Blogs from Bulgaria, Europe - page 56

Arrive at 4am, no sleep and have to suffer the hell of the idiots at passport control. They NEED to know the exact duration of everyone's stay and where they will be down to the nearest minute. The queue takes about an hour for a hundred people and by the time I get out there's an empty airport. Manage to crash a lift into town with a couple of girls on a conference who have a car arranged to pick them up. Wander the streets a bit but it's no fun, go into the nearest bar and drink some beers. Head vibrating with lack of sleep. As it starts to get light outside I wander down to the beach and watch the sun rise over the black sea. The beach is almost deserted save for a ... read more

well kids, i'm back in sofia after my adventures in macedonia. seeing as my bus got in before 6am this morning, i've been quite bored or the past couple of hours. after some coffee and pretending to understand the bulgarian newspaper at the bus station, i dropped off my bags and headed out for a morning stroll through the city. its quite peaceful in the morning. we'll see what i end up doing for the rest of the day before my flight to warsaw... so yesterday morning i think i finally felt like part of the family, which was unfortunate considering it was the day i had to leave. after waking up and buying my bus ticket with Goce (neighbor), i joined the bunch on the balcony for a traditional balkan breakfast of cigarettes and turkish ... read more

i just wanted to let everyone know that today i had what i'd like to call a "language seizure" that happened as a result of my speaking catalan, spanish, english, french, and bulgarian all within a 2 minute period. i literally started shaking and sweating. in other news, i bought a cell phone yesterday, but as of now there aren't any minutes on it so i have to go buy a voucher. i'm keeping it in bulgarian which is pretty sweet, plus no one will be able to get into my phone unless they know bulgaria or cyrillic, i suppose. also, i'm at this secret university internet cafe place that's free, and the computers are actually updated, so tomorrow i intend to come back and FINALLY upload some pictures for y'all. being here today and thinking ... read more

Not much to report here I'm afraid. Bulgaria's Black Sea coast is a bit like an action film. It's fun but not very interesting. Trying to escape from some zealous American missionaries (Missionaries? Bulgaria is almost entirely orthodox Christian) I had met on the Bus from Velika, I jumped into a taxi that drove me to the hostel I had planned on staying in. Up three flights of stairs later, and it was clear that the either 'Coast Hostel' didn't exist, or someone was making some extravagant claims on the web sight. Some wide-boy Bulgarian, who might have worked in this mythical place or not, (I never figured out whether it existed)took pity on me and lead me across town to the Flag Hostel. I was greeted by Dean, a laddish northerner who seemed like he'd ... read more

Hello everyone, Bulgaria is more like the former Soviet block atmosphere that I had expected. You still see horse carts and horses instead of tractors in fields. They use shepherds instead of fencing. They are trying to get on track--hope to join the European Union in 2007. Their history during WWII is a little different. The government chose to support Germany rather than Russia, but the people wanted to support Russia--Russia had liberated them from Turkish domination back in 1878. The damage from bombing was actually done by Russia. The Soviets still liberated them and they became part of the Soviet bloc. Interesting fact--Bulgaria is the only European country to always have the same name, since 681. Another interesting fact is that they elected a former king as their prime minister in 2001. His name is ... read more