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Published: August 10th 2007
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Varna Cathedral
Before we can begin to talk about Bulgaria, and our initial forays into their crazy letters, we have to finish off our last day in Turkey and go over the nightmare bus ride that took us to Varna...
We had scoped out the area and how to get to the bus station the day before so all went well there. Got our tickets without much problem.... kind of... the bus station is more llike the convergence of a world of bus stations, in one vast sprawling mess... 168 bus stops in all... each one owned and operated by it's own tiny little bureau. It could be a perfectly efficient place if it weren't for that. Got tickets for seats 3 and 4 (having read that that would be the best place to avoid the smoke from the other passengers) and were promptly yelled at and ushered down to the very back... the puke pews. A Romanian woman nicely helped us out a bit and informed us that apparently our bus to Varna hadn't made it to Istanbul, and that we'd meet it about
Varna Cathedral
Lachlan's favorite pict he's taken. an hour down the road... cue concerns over successful arrival...
Anyway... we finally got on the
Varna Cathedral
Lachlan's favorite pict he's taken.right bus without incident, chatting nicely with the friendly Romanian lady (who later on even bought Brigid a coke at the border control). Down we sat, right at the front, in our designated seats, and looked forwad to a smokeless journey. But avast ye beastly jillies... folied again... it turns out that the ONLY people that smoked on the bus were the 2 drivers and their 'stewardess'. And she the worst - an 8 hour bus journey, and she easily had 15 cigarettes!!!! GARGH!
Border control was interesting... passports confiscated by the stewardess for 20 minutes. Given back to us, before being confiscated again by an armed guard. Another brief possession of our passport while they stamped it, before having to kiss it goodbye again while we drive down the road a bit in the bus. We got it back though, in the end, and passing through the border seemed to quickly relax all of the bus drivers etc... (we suspect that they were bringing in illegal goods; on the way they seemed to make several
'unofficial' stops at various shops, returning with armfuls of goods and stowing them in the hold...!).
Not long after clearing the border,
A-Lounge Bar, right on the beach
the smokeress decided it was time for music, and put on a CD of what I can only describe as an upbeat pop/traditional turkish music fusion. 'wasn't too bad actually... catchy and toe tappy... but that CD only had 9 songs on it, and she played it on a loop the whole way... 5 hours... maybe 15 times...? Even I know the words now, and was mumbling incohesively in the brain-drained trance by the end.
Arriving in Varna we quickly (ha ha ha) got the grasp of things and called our hostel owners to come pick us up (very convenient!). We actually stayed in a small village called Zvezditsa, about 8 or so miles outside of the city. A great place... small. Quiet... sort of. There are about 55 cockerels that apparently live in the village... or at least within ear-shot of the hostel. (Brigid says I am exagerating too much... but with her looking over my shoulder you can be sure of the truth when I now say that
there were 10 of them at least). Anyway they take turns crowing essentially all night, from about 4am onwards 'til about 4pm... although they ease off a lot after
Varna Beach
11am... I felt a little hard done by to be fair... not cos of the crowing per se (we were used to morning prayer calls afterall), but because if you sat and listened, you could hear the crow-circle make it's way round, kind of like an aural mexican wave. A long way off you could hear a beatiful pitch-perfect "COCK-a-doooodle-dooooooOOOooo!". A little closer, it would quickly be matched in like fashion. Closer and closer these almost idyllic crows would make their way round, until with the soft gentle subtlety of a lump mallet the one across the road from us would cry; "SQUAWAAAAAAACK!AWWWWWWWWWWWK!". *shudder*. Teeth grate. Nature itself seems to hang it's head in shame. That poor thing really got a good thwacking from the ugly vocal chord stick...
Anyway... to our stay in Varna... I will cover 4 days in less words than there are above... by a long way. We spent a day looking at the sites (pics included below), which is basically just one cathedral.
We were planning on finding more good things to be touristy with but got waylayed by the amazing beaches (and near naked ladies; very skinny) and the very friendly hostel owners
Twister action
(Georgia and Terry) and (to a greater extent) the other guests. It is cheap in Bulgaria compared to Istanbul. We drank too much and just had a fun fun time all around. There is a really cool bar that has 2 swimming pools in it, and plays low-key drum and bass music all day. It is kind of a pretty-face-place but was great during the day to just hang back and read a little. Fruity cocktails too...
We did take a day trip to an unheard of beach and went snorkelling and spear-fishing (a local friend of Georgia and Terry take their guests to the better, more local places, for a small fee). We caught a number of small fish called Goby, and ate them for dinner. Lachlan was very thirsty the whole time... being his first time snorkelling he drank about 3 gallons of salted bulgarian mineral water (also known as "The Black Sea"). Wish we'd remembered to take a pic before we scarfed the
fish but we forgot... sorry folks. Brigid got a little burned, and was referred to later by one of the other hostellers as "The girl with the red face"!. Really she was just
Twister action
hot though, it was her feet that got the sun...
We had a crazy last night party; starting off with insanity on the twister mat (pics below... Lachlan is the one wearing the red/maroon/claret T shirt; check out the dubious head placement!). It was somewhat sad to leave Gregory's; it is a very well run hostel... they leave the guest to do what they will pretty much and they do... glad to go in a way too though, as it was a bit more of a party than we intended and our bill was racking up quite highly; until either the GSC or Sigma start accidentally paying us while we're not working, we really should look into sticking to a budget!
Anything else anything else...? Yes... one last thing... we've both been battling a bit of a tummy thing since Istanbul. It's lingering even now. 'wouldn't so much call it the runs, but it's definitely a fair-paced-jog... it's a bit of a bother as you have to pay to use the toilet in Bulgaria. 30-50 Stotinkis (aka 'stinkies' since you need them to make them) which is only about 10-30c/5-20p, but it's a pain trying to count out foreign coins when all you want to do is sprint past into the haven before you! We've found imodium pills that are bigger than nickels (about the size of the old 5p for the UK folks) so I'm sure that we'll be back to the good stuff soon.
Anyway... that's it. Current location: Velicko Turnovo (Bulgaria) in a hostel called 'Low Costel Hostel'. It is very quiet and perfect for us right now. We head through Ruse, and Bucharest (Romania) to Brasov in Romania sometime tomorrow. Hope they've found the hungry bear with the taste for meat-de-americanie by the time we get there!
More updates to come as always.
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Brendan
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Lovely Home for sale in Brasov
I was reading the newspaper today like I always do at lunchtime, and I just so happened to see a lovely home for sale. It is located 16miles southwest of Brasov in the village of Bran. It us very historic and sits atop a 200ft rock overlooking the village of Bran. If you haven't picked up on it yet it is Bran Castle. Not saying you have to buy it or anything but it would be one to look at for sure. ;)