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what the heck is this blog about?

This blog is for me to share with you all about the exciting adventures I am having while spending all my money on travel. When not sleeping in train stations and lugging a pack around you'll find me wishing I was, in the garden city of Christchurch, New Zealand. I'm an 20-something, wishing-I-still-was-one student, worth around 100 camels according to that guy in Morocco. Lucky enough to have already been on lots of global adventures but still looking for more countries to go to with unpronounceable names. On the right you can see my progress around the world. Blogs posts are grouped in countries and in different trips. The first block is from my 2006/2007 RTW trip, below that is my 2008 'overland trip', then lay travels since then. There is also links to all my photos, video's and trip expenses. Have a look around and please leave me a comment if you like what you read! *update* I am now living in London with a job that I love and taking a break from the travelling life, one day I will return but till then...

time to bring out the thermals

September 11th, 2008

Well just to let you all know for those who rely on my blog as the only source of contact….I am alive and well and just getting a bit slack! Have made it up to Tallinn in Estonia, right up the top of Eastern Europe, am working on blogs and photos on Rdoc’s fancy tiny laptop. Rdoc and Tom arrived 2 days ago which is great, however Toms laptop is broken and all of us are trying to use Rdoc’s…I could go to an internet cafe but can’t really be bothered, plus Riga was way more expensive than most paces so waiting to make use of sweet free wifi everywhere.

So more things will come…soon. Rest assured things are good but so very very cold. It was quite a shock to pull into Tallinn today and be freezing! A huge temp drop and will only get colder as we go north. So have fished out my shoes and thermals and eternally grateful for Rdoc bringing my down jacket over from NZ. Another day in Tallinn then up to Helsinki.

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Back to Soviet days: Moldova

September 6th, 2008

Coming in at the number one most random country I have visited, Moldova is about as far off the beaten track you can go in Europe and lives up to its (non) reputation of a strange, soviet country with no tourists. Actually not no tourists, there were 2 others in the ‘hostel’ I was staying at, which was really an old couples front room with a few bunk beds in it.

From travels 08 blogphotos

Our train pulled up to the capital, Chisinau around 9am and I found this dutch backpacker wandering around looking lost. He didn’t have a hostel or anything so followed me as we walked through town to get to this place. We dumped our bags and grabbed some cheap breakfast at a cafe/bar around the corner which amazingly has an english translation on the menu, therefore becoming my new favourite place in the city. I have mentioned before that in Eastern Europe girls tend to dress a bit more….umm…’nice’, well you could say that they dress a lot like prostitutes….and well, Chisinau was a whole new level, at already by 10am there were girls in tiny dresses and high heels wandering the streets.

Chisinau isn’t exactly bursting with tourist sights, actually there is basically no tourism industry at all because there are no tourists. People are really unfriendly and not at all interested in helping you, so doing anything is difficult. Me and dutch #4 (again…forgot the guys name, I am terrible) decided we would try to hire a car for the following day to get out to the country side as it sounded like it would be cheap. We followed the LP map to where there supposedly was a car hire but no, nothing there, so we walked across town to find a couple of places which had no cars left as apparently they were all rented out (to all the imaginary tourists I guess). Seeing as it had taken most of the day to actually get this far we gave up on the car idea and began a bar crawl back towards the hostel stopped on route at lots of bars and drinking beer and liquored coffee…yum.

From travels 08 blogphotos
From travels 08 blogphotos

The town is actually quite nice, you can tell it is poorer than a lot of places in Europe, as a lot more homeless on the streets and things. But the main road is nice, a big wide boulevard with shops, 2 big parks with of course lots of fountains in them. It really is just a bit strange though and feels like you are living in 1992, kind of like going back in time, although with cell phones…lots of cell phones and the unfortunately named ‘Moldcell’

From travels 08 blogphotos
From travels 08 blogphotos

By 8pm after a few too many beers and bottles of wine (Moldova has amazingly good and cheap wine, thats there one big thing) I very sleepy, we headed back to the hostel and picked up the english guy who was staying there and headed out to dinner on a street side cafe where we got followed by an old drunk lady with very little clothing on who wouldn’t leave us alone and kept stroking the guys arms (I still think she was a prostitute but who knows) eventually she passes out on the ground but some how gets hold of more alcohol and we keep having to switch tables to get away from her. Food was pretty terrible, I had some sort of salad drowned in mayo. Although Chisinau is a huge party town I was shattered and we headed back to the hostel after stopping at a bar.

