Week 1

About two weeks ago I landed in Istanbul after a loooong flight (Parts 1, & 2), had a look around, and stayed a night there. The next day I caught the bus to Haskovo, Bulgaria and stayed there for a few days with Elly & Stu. They are currently living there in an old communist style flat and teaching English to a 6yo. There we saw everything Haskovo has to offer, met some of the other Aussies there, and went a few times into the Mahalle. The Mahalle is a really interesting place (we would probably call it a slum), and I hope to write more about it in another post. A photo of the awesome Haskovo tour to the abandoned & incomplete power plant is shown below. Apparently, it never got completed due to the fall of Communism.

Checking out Bulgaria

Elly & Stu have also written some posts about these few days —
part 1,
part 2

Once we (read ‘me’) got bored of Haskovo, Elly, Stu, & I started out on our tour of Bulgaria by catching a bus to Plovdiv. Plovdiv would be my favourite Bulgarian city so far because it’s a great mix of new and old. We stayed a night there in a 8 bed dorm room, were we got woken up by some drunk travellers who came back drunk at 5am and then got up to some [not so] hush hush shenanigans. Memories = Repressed :-).

The next day we caught the very cool train to Bansko. Bansko is an up and coming ski-resort, and has recently become the most developed ski-resort in the Balkans. Luckily for us, it was the off season, so the place wasn’t crawling with tourists. It also meant that we stayed in rather nice hotel, for only $13/night which is much cheaper than what we could have stayed in a hostel. for. While there we climbed most of the way up Mt. Vihren, which you can read about on Elly’s blog post, The Grand Tour Part 2. Here’s one of the MANY photos that I took while up there:

After Bansko, we bused to Sofia and checked that our for about 4-5 hours. I couldn’t stand it there. It stunk of pollution, looked dirty, and there was way too many beggars who were trying to scam off us. When we got to the train station, somebody came up to me asking if they could help me. My first thought was that it was a scam, but then he seems to be wanted to help me find where we were going, and not asking for money. Maybe he works here I thought? Anyway, turns out he wanted money for helping us out. So I reluctantly offered him 2 lev (only about $1.60, but worth about $5 for them), but he wouldn’t take it and insisted I give him 5 lev. Once I did that, he tried to get 5 more lev off Stu, but I told him sternly that 5 lev was more than enough for showing us where the ticket office was and off he pottered.

Heading to Romania

Elly & Stu have also written some posts about these few days —
part 3,

That night we caught the night train to București, Romania. It was a 9 hour journey, but didn’t seem to take that long since we had a sleeper car. The border crossing was pretty uneventful – we didn’t even need to get out of our beds. The Romanian guard did make us laugh we he said, “Australia? – Kangaroo”. The train then crossed the Danube and we were in Romania.

We arrived at București at 5:45am and since it was dark, we didn’t know what to do besides buying some barely drinkable coffee at macca’s so we could use their wifi while waiting for it to become light outside. That was good, because weren’t planning on coming to Romania as quick as we did, so we had no idea what to do. The most interesting part of McD’s was not the coffee (that was sickening) but have the staff physically remove a beggar who was trying to get me to buy him something. It’s really sad that beggars are really common here. I had a kid harrasing me outside an ATM I was trying to use yesterday. I’m still undecided about how I want to react to them because it’s impossible to give to everybody. When I get a better idea, I think think I should do a blog post about it. Any ideas?

Anyway, back to the story… We left macca’s, passed though the gauntlet of taxi drivers, walked for 3-4 hours with our packs, and arrived at the maxi-taxi station. Oh yeah, we had a bit of “fun” trying to find the place without a map. Elly commented that “you know it’s bad when Humphrey starts whinging!”.

Now these maxi-taxi’s require an explanation. They are Mercedes Benz vans, with seats, and a couple of bars screwed into the walls for people to hang on to. They are a long way from comfortable and leg-room is non-existent. Of course, that is only if you get a seat. According to the sign on the inside of one of these mini-buses it was able to carry 16 seated and 16 standing. That’s 32 people in a tiny van thing! Yesterday, while standing up in a maxi-taxi, one of the screws fastening the bar was I hanging onto came loose, “CL-ICK”. Was a little freaky Oh, and the drivers cain the maxi-taxis! They tailgate VERY close, overtake with less than a metre to spare, honk, and don’t really slow down for village streets. These drivers would loose their licences very quickly in Australia. But, these are the easiest and quickest way to travel around Romania. Thanks to jeffltaylor2 for uploading this photo of one to Flickr.

In Romania

The maxi-taxi to Târgu Mureş took a bit over 5 hours. You can tell he was speeding because it took us 6 hours on the way back. Once there we stayed with the Nairns for a number of days. On Sunday, James took us to a local church, followed by a “just as spiritual” game of paint-ball. In the last round I broke the main rule: Don’t shoot anybody closer than 5m. Sorry for the friendly-fire Stu!

While there we also did a heap of shopping, chilling out, and going out for the odd drink. Yesterday we checked out the village of Sighişoara, which is a place where Vlad (The actual Dracula) once lived. It was a really nice historical village, and we also managed to find the best coffee that I’ve had in either Bulgaria or Romania.

Back to Bulgaria

Today we caught the maxi-taxi back to București, where we are currently. Tomorrow we’re planning on catching the train back to Elly & Stu’s place, where I’ll spend a couple of nights before heading onto Turkey. We’re still not too sure how the Turkish leg will work out. I don’t think Elly & Stu are able to spend a whole two weeks in Turkey, so they will either join me for the first week, or stay in Bulgaria and rendezvous with me somewhere in Turkey. Everything else has just fallen into place so far, so I trust that will too.

Here’s Elly being tough at the train station:

Thanks for reading my blog. If you were gullible enough to fall for my recent facebook status update, then I extend a “ha ha” in your general direction. And, remember about the commenting rule – commenting is cool, just like school.

PS - You may have noticed that I’ve added a new link to the top of my blog for a google map of my trip. I’m planning on adding the Romanian leg of the journey to the map soon.

PPS - I’m currently proof-reading this post while sitting on the aforementioned train, and have about 2.5 hours left. We’re in the only room that doesn’t have a working light so it’s heaps dark in here and therefore hard to type. Hopefully we can work out when we are at the right station.

NEWS FLASH - We just noticed that it’s snowing outside the train carriage! Hooray for travelling in a train through snow.

Well, I’ve already watched 2 episodes of Dexter on this train trip and I have exactly enough battery power for 1 more episode. So chao chao. Oh, by the time I publish this we’ll be back at Elly & Stu’s commy flat.

La revedere!