Bulgaria and Romania

We left Turkey and began our 3 week or so journey through Eastern Europe into Scandenevia. The first stop, Bulgaria was certainly a change from the countries we've seen thus far. For one thing, we entered the country completely blindly with no plans or ideas of what we'd see. I mistakenly thought Bulgaria was in a guidebook I had brought, so we had no information at all about the country. The alphabet is again different from ours, or the Greek, and fewer signs were translated into our alphabet here, presumably because of fewer tourists. I soon learned the sign for Sofia--the capital, and for lack of any better plan followed them. The capital was small, pretty, with snowey mountains surrounding it, had very few hotels, which were quite expensive, was very clean and quite orderly. This is the first country we've been in without lots of stray dogs and cats. People stood on the street corners, with no cars in sight waiting for the light to change to cross. The hotel we stayed in was clearly a communist-era hold-over, very cinder-blocky with no charm. The desk clerks were brusk and spent lots of time tearing papers with straight=edges and stamping things with big stampers. My reciept was hand-filled in, in triplicate. But we enjoyed walking around. The streets were clean and the historic buildings lit up at night. The next day we headed into the countryside, which was very charming. There were still many people riding about in donkey-drawn or horse-drawn carts, filled with great loads of sticks, and colorfully dressed families riding in them. We visited several castles. One was visitor-orriented with tickets and signs, others just stood there ready to be enterred and explored. After two days we crossed into Romania and were greeted at the border crossing on the Romanian side with about 10 stray dogs. As in Greece and Turkey, in Romania the dogs are everywhere. We always save scraps of food when we eat for them. I love Romania, it has quickly become one of my favorite countries. It is colorful: the clothing, the houses...it is gourgeous with the snowey mountains. Again there are alot of horse and donkey carts. Prices are very low. We have seen several castles...one, the boys favorite ever was huge and abandoned on a hillside to climb up to. We also saw Dracula's castle and another that used to belong to the King. Both were taken by the government during the communist era and have just been returned to the families with a stipulation that they stay open for 3 years. After that...who knows. Indeed Dracula's castle is on the market if you are interested in buying. We are right now in a beautifully preserved medieval town. in central Romania. I feel we are visiting these countries at a great time. They are still in transition, and will probably be quite different 10 years from now. Take care. e-mail me. Mijke.

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