so yea, this entry will be pretty short, but i'll do a brief summary of things. so saturday night kasia and i met up with colin, who was back in sofia. we went out for ice cream, and then had a rather amusing experience going to a kebab stand where like 8 really ugly bulgarian drag queens were eating. sunday morning we pretty much chilled and packed, and before i knew it kasia was headed for home. its weird not having her here anymore, but the stuff in turnovo is keeping me pretty occupied for now. colin and i headed to [View Full Entry]

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the day started out a bit earlier than normal since we had to be ready @ 9:30 for our excursion to Rila, a bit to the south and in a more mountainy area. we decided that we needed to pick out something "monasterical" to wear there, and so started the day's joke. there were 5 of us, but we split into 2 and 3 since we were taking taxis there, even though it was like a 2 hour ride each way. kasia and i ended up with steve, this guy from melbourne. he just finished working on a cruise ship in [View Full Entry]

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so yea, bulgaria's still awesome. but first, i feel like i've forgotten to mention whitney houston's song 'dance with somebody', which most of you probably remember. this song is seriously everwhere, and has been the trip's theme song since way back in Krakow. we were wondering how whitney was still able to keep up her crack habit, but then we came here! anyway, arriving in sofia after around a 3 hour bus ride we had no problem getting a cab, though our driver was a big asshole and didn't even help us with our bags. hope he liked his shitty tip! [View Full Entry]

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mmk well i'm in sofia now, and seeing that this computer is Windows 98 i'm getting a bad feeling....consequently i'm just going to update w/o pictures and hope i can find a computer from this century in the near future...also, i'm pretending i'm in veliko turnovo still... so our last day in istanbul consisted of us basically sitting and eating for 75% of the time we had . we sat on the water again because our skin wasn't already charred and i ended up getting my name in cool ottoman arabic caligraphy as well. one of the cafes we sat at [View Full Entry]

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you're probably sick of hearing about this breakfast, but it was again delicious. there were these annoying spoiled brat canadians sitting near us, but that was about the only negative thing i could think of. we flooded the bathroom even more than usual today (like 2 inches of water, not kidding) and then relaxed (long day already) before heading out for the day. walking toward the maın drag by our hostel we dıd our best to avoıd seeıng the men at that shop sınce we pretty much dıtched theır dınner ınvıtatıon, but we were weırded [View Full Entry]

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before i go any further i must say that the unibrow situation here is quite unfortunate. perhaps post-retirement i can come here and make a living off of my eyebrow waxing tent... anyway, today we got up around 9:30 and headed up to yet another amazing rooftop breakfast. we could tell that the day would be a little bit warmer, but with the breeze coming off of the ocean all we'd have to show for it was a little bit of a sunburn. by the time we got our of the guesthouse it was almost noon, and at about 1:10 we [View Full Entry]

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we awoke to yet another incredible breakfast overlooking the waterfront, this time with the added bonus of some kind of egg dish as well as dried apricots in a sugary syrup that i had with my yogurt. we chatted with this older woman from the u.s. about travel and whatnot, which was nice. she's here with her daughter and son, the daughter being an english teacher in prague and the son who studies music ethnography, about to depart for georgia (the country, not state). i hope my family can be that jet-setting some day, meeting in various places around the world [View Full Entry]

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though the prevıous entry may have put you on edge about thıs cıty, i cannot even begin to describe how incredible this place is. everyone seriously needs to book a trip here. its worth the money. but back to getting here... so we arrived in the city at 3:30am. we were too tired to be angry/scared/upset and just figured we'd find some hotel somewhere, put in on the credit card, whatever. a cab pulled up and despite the fact that being ripped off was quite likely, we figured we'd at least go to our guesthouse and see if it would be [View Full Entry]

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so were actually ın Istanbul rıght now (ıncredıble) but ıll get to that ın the next update. ıve fınally found a computer wıth wındows xp so ım every so slowly uploadıng pıctures onto all the prevıous romanıan entrıes. that beıng saıd, go back and look at the pıctures. theres only a few so dont get too excıted, but take what you can get.... Anyway...after arriving in Bucharest, it took us 40 minutes to find our hostel, despite its being located um...2 blocks from the train station. I blame it [View Full Entry]

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the train ride to Brasov was uneventful, though we did talk to that Austin woman for half of the time. Being from Texas, her speech was painfully slow and sometimes we just wanted to smack her and tell her to get to the point. arriving at the train station, we were approached by this woman Maria who apparently worked at Rolling Stone hostel, a place we had read bad reviews about. she kept trying to tell us our hostel was booked and to take a flyer but we just said 'bye' and kept walking. about ten minutes later while waiting for [View Full Entry]

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