Beautiful Weather in Bulgaria ... Finally!

---

Okay, so whilst leaving Romania I found myself in the same cabin as two American guys and one Romanian. One of the American guys was really nice and relaxed, but the other one was quite irritating to be honest. Anyway it turned out that the annoying one was going to the same place as I was - Veliko Tarnavo - whilst everyone else was heading to Istanbul. Eventually the conductor moved the annoying guy out of our cabin to one which had a bit more room. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, and I spent most of the time chatting to the American guy and trying to communicate as best as possible with the Romanian guy and the rest of the time I spent finishing off Hard Times.
Anyway the Romanian guy told me as we were pulling into our stop (which are all really poorly marked) that this was the one to get off at. Me and Brad (another American going to Veliko) got off but the annoying American had chosen that moment to go to the toilet and then had to go back to his cabin and pack his stuff up, in the process delaying the train by about 5 minutes. The three of us then met Todd, who runs the hostel and comes to pick you up from the station, who then drove us to the hostel. Once there we were just checking in and another guy from the hostel came in to tell us that the light show at the citadel had just started up. We headed up to the viewing platform nearby to watch. A loudspeaker was blaring some music and a small tower was being lit up in different colours - so my initial impression was not very favourable - but then the music became more dramatic and uptempo and heaps of lights came on revealing a huge citadel. The light show, which included a laser show, was really awesome but hard to describe. After that I headed back to the hostel and cooked some pasta and hung out with Brad and then watched TV in the common room with everybody else. The hostel was really nice and kept plying everyone with free alcohol which was nice. Whilst I was there I ran into someone I recognised and who recognised me. After ages of trying to figure out how we had met, we remembered that we were on the same trivia team back in Edinburgh! Small world!
The next day was beautiful weather and I spent most of the time exploring Veliko Tarnovo, including climbing the mountain nearby and exploring the citadel. I then headed back to the hostel in the afternoon and lazed around there which included writing the previous blog which I only just realised is actually 5000 words. I ate the free meal and drank the free beer and then had another quite quiet night at the hostel.
I had a slowish morning the next day and then headed to the bus station to catch my bus to Varna which is a large town on the Black Sea. The bus took 4 hours and so I arrived late afternoon. I checked in at my hostel and then headed down to the beach where I ran into 2 German girls (Anigrid and Katerina) and 2 Polish guys. I left them after a while and kept exploring. I headed back to the hostel where everyone was, including Adam, an English guy (and the sole native-English speaker in the hostel), who suggested we all go out to eat. So me, Adam, the German girls and 5 Polish people (3 more of their friends had arrived) went to a restaurant to get something to eat. The menu was in Bulgarian (and thus also in the Cyrillic alphabet) and so we chose our meal by pointing at it - I ended up with something with pork in it which was actually really nice. The Polish were lots of fun, but definitely annoying tourists at times - but I think all the other tables probably thought they were Americans and blamed it on them! The other semi-annoying thing was that everyone but me and Adam could speak German so at times I felt a bit left out of conversations. After that we headed back to the hostel and as it was quite late I headed to bed.
I headed to the beach the next day and lazed around there reading my current book - The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens again. I spent ages there and then met up with the Polish for a little bit before they went off to catch their bus. 4 Germans had arrived and so me, Adam and 6 Germans headed out to get a meal. The place we went was nowhere near as nice in food or service. I had an entree of fried cheese which was a bit meh! And then "pork cooked in a home-made style" which was better but still not great. Katrina found a piece of glass in her meal which turned out to be off one of the cooks rings, and we were also brought meals we didn't order. Again I headed to bed not long after getting back to the hostel.
Today I went with the guy who runs the hostel and the 4 German girls to Kavarna which was a peninsula with a fortress on it which was really pretty. We then headed into the town and visited the botanical gardens and palace which were both really nice. The whole trip was great but there isn't much to say, and it'll be better just to put up pictures later on. We arrived back at the hostel and I wrote this whilst killing time before I head off to catch my bus to Istanbul which takes 10 hours and will probably be full so I won't have any room. I'm planning on this being my final destination before flying back to London on the 5th of October and back to Australia on the 10th (arriving on the 12th)!
Sorry this blog hasn't been as eventful as the last, but not much has happened over the last few days but I have enjoyed relaxing and am ready for Istanbul which might be more of an adventure.

---