Not going to Varna? I see...

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Veliko Tarnovo

After the festival in Bourgas, we were just about recovered enough the next morning to dawdle down to the train station and head on to Veliko Tarnovo (the medieval capital of Bulgaria). The idea of our next destination was some mountain based recuperation. The journey we took required one change, and we were rather dubious as to whether we would know when due to most signs being in cyrillic. Anyway, we did succeed in our change, which was in the middle of nowhere!! So basically, we were standing on a platform in the middle of Bulgaria, just waiting for a train to appear on the horizon. Nevertheless, we weren't alone - Veliko Tarnovo is a popular stop off on the backpacker trail so there were lots of other bemused foreigners with us. While we were waiting, we popped to the miniature station shop, and dared to buy some snacks - hoping it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg like in England - far from it, in fact, some huge heated pastry cheesey thing and a packet of "pizza" flavoured crisps (chosen because it was the only identifiable flavour in English) cost under one pound. Nice. We did indeed manage to make our connection (by just following the other backpackers) and make it to Veliko Tarnovo to be collected at the station by our hostel manager.

The hostel chosen for our stay is called the "Low Costel Hostel" - there has been an explosion of hostels here so we decided between them mostly because of this one's name. In fact its rather nice, it has a large loft social area with a great modern kitchen (rare for a hostel), so we've even cooked a couple of times.

The first night in Veliko Tarnovo didn't involve much, we went to a traditional Bulgarian restaurant, drank a bottle of Chardonnay (standard) and had these meals that are cooked in clay pots (rather delicious). However, just like Romania has community dogs, Bulgaria has community cats. There were soooo many cats in the restaurant, and when your food turns up, you can't get rid of them. Even while you are eating, they are audacious enough to jump up and sit on your lap, so you have to pick them up and throw them somewhere (no animal cruelty complaints please). After that we headed back for a somewhat early night.

In our first full day in Veliko Tarnovo, we first went to the open air fruit + veg market as we had decided to cook for the next two nights. This indeed was a wise choice - I half filled a bag of vegetables, the man weighed it, and announced to me that the bag of food would cost 1 lev, around 40p. Bargain!! Following lunch, we decided we should be energetic enough to go and see the main site - the Tzarevetz fortress. However, it is roasting in this city (easily 30degrees plus even later on) - and we had foolishly hoped there would be some cooler air in the mountains. Also, we should mention that this city is pretty much built on several hill slopes, so going anywhere is a mountain treck. This was all far more exercise than we had anticipated in our recuperation. The fortress also demonstrated to us that Bulgarians couldn't care less about health and safety - there is many a perilous spot on the site (for a start they used to execute people by throwing them off the top into the river below) and we were later told that last week a 6yr old kid unfortunately died by falling off too. At the end of the day, and after all this strenuous exercise, we of course, wound down with a good old drink.

We had previously held high hopes for our second day in Veliko, dreaming up day trips to some local sights. However, we were of course somewhat lazy, and put off by the 8.30am bus to the nearby canyon (and apparently its dried up at this time of year anyway so that rather confirmed our decision). So instead, we got up late and went to the market again (yes our days are rather repetitive, but hey, its been nearly 3 weeks of travelling now). In the afternoon, we explored much closer, and walked around the old town which is now pretty much full of souvenir shops, there are probably two per tourist. We ventured to buy some postcards and got the full sell on pretty much every item in the shop - it was like being attacked by an apprentice contestant.

The evening was envisaged to be a rather quiet affair, and we went down to the local student pub. However, after one drink we left because of a rather disturbing bulgarian man who plonked himself down next to us, stared at us rather too keenly, grinned and winked. We left pretty quick obviously. Although, this meant we were back at the hostel before 11pm - far too early considering we hadn't really done much in the day to tire us out. So, after a few minutes it was tentatively suggested that we go back out, and, well, we did! So off we headed to a different bar, where unfortunately we saw the above mentioned man again, but fortunately he did not see us and got into a fight anyway. We hoped he was on the losing side. After a bargain cocktail each, we got chatting to the people on the next table - some Bulgarian guys who had been living in Camberley (Surrey) and London for several years. To continue our meeting with famous faces in eastern europe one of the guys was a wrestler in training for the 2012 olympics however not (as you may think) for bulgaria, he is actually going to be a "team gb" competer! We had another cocktail in their company and headed to a club. This club was slightly bizarre though, the top floor (which apparently normally plays 'western' music) being shut, we had to go downstairs and listen to some top Bulgarian hits - which to be honest, were pretty good but then again, this could be the cocktails taking effect. We decided only to stay for a couple of drinks, but these unfortunately involved a vodka named 'Flirt' which basing on how we felt this morning, is not one of the best brands. Ah well, we learn from our mistakes and in this case, we have learnt well...

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Comments

[anonymous]

disturbing bulgarian man is the winner