The next day the english took off and dutch#4 went for the day to visit Trandsinester, the country that doesn’t exist, they have tried to separate from Moldova but no-one will recognize them, Russia gives them money and they are still very much communist with their own border guards and currency. Basically the fun of going is the crazy border situation to try and get away with not paying too much bribe money. I figured I have had enough border fun in the Middle East so gave it the chop to spend the day catching up on internet stuff and sitting in nice cafes. I did try to visit a museum but it was closed that day. By the evening I was alone in the hostel with no book to read, I went for a bit of a wander around the town then headed back to bed. There are some great wineries close to the city but to get to them for the day is just so difficult with transport and the most unhelpful people ever. So I actually would like to come back and do some tours around these amazing wineries which have huge underground networks of cellars. To make up for not visiting I brought a couple of bottles which are only about 2 euros each, so am saving them till I meet up with the boys.

From travels 08 blogphotos

An amazingly beautiful church we stumbled upon

From travels 08 blogphotos

Soviet style buildings
Waking up the next morning I was a bit like what the hell am I doing in this country, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and not excited about the 20hour train journey ahead of me (which the LP said was only 8hours!). I packed my bag and found it was pouring with rain outside. I went to the supermarket with spectacularly rude staff and managed to get some food before trying to change the last of my money and having the guy try to rip me off, untill I asked for a receipt and then he decided to actually give me the rest of my money. Then I tried to catch a tram to the train station which ended up in the middle of nowhere with the ticket guy ignoring me and my attempts at asking wehre the train station was. At one point I tried to get off so I could go back into town but he was like “no no no, train, da” so I stayed on to find myself in some bus park in the middle of nowhere and the ticket guy just took off and left me there! I was worried about issing the train which only leaves every second day and stranded in the middle of nowhere with people literally just ignoring me. Eventually someone was nice and took me to where I could get a taxi and I made it to the station where I got my ticket (cheaper than I thought) brought more junk food for the train and got on in time for he long journey to the Ukraine. A very frustrating morning and I was well over it and wanting to get out of this crazy country! thats what happens when you get ‘off the beaten track’ its just frustrating! haha…but good experience.

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thats not yoghurt

September 4th, 2008

So like I mentioned before Dracula is based on some guy called Vlad who would impale people, still he’s the closest thing to the Dracula we know so of course towns connected to him capitalize on the Dracula thing, a lot.

So being the tourists that we are, we headed of to Sighisoara to Vlad’s birth place to check it out. Again it was me and Pete joined by Martin (Dutch guy #3) but not #1 and 2 as they were still in bed. After spending an hour or so arguing with them about if they actually wanted to come or not, we finally got to the train station and caught the 2 hour train and I managed to book my next train ticket for the following day to Chisinau.

So Sighisoara…a nice town, actually a really beautiful little spot with an old town on a hill with lots of nice churches and old buildings.
From random blog photos

The centre was a little bit touristy but not so bad. It was all original building from back in the day and we checked out the tiny torture museum and read about how they would torture and hang people, then we past the main square where they would burn witches….pleasant. Its seems all so crazy that that sort of stuff actually happened. the clock tower was really beautiful and the whole place seemed authentically old (because it is I guess!).

From random blog photos

For lunch we headed away from the old town to track down a little shop selling food, we got some bread,cheese and yoghurt. My yoghurt was apricot, the boys got plain. However when they opened it, it looked remarkably unlike yoghurt and much more like sour cream….because it was….oh the joys of not speaking the language. My yoghurt was good, Pete was sad. The best thing is how the lady just let us buy 2 tubs of sour cream when clearly we were trying to get yoghurt. Oh well.

We also climbed up to a church and saw an old cemetery and some views across the valley then we tracked down Vlad’s statue and brought vampire teeth to get our photo with it. We thought we were hilarious with our plastic vampire teeth made for children, not sure other people walking past thought it was quite so funny.

From random blog photos

We caught a late train home as it was much cheaper and hung out in the park for a bit playing on Disney ‘princess’ cards we picked up in the market. The train back to Brasov was empty and half way started cranking up music realy loud…it was a bit strange in this old train with no one around with really loud music, some sort of communist style and other stuff like ‘Cotton Eye Joe”…it was bizarre.

