Bulgaria

After Bucharest Danielle, Ray and myself headed to Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria. Getting the tickets took forever as the woman kept saying we needed a sleeping compartment which luckily the night before we had been warned about. After 10 minutes she realised it wasnt working so sold us the correct tickets. Its a shame but there are so many people trying to scam whether its for 1 euro or whatever its just annoying.

The direct train of course was cancelled so the trip involved getting first to Ruse on the border and then Gorna something which is about 10km from Veliko. We had picked up another passenger on the way a Korean girl who we had met the night before. Nomads hostel was right on the side of a gorge with the most amazing view of the old town and the massive monument. We had the hostel to ourselves and the owners by the sounds of hit hadnt seen anyone for a while. That night Ray and I aquainted ourselves with the local nightlife which due to the fact it was exam season was hardly busy. Eventually we found spider club which was maybe half full. Beer 2 lev (1 pound) and shots 1 lev. Around four in the morning we decided to call it a night and stumbled our way back to the hostel. As you can imagine the next day didnt begin until the afternoon. On advice from the hostel as most of the UNESCO sites were very inaccessible Danielle and i hiked up the surrounding hills to Albamassi a preserved town. I think we were probably the only ones there and managed to find somewhere open for lunch. It is really wierd to sit in a three story restaurant that is completely empty, by now i was hoping most things would have picked up but its still dead. We even had time to try out the local delicacies pigs ears and feet. We had assumed it was in a stew or something but instead some gristly bits of fat were placed in front of us and we nearly puked after one bite. Later we found out that it is only mezes or drinking food as the restaurant owner had come to the hostel to make sure we were ok as we hadnt eaten all of it.

Ray and I had heard from a couple of people that Rila monastery was well worth visiting as its the best preserved and you are also able to stay there. I had been planning to go to Plovdiv but the monastery would be completely different experience. So at 6am Ray and i started our 8 hour 4 bus journey to Rila. The place is really hard to get to but fortunately our connection was minutes away each time so it wasnt a massive hastle. Arriving at the monastery it was packed with tourists nothing like i had been lead to believe. After about 10 minutes we had seen everything to be seen including the amazing church. Despite being built for 400 monks we saw maybe 5 in the day we were there. Despite it being a bit of a let down we still decided to stay the night. At 9pm they lock up so you have to make sure your in the compound and when they did it was completely quiet and also freezing cold. Just in the backgound of the monastery were some really high snow capped mountains.

There really wasnt a lot to do and we both realised we werent the people that the experience was designed for. So waking up the next day i faced either a 8 hour trip to plovdiv or a 12 hour bus ride to varna. I really needed to have a few days in one place so opted for varna. Ray and i split at sofia and I eventually arrived tired at the hostel around 9 and the receptionist was just heading out to watch the champions league final. Him and his canadian friend reece and his girlfriend had run the hostel last year and advised me to change hostel the next day as it had gone downhill. Varna hostel was pretty scummy and in the daytime looked even worse. The building was practically falling apart and was really grubby so after spending a couple of hours seeing the sights all 4 of them i swapped hostels to Yo Ho hostel. I went from being the only one to a hostel that was pretty much full.

Today unbenknownst to me was cyrillic day where bulgarians celebrate inventing the alphabet (despite it being invented in macedonia)so there was a parade of all the schools down the main street. The entire town i think turned out and was alot busier than i had been led to believe. The parade was followed by the start of the tall ships race from varna to istanbul, so all the spectators headed down to the harbour to sit in the amazing sunshine and watch all the old sail ships start off. I think it was probably the first time in a week i have seen the sun.

Due to the unexpected holiday i didnt manage to get any of the jobs done that i had wanted to do before i go to moldova tomorrow. 25 hours on a train arriving in Chisinau at 10am on wednesday looking forward to it.