Sofia

silly me got to the airport a couple of hours too early. in hindsight i probably should've checked my ticket and not relied on my memory. but it didn't really matter, i met some American's who were also waiting for my flight but weren't staying in Sofia, they were catching a bus to Greece so i killed some time talking to them. anyway, after a bit of a wait, the plane arrived and before i knew it we were jetting off to Bulgaria. when flying i always love the part when the pilot gets on the PA and gives his two cents. they always seem to be putting on a voice or something. you know what i mean, they always have a deep confident voice that's slightly cocky. you never hear a pilot who sounds nervous or whose voice breaks, do you? maybe its a criteria for being a pilot. deep confident voice? CHECK! and what happens to the pilots that don't have deep confident voices? maybe they drive buses or limos or something, you never hear them make announcements. anyway, i'm rambling so i'll stop.
i'll never forget this next bit as long as i live. the flight was pretty cruisy, not much terbulance to speak of, so i wasn't worried about my life at all, but clearly the other people in the plane were. as we landed softly on terra firma the passengers on the plane erupted into applause, as if they were expecting to crash. i've flown EasyJet a couple of times now and i think i prefer them to RyanAir. for a few reasons, but mainly because i think there are less hidden charges as well as you get more luggage allowance (16kg on Ryanair whereas EasyJet allow 20kg) but with both airlines i've never felt i was going to drop out of the sky - i found the clapping experience a little bizarre so say the very least.
as soon as i got out of the door of the airport i was hounded by taxi drivers asking if i needed a lift. on all the hostel websites they tell you not to use the taxis at the airport because they are all dodgy and will most likely charge you too much so i opted for the bus. problem was i didn't realize the bus driver didn't sell them. you had to get your ticket before you go on. i asked a young woman who was sitting on the bus (because i figured that if anyone was going to speak english it was going to be someone from a younger generation, sure enough i was right) where i could get a ticket from, she told me not to worry about it because they never check, plus the bus driver didn't seem to care to much. her father who was sitting next to her, ended up giving me a spare bus ticket that he had, i offered to pay him, but he wouldn't take it. i found that quite a bit while i was last in the balkan countries, the people here are so friendly and so giving. isn't it funny that people that generally don't have much to give are generally the ones who give the most. the daughter ended up being really helpful pointing out which stop i needed, so i was already beginning to get a good feeling about the place.
after a bit of walk and trying to figure out the signs, (the Americans i met were nice enough to give me a map but it was in english not in Cyrillic). it was a miracle, but i made it to my hostel, which was pretty good. they offered, a full breakfast and a dinner with a local beer, couldn't really go wrong really.

when i say Sofia, you might think of the sharp witted little old lady from the TV show 'The Golden Girls' which is true, to an extent... but its actually the Capital of Bulgaria. I wouldn't say Sofia is a beautiful city, its pretty rough around the edges lots of buildings crumbling and streets that aren't that well looked after, it actually gets worst the further you go out of the city. but there are a few things around town worth looking at, but most of them are churches, which is a big slap in the face to me. but Sofia is like a supermarket for Churches, they've got one in every sizes and in every religion. i'll even admit, some of them where quite good. one of my favourites was the Church of St. George which is considered to be one of the oldest buildings in Bulgaria, built by the romans in around the 4th century. a lot of it is rubble, but you can still go inside and see the frescos on the roof. the other building i liked was the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral which again was really old, but i liked mainly because it was only lit with candles, it kind of transported you to another time. it has a gold roof and apparently when it hails, the Gypsys hang around that the bottom of it and get the little pieces of gold that get chipped off! another good one was the Russian Church, which isn't very big, but interesting all the same.
getting away from Churches for a moment, they have another building called the National Palace of Culture which from what i can gather is a big conference centre. it looks like a bit of an eye sore to me, but the people here seem to like it.
as i said, i would say there is a good majority of the town that is run down but Sofia has been through a bit,from what i've seen traveling, communism generally doesn't help a city much. having said that there are still a number of nice buildings around, the good ones (which, funnily enough, are generally government buildings) look like something you might see in Vienna. i heard that just outside of the city there is a monastery and that there's good bush walking in the mountains nearby, but the weather wasn't that great while i was here so i decided to pass. apparently Bulgaria is getting a name for itself when it comes to outdoor sports.