Back home we cooked up..PASTA! yep so creative and headed to bed.

The next day was my last before heading to Chisninau at 4pm, me and Pete were going to go check out Bran castle, the real Dracula castle but left it a bit late so ended up chopping it in favour of walking through the bear infested woods up to the Brasov sign in the hills.

From random blog photos

We had a late lunch then it was time to leave. I had to take a train back to Bucharest then change onto my overnight soviet era train to Chisinau, needless to say I didnt see any other tourists. the train was great, it was 4 berth cabis with sheets with roses that said ‘I love you’ and carpited floors and frilley curtins, excellent.

From random blog photos

So began my long, and hot journey into Moldova, probably the most random country I have visited yet

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our unsuccessful castle visit

September 2nd, 2008

Brasov is the perfect place for day trips around transylvania so a few us headed out for the day to Sinaia to visit the Peles castle that was there. I was with Pete who is an english guy spending 2 weeks in Brasov to write some research thing for uni on tourism in Brasov and Dracula stuff, so he trying to take notes on any amazing insights we had into the world of tourism….I’m not sure if we were ever helpful! Also with Dutch # 1 and #2.

We finally headed to the train station after everyone eventually got up and made it onto the train at around 12.30. It was a 2 hour trip out there and a rally nice train ride through the mountains and saw lots of little villages and things long the way.


Sinaia was really beautiful, set  amoungst mountains and lots of cute houses around including some very gothic ones that could totally have been haunted and very dracula-esq



.

We were pretty hungry by this stage so grabbed some lunch at a seemingly cheap restaurant which turned out to be expensive as menu prices weren’t quite what they seems! Never mind though as in this part of the world, the difference is only ever a couple of dollars.

Finally we headed on up to try find the palace, we stoped at cute monastary on the way then walked all the way up this hill before evenually finding the entrance to the castle which we joked that by this time it might be closed.

It was.

Actually it was Monday and it wasn’t even open on Monday, the guards wouldn’t even let us walk around the outside! We thought briefly about climbing through the hills and sneaking around the front but there are bears and guards with guns. So we found a good vantage point to get photos, we still saw the whole front of it, and really to be honest, the insides are never that great. So while our day tip was a little unsuccessful we still saw the castle, and the monastery and the town was really nice.

We headed back down to the train station which we discovered wasn’t that far at all we had just somehow missed the main entrance (not that you would actually think to put a sigh there or anything) and walked the very long way.


We had an hour or so ait for the train then a 2 hour ride back where we discussed uni, politics and life without coming up to answers for anything . The ride back was nice and by the time we made it back to the hostel it was getting dark. We stoped at a supermarket and brought heap of veges and cooked up thi masive healthy meal whch was awesome and had it while watching the worst movie ever, but also one of the funniest, Eurotrip- always god to watch while backpakcing around Europe and ofending every european in the room with horrible stereotypes of their country. We headed to bed early with another day trip planned for the next day. Well, me and Pete did while the dutch guys ended up staying up till 5 am with some Canadians and never quite made it on our day trip.

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You know you’re in Eastern Europe when…

August 31st, 2008
  • All females are wearing high heels, miniskirts and low cut tops at all times of the day
  • Leopard print is still in fashion
  • there is a street named after a date in 1989, ie. “31 August 1989”
  • there is a lot of fountains
  • Beer is cheaper than water and sold in 2L bottles
  • Every park and intersection has a giant revolution monument
  • People use trolley buses as the main form of public transport
  • The best thing your guidebook can suggest is to go to bars and clubs as the “nightlife is unbeatable”
  • Waiters and any service people are at best rude to you, or totally ignore you
  • There are flags everywhere, especially EU ones, even if the country is not, and probably never will be part of it
  • the currency has recently been revised by cutting off at least 6 zero’s
  • All people older than 25 speak Russian
  • most people younger than 25 want to leave
  • A large proportion of older people have their entire wealth in the form of gold teeth
  • You get the feeling that its still 1992

A few observations…I will add to I’m sure.

