Well I've got some time to kill so I'm gonna make a
shorter post and put up some pictures. We're made our reurn to civilization in
Varna, Bulgaria. Kinda... the road here is porbably, scratch that, without a
doubt, the worst road we have had the misfortune to travel on. A one hour trip
left me with a backache for the remainder of the day. Fortunatly once you near
the acual city of Varna the situtaion improves and the taxi drivers here seem
particularly adept at dodging the few but massive potholes. They like to
decorate the road surface here in Europe with lines and things like "STOP" and
"NO TURNS", I say decorate as they seem to have absolutly no effect on the
manner in which people drive. We are staying at a hostel one a large sloping
hill maybe half a mile from the coast of the Black Sea located in between the
city of Varna and the resort area north of the city "The Golden Sands". Varna is
probably the most developed city we have seen in a few weeks (since Budapest),
but is amazingly cheap if you are able to avoid being scammed by the locals. The
local tourist industry seems to think that because we are western tourists that
we must have empty heads and full pockets. The audacity of it all can
be alarming, they will tell you "No, we are out of that beer" and then suggest
one 2-3 times the price of the one you asked for... all while the cooler w/ the
beers 10ft away is in full sight and stocked w/ the beer you requested. You have
to negotiate a price with the taxi drivers before getting in as well, we paid 10
lev (about 8$) for our ride into the city last night and the first and second
drivers we approached for a ride home last night attempted to charge us 30
and 25 lev respectively, we accepted the thrid cabbies offer of 12 lev, I mean
the sun was coming up :) We may be going spear fishing tomm or the day after,
we'll probably be staying in Varna utill Tuesday when we leave for the Bulgarian
Capital, Sofia, which has some amazing archtecture. On friday we will leave for
what is the personal highlight of my trip, ROME!
-fjd