while i was walking around i found a couple of little markets, the first one was just rubbish selling toys, shoes, cheap clothing, fruit and veg, that kind of thing. while i was there i saw some, what looked like, hot dogs. i was feeling peckish so i brought one. bad idea. i'll leave you to read between the lines as to what happened next.
the second market was quite good, more of a trash and treasure kind of market, with old guys selling various things from when Bulgaria was communist. there was one guy there who spoke excellent English. he asked me where i was from, as soon as i mentioned Australia i couldn't shut him up about his trip to Australia 15 years ago when he visited Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. it was quite funny in a way, because he was telling me how boring he found Adelaide, i laughed and told him 'everybody thinks that'.
after i recovered from the hotdog i went for a round 2 with Bulgarian food. its pretty similar to the food in the neighboring countries. meat, meat, meat, and chicken... oh, wait, that's a meat too. as you can see, there isn't much choice in that department and there isn't much choice in the portion size either. when i ordered i asked the waiter how big it was, he said 'quite small', thinking that i might have ordered too little i kept the menu just in case i needed to order more. but there was no need to worry, IT WAS FREAKIN' HUGE! i almost had to get rolled out of the restaurant.

something i heard while i was here which i found interesting was, they have a couple of Porsche police cars. not because they are well funded but because they are corrupt. it was a case of, they saw them, they liked them, they took them, they kept them, they painted them police colours. supposedly they are less corrupt now, but who knows.
here in Bulgaria there currency is Lev and its not really that strong, having said that its about as strong as the Australian dollar when you convert it to Euros. but everything is quite cheap here, a lot cheaper than it is back home. speaking of money, i noticed that the Bulgarians love a punt. there seems to be a casino on every corner.
another thing i noticed was a number of stray animals that wander the streets. cats and dogs are everywhere, its pretty sad to see. when you come to places like this you look at the people and how hard it must've been to get by during different periods in there history, even now. you don't even think about animals, and how it must effect them too. so often you see them hanging around restaurants looking for scraps.
something i found interesting was when i asked a question like 'do you speak english' and there response was a nod they actually mean 'no'. the same goes when they shake there head, it actually means 'yes'. what a topsy turvy world!
i had a bit of a Borat moment while i was here. while i was walking down the street i saw a horse/donkey pulling a car! i would've loved to have seen my face, i'm sure my jaw was on the ground.

i think a couple of days in Sofia was more than enough. so i spent a couple of days in Veliko Tarnovo, which is about a 3 hour drive east of Sofia. i'm really glad i did, not only was it quite a nice town, it was cheap and a good place to relax for a while. my hostel overlooked a beautiful green forrest and also had breakfast and dinner included in the price. but the best part of it all was the owners had a 3 year old son who was great fun, he spoke a mish mash of Bulgarian and english - he was a real little character.
considering Sofia is the capital, it isn't a very big place, so its no surprise that Veliko Tarnovo is a lot smaller, in someways it reminded me a little bit of Mostar in Bosnia. Veliko Tarnovo's main attraction is a giant fort, not far from where i was staying, which is quite good to look around and they have some amazing views from the top. of an evening they have a lightshow, projecting different colours all over the walls of the fort. it sounds corny, but it was pretty good.
Most of all Veliko Tarnovo was a great place to chill out for a while and get some sleep, well kind of. in my last blog i signed off by saying that i was sure that there would've been more sleepless night tales ahead, unfortunately i was right. there was one guy in my room who snored so loud that it sounded like a tractor! normally after a while i can get to sleep but he was so loud that at about 3am i gave up on getting to sleep that i moved and set up camp on the couches.

i enjoyed my time here in Bulgaria, it wasn't really that eventful, and i don't think i'm going to look back on Bulgaria and go 'i'm so glad i went there', but i was nice to have a break for a while. Turkey, here i come!