Vitosha Park Hotel Sofia

... oops we forgot to tell you the airport is stupidly expensive...cheers dad!<br><br>car ride was looong but its quite a nice journey scenerys lovely. you go out of sofia and through the mountains then its through farmers fields and small villages dotted about. notlooking forward to the bus trip back though, the parents don't fancy a 10 hour round trip to take us back to the airport too, damn!!

... your admission cost to things but its always extra. Not that we can't afford the bathroom, but to always be sure to have change with you and to pay without even getting a clean bathroom. <br> We arrived in Sofia early in the morning and took a free tram (don't know if they were supposed to be free) to our hostel. We weren't sure if they would have our room ready, but I was praying because I was so tired. Brian picked out a good place for us. The hostel only had 5 rooms and it was ...

... help us. Of course, he could not speak English or Turkish, and he could only read the Cyrillic alphabet, which made it difficult. Peter, thankfully spoke enough Russian to establish that our reservations had been double booked so it looked as though all five of us were going to have to share a cabin for three. Now, I should take a moment to describe what a sleeper cabin on this particular train was like. Image a room four feet wide, six feet long, and about 8 feet high ...

... had "liberated" Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire, and this was built to commemorate this achievement.Inside it is all marble with murals covering all the walls. There is a magnificent iconastasis decorated in gold. It is the seat of the Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox church and the special seats for the king and the patriarch are near the altar. From here the rest of the group returned to the hotel. We were not going on the optional tour to Rila Monastery so we stayed in the ...

Zdraveite! / Hi! As soon as my conscience landed in Sofia.. I was wrapped up in all kind of activities.. Finding a place to stay, finding my way to and in the office, getting to know the people there and other people in Sofia who are concerned with the biketour, cycling and samba (there is an actionsambaband here, which is connected to the Rhythms of Resistance network!). Besides this there where some issues with money and ...

... soo hard to know! By the third shake you feel dumb and realize they have been saying yes all along. It's not good to generalize about body types, but even in croatia we noticed two kinds of guys, the thick medium sized (usually with no shirt) and the tall and lanky. Here in Bulgaria it is the wrestler body, they are everywhere, no wonder they win in the olympics all the time. Am I being too mean? REally, everyone was good to us (except I am irritated with the ...

... to pick me up, though the car was turned off and parked. Anyway, the song I heard playing when I got in sounded familiar. It was none other than the famous techno 80s band-- SNAP, playing "I've got the power." This is the same group who did "Rhythm is a Dancer," which, for those of us who can remember these hits, they are solid 80s (or is it 90s?) tunes. "Ive got the power" particularly motivated me as it was the first song I heard upon entering ...

Well on my last day in Nis i was able to visit the old roman palace. It wasnt much to be honest, but at least i got the chance to visit. Then i had to take the train from Nis to Sofia. The two places are about 170km apart, and the trip was scheduled to take 4 hours. Instead it took about 8, with 4 of those hours being split evenly on the Serbian side of the border and the Bulgarian side. Seems the big racket in these parts is smuggling cigarettes ...

... and now I'm in possession of a banging headache. Our chewing gum food ration hasn't lasted as long as we would have hoped. However, not all is bleak, as we have just been witness to one of the most entertaining spectacles of the journey thus far - the Serbian Smuggling Ring. Everyone in our train car seems to know each other, and they all seem to be smuggling cigarettes and alcohol over the Bulgarian border. We had a compartment to ourselves for the first few hours, but ...

... Und wo sei meine Registration? Nach 5 Minuten Diskussion kam die entscheidende Frage - nie hatte ich sowas direktes erlebt: Haben Sie 5 Euro? Es folgten etwa 5 Stunden warten, bis auch die rumaenischen Grenzer alle gluecklich waren. Mein Fahrer hatte an der Grenze eine Stange Marlboro verteilt, ueber die Stationen hinweg. Als ich per Taxi bis in die Innenstadt gefahren war (nach 2 Anrufen, und fuer 5 Euro), durfte ich noch miterleben, was echte rumaenische ...