as a Wagon Wheel.

... t let us do so. He made us sleep in one of his 2 beds in the cabin, without any discussion. We went to sleep right after 10 pm, we were exhausted by the previous night spent on a bus, then the morning at a coach station, and later on walking with the backpacks. Half an hour later on our Turkish driver came to the cabin and made us get up, by putting a torch into our eyes. We didn`t know what was going on. And then we realized that he`d brought... a ...

... we sort of made a game plan to get us around to the highlights and get Kimby back to her plane on time. We ended up in kind of a flop house in sofia the first night, but found a really cute little restaurant by chance and one of the first of many shopska salads (cucs, tomatoes, and shredded white cheese) We zoomed out the next day to a great place that I can't spell right now, Koprishitistva,. A beautiful village full of old historic houses. We strolled, ate ...

... was nice and I got invited out by a couple of girls the night after arriving. One was from Israel and the other was Turkish Bulgarian (Turks make up about 15 percent of the population in Bulgaria). I had decided to go to plovdiv (a city 2 hours away), but they offered me a a place to stay a one of their houses, and so I decided to save some money and take them up on their offer. It was cool to out and dance as I hadn't done too much of it on my travels... I realised I still ...

... our luck was in, and we found some outdoor disco kind of establishment. A few more drinks (actually, as I think about it, really quite a lot of drinks) and some shots of the local Ouzo style spirit that's name escapes me (that and so much more). It was around this time that things started to get interesting. When Bryan went to the toilet Paul started talking about "****ing Americans", and he started to make it pretty clear that he found Vinny and I a bare ...

From Istanbul I took a night bus to Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria. Hanging out at the Turkey-Bulgaria border crossing at 2:30 in the morning was certainly an interesting experience. The whole process of leaving Turkey and entering Bulgaria took over two hours, two hours that I will likely never forget. Our bus driver was giving all the instructions in Bulgarian, so of course I couldn't understand a word of what was going on and just had to follow the rest of the bus ...