Tonielle's European Adventure "It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday. That's why we only work when... we need the money." - Franz Ferdinand

Bulgaria… where do I begin? I arrived in Plovdiv train station early in the morning, and had to get to the hostel. That is usually a bit of a challenge in a new country, but not too difficult… that was until I realized that EVERYTHING was in Cyrillic. Now I knew that Bulgaria had their own alphabet, and that it was going to be more of a challenge to get around, but what I didn’t realize was that I wouldn’t even be able to find the bus station from the train station!!??

I had two options, so I picked one, and just started walking. I got to a bus depot, perfect. I decided that I was getting hungry so I should grab some breakfast. Had a look at the café, and again, the menu board was all in Cyrillic… shit! Orange juice from the fridge it is… at least I can point at that! Eventually after realizing that the bus I wanted wasn’t coming, I got enough body language and a few words of English from a staff member to realize this was the distance buses, I needed to go outside to find the local buses.

And because luck was on my side that day, I found the bus I needed… and caught it going the wrong direction! I ended up at the end of the line before the ticket lady felt sorry for me and pushed me onto another bus that eventually got me to the right stop. It then took me a good half hour of walking around the cobblestone streets of the old town in Plovdiv before I found one person that spoke two words of English, and after a three-hour ordeal from train station to hostel… I arrived!

It was then that I realized, Bulgaria is probably going to be the most challenging European country I’ve been to so far, but that was part of the fun of traveling, so I was going to have A LOT of fun in Bulgaria. ☺

I really enjoyed Plovdiv, the old city was beautiful, even if the cobblestones were particularly deadly. There were several Roman ruins throughout the city, the best was the amphitheatre made completely of marble and well preserved, the main arches and statues were still erected, which made it very impressive to see. The other one I saw was actually in the main street, there was a hole through the middle of mall strip and below, the remains of another theatre. I had read that they wanted to make some of the flooring around it see-through to really showcase the ruin, but as yet it hadn’t happened (I’m not sure it will to be honest).  It was sad to see important historical ruins looked after like that.

After a walk around town and a stop into a trendy coffee shop (it had been so long) I went out to dinner with a couple of girls from the hostel – one French, one German that were both studying in Istanbul. It was the restaurant that was recommended and it wasn’t bad. It was so cheap (comparatively to western Europe and even Turkey) that we went a little crazy, bottle of wine, main and dessert – the dessert was the size of the main! It was great to be the only Aussie in the hostel and to go out with people from other nationalities and have an interesting conversation about our different cultures!

The next day, I made the trek up one of the seven hills in the city to the giant statue on top – The Statue of Liberation. It was a nice walk up, surrounded by autumn trees, even if it was a crappy day. A great view from the top, it was a nice way to wile away the morning. The rest of my time in Plovdiv was spent walking through the city, it just had a nice atmosphere.

I had plans to go to a small town called Koprivshtitsa the next day, but the bus didn’t leave until that afternoon, and the lonely planet mentioned a small day trip out to Asenovgrad to hike to an old hilltop fortress, so away I went. Silly me, I didn’t really research it very well and when I’d arrived I couldn’t find any information or anyone that spoke English… and then it started to rain. So I ended up in a café instead, for lunch. Because it is a small town, their menu was only in Cyrillic, so I tried speaking to someone at the bar, asking what I should order. One of the guys could speak a little English so he asked what I wanted to eat, he said snitzel, I was like whatever, that sounds fine. Then he started asking me something, that I didn’t understand, and he didn’t know the English word, all the other staff were watching us, laughing along. We weren’t getting anywhere, so he went out to the kitchen and came back with a slice of bread – he was trying to ask if I wanted a sandwich. We all pissed ourselves laughing, that he’d done that… sometimes I love misunderstandings, they can be hilarious!

I eventually got the bus back to Plovdiv, had to run back to the hostel to get by bag and then run back to the bus station to get the bus to Koprivshtitsa, but it turned out that the hostel guy sent me to the wrong bus station, and because the bus was leaving shortly, I didn’t have time to get to the other one, so I ended up getting a bus straight to Sofia instead.

Sofia. I arrived at night, and found the hostel reasonably easy. I spent the next two days, walking through town, seeing the sights. Even though the weather was miserable, it was still an enjoyable city to wander through. The third night I was in Sofia, I went out with a few guys from the hostel, had dinner and then wandered around trying to find somewhere we could have a drink. It’s an odd city in that it doesn’t really have any noticeable bars and pubs around. So we saw a girl come out of a building and we asked her if there was anywhere to go and she said “yeah, I just came out of a pub, its up the stairs”. There was this open hallway that she’d just came from, an unmarked door on the left and then stairs leading up to McCarthy’s – a hidden away Irish pub that was packed!

So we went in, ordered a drink – my vodka-coke came out as three glasses – one with ice in it, one with vodka and the third of coke. Complicated! I ended up chatting to this larger than life Russian woman called Sasha. She was brilliant – this was her local, so she came in and owned the place, knew everyone and soon I had met half the bar and found out that shaking her hand almost crushes every bone in your hand!

Soon it was just Sasha, her Bulgarian friend Asya, another Russian guy and one of the English guys from the hostel, Matt and I. We had a great night out, drinking vodka on the rocks (I had a coke chaser, crazy Russians!) and talking lots of crap, ending up at this great little café that was serving food and drinks at 3am! The girls invited me out to dinner with them the following night, so we bid our goodbyes and then I met up with them the next night for similar mayhem.

Again, we met at McCarthy’s and had a drink before heading to this great restaurant called Olive’s where we met up with the forth member of the party, an English guy that was working in Sofia, Geoff. Another great night, and many bottles of wine, we went to a couple different bars including one that was accessed by a garden gate – and was a backyard barn, only lit by candlelight! No signage anywhere, it was still pretty busy - all locals, and everyone looking at Geoff and I saying “how’d you get in here?”. It was great to go out with locals in town, it just felt like a normal night out with friends, rather than a bunch of foreigners sightseeing in the city, which was nice for a change.

That next day I was off to Veliko Tarnovo, but the girls became friends and everytime I go back to Sofia, we’ll definitely be in touch!