Blogs from Varna, Varna Province, Bulgaria, Europe - page 2

Hi all... had another fantastic but very busy week. Had a visit from my lecturer at university and a lady from Frontline to continue links with the UK and to ensure all our University documentation was correct. Had a good meeting with them and the Ruse universtiy lecturers to get an idea of our progress and received very good feedback. I now have some more outcomes to achieve in the final three weeks with the children and a few minor bits and bats to sort out while here. It all seems managable so should be ok : ) The weather has been rubbish again at the start of the week. Me and Claire walked back from a meal out to our house and returned looking like someone had thrown a bucket of water on us! It ... read more

Day 6-Ruse, Bulgaria to the Black Sea 8/22/10 Today, another perfect weather day, was a road trip. We were bussed about 120 miles southeast to Varna, a seaside village on the Black Sea, a trip of 2.5 hours. We discovered that Bulgaria is a very agricultural country. The communist leader here was not as ruthless as Ceausescu was in Romania. As a result, he was not executed when communism was ended here. But there still remains many examples of the difficulties of their lives under communist rule. And the rule afterwards, which was led by many of the former communist leaders. There was also growing problems with the mafia. Examples include the shoddy housing built on the Soviet model of apartments. People still live in them although they appear to be collapsing. The average size for ... read more

Yes folks I made it to Boyana!!The car proved itself worthy yet again - the weather not so and me even less ! I got through to Romania with no problem and in less than 2 days, but then things deteriorated(surprise,surprise!).Firstly I was given the wrong direction to reach my E70 route after they failed to sign it anywhere. As a result i ended up much further east than expected. having worked out that this was so using the map it was by then too late to turn round so began the negotiation of snow covered roads,adorned with ice on top.Good tyres therefore had little effect.I made it down to the next major junction and headed south on the E road to Craiova. This took me through a serious of hairpin bends on narrow snowy roads ... read more

Our stay in Varna has essentially been 10 days of down time, a welcome break halfway through this trip. It's just a shame the British weather came to greet us as we were looking forward to lying by the pool and getting a tan. We were met off the bus by Rob who we worked with in Azerbaijan. He kindly invited us to stay at his house in the hills above Varna. Our first full day with him was glorious and we basked in the sunshine making the most of his swimming pool. Sadly that was the last we saw of the sun for almost a week! On Monday Rob had to leave but he entrusted his house to us for a further week. Rob left behind torrential rain and a chill breeze, lovely weather for ... read more

At least I think it should be upwards.Looking forward to family visit - not long now and have devised possible excursions to use time wisely.Travelling will have to be early am or later evening as in between is a nightmare with our weather. We are in the process of laying down plum Rakia for winter cold offsetting! Never fear there will be some for Belfast at Xmas and Cornwall in June!! Even we can't drink 50L of plum and of course grape to follow.Gillian and Peter got good weather with some nightime storms and we have had the odd one since following 50C days!! In our case it has been welcome to feed crops.The cat and dog continue in good health although the latter seemed to have an allergic reaction as I did from grasses when ... read more