The Rooms Sofia

Hello again from a sodden Bulgaria. After months of prep and weeks of intensive effort today the Trussell team actually managed to distribute some Christmas boxes. As the muppets would say: Yayyyy!

For Sophia, Lizzie and Valya the day started in a leisurely fashion at the House of Joshua (HoJ) as Mimi and Rich started work in Sofia. Every year the Trust transports hundreds of boxes for a group of churches from Devon who have had a long ...

... In we piled, pointed down the road as none of us could speak coherently, and set off. Before the taxi got out of second gear, we arrived at the hotel feeling somewhat foolish and paid the driver a good tip, laughing like idiots.

Not surprisingly, after bouncing off the walls back to out rooms we all awoke to major hangovers to remind us of the night and we set off West towards Serbia.

Cheers, Rick

... fact that he held his finger pointed in one direction and as we went up and down streets he never lost track of that one direction. As I was trying to figure out what he was doing, Megan was dodging the things falling out of his hair. Yep. Kinda disgusting. But he got off two stops later and we got off a few after that and headed to the check-in area for EasyJet for our voyage into Italy! (sorry this took so long to post...but things as some of you know have been a bit hectic...)

... half of these girls looked one customer complaint away from dialling the Samaritans. I could definitely sympathise. Amongst the endless hordes of waiting staff I spotted a solitary male waiter and I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. While he got to work with attractive women all day he'd always have to live with the fact that nobody wanted him serving them ("Ok, you can have your meal served by the luscious Ludlilla, or the snot nosed Boris, your choice sir ...

... people have felt sorry for what happened in Struga and that i decided to leave. I'm also sorry, but the more I think about the whole situation, the better I feel that I left. Five months were totally enough I that place, because of what it offered-or what I could create there -differed so much of that what I intented to do. The voluntary tourism is just not the thing I wanted. At the same time I'm happy that I went there, because more than anything ...

... and scratching ourselves. Let's just say it wouldn't be "parent approved" in the US. The beds were surprisingly comfy (it's all relative), and somehow I managed to get about 9 hours of sleep (and without the aid of Tylenol PM). The interesting thing is how passport control was handled since it was an international train ride. We left Istanbul at 10pm, and arrived a few miles from the border of Bulgaria just before 3am. All passengers had to get off the train ...

... 9 euros. Not as cheap but looked more hospitable and happening. I know Bulgarians aren't like this though. If I didn't know nice ones, I truly would've gotten back on the train and left elsewhere - it was so frustrating. All for five bucks too. I didn't want to pay and the police won't bother just for five bucks. And the tram lady doesn't get paid enough to deal with this. It all worked out. Except for that cop car that passed by once and it looked like ...

... and ipod type things just because they can - I for one am not going to say no to a guy with a gun. We were also staying in a hotel for our 2 nights here...I guess if communist houses look like shoe boxes then communist camping grounds must be really really bad. Although I can't think of much worse than the Kavalla site. Surprise, surprise, our hotel was a really big square type box building... but inside the rooms weren't too bad. My new room ...

... gave us a "you don't want to go there" look I thought, but then I quickly realized he was just making it sound like a difficult fare to try to squeeze a few extra Bulgarian Yentils from us. I didn't care about the money. I just wanted to be on the move, away from the train station. We climbed the corroded steel steps, took a deep breath and looked out onto Sofia. We weren't one hundred metres from the train station when the sun started to shine, the ...

... the eye can only be extracted when the sun rises over the western mountains. Go now, young one." I then gathered up my pouch, consisting of the foot of a clam, the wing of a tortoise, the fingernail of a frog, and the sweat from an elephant's back, and exited into the big city. I'll have you know that after some travail I procured said eye of worm and have turned everything in to Immigration. I have to check back in a week.