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Transylvania-without the vampires

August 31st, 2008

Awhile ago I watched this truly awful movie called ‘Vlad” set in Transylvania about vampire hunting and weird things about Vlad…it was probably the worst movie ever, luckily in reality Transylvania is great! And not really at all dark and grim. And also really Dracula never existed, he was just based on some impaler from the 14oo’s called Vlad, however this doesn’t stop the whole area capitalizing on some of the worst souvenirs I’ve ever seen. Brasov the town I based myself in for the 5 days was this beautiful little town with old buildings and green hills surrounding it, even compleate with a bizarre Hollywood style BRASOV sign on the hill.

The hostel I was staying out turned out to be really nice and full of cool people, in a nice area, good rooms and a kitchen. Plus a free drink everynight and loads of DVD’s to watch.

When I arrived and dumped my stuff I took off for a walk down to the supermarket to grab some things for the standard pasta dinner. I ended up watching a DVD after dinner then I found Sam from Bulgaria who was staying at the hostel and we, along with a couple of Costa-Ricans, another english guy and a Taiwan/american chick headed out to find some fun, as it was Saturday night.

We stopped in a a Scottish pub for a drink then wandered along the streets in search of some places that weren’t closing down. Eventually we found a club down these stairs which must double as a strip bar as there were strategically placed poles everywhere, and to top it off, 2 semi-naked girls dancing on the bar. Not like dodgy pole dancing, just hanging out, wearing not much…it was weird. But you know, kind of funny so we hung around, danced a lot to strange music with a DJ who like to make comments in Romanian all the time. The place filled up pretty quick, with a lot of girls wearing very little and dancing on tables, we took the piss a wee bit and I am sure everyone there must have thought we were nuts.

After a few hours we were pretty shattered and headed back to the hostel to hang out in the basement bar where we all brought down our ipods and had a world music session, ending with me and Jack listening to Flight of the Concords and discussing how brilliant they were.

The next day was Sunday and while that really means nothing it was nice to have a lazy day. A huge group of us headed down to this amazing pastry shop for coffee and over-the-top pastries and cake, then me and Jack (the english guy) headed to the Scottish pub to find out when the closing ceremony for the Olympics was on, it didn’t start for a few hours so we wandered around a bit then went back and watched the crazy, massive closing ceremony for a bit. Once we headed back to the hostel we caught up with a few more people and watched another terrible Dracula movie called underworld, not as bad as Vlad but up there!. Then we all headed round the corner to this very Romanian restaurant for tea and shots of some strange plum liquor.


Back at the hostel we stayed up far too late playing stupid games while I tried to steer the conversation away from music. Somehow I always get trapped with english guys who are always obsessed with bands, also the 2 dutch guys who were just as obsessed with english music….really though its just like being at home with Rdoc and Michael Down and lets try out do each other with unknown bands, anyway, fun night and eventually made it to bed.

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Bucharest

August 29th, 2008

Arriving into Romania, myself, Sam and Jess all split off towards our different hostels. Already the train station was a lot more developed than  Bulgaria, it was big and busy and lots going on.

safety first…

I grabbed a bus towards the hostel and meet 3 english girls heading there as well. The hostel was above a strip club, like in the same building to it…so a wee bit weird walking practically into the strip club to get up to the hostel. It was late and I was stuffed so just headed down the road to some sort of Romanian style fast food and grabbed a salad as I was feeling a bit lacking in fresh food after a day of eating chips and bread. I meet an Aussie in the hostel, who while was lovely, went on to fulfill every stereotype of aussie backpackers. Basically he spent about half an hour telling me how cool he was because he gets drunk so much. Yes you are…so cool.

We watched some Olympics and headed to bed pretty early, nice enough hostel but rooms were like an oven and hard to sleep when its so hot, to make it worse a couple came in late at night who snored worse than anything I’d ever heard. I am not sure why this overweight middle age couple with massive wheely suitcases were staying in the hostel, but thankfully they left in the morning. I had a full day in the capital before heading out to Transylvania so as I do most days I went for a massive walk across the city checking out the historic quarter and also the huge boulevards built by the crazy dictator Ceausescu in the 1980’s. Pretty much he just wiped out half the city after visiting North Korea and built massive fountain lined streets and the second biggest building in the world for the government which is this stupidly large white palace type thing. Really crazy dictators are mental and while its all very impressive, its a bit weird.


The history of Bucharest is really interesting with this Ceasescu guy and then the revolution/uprising in 1989 which happened around the university, you can still see the bullet holes in the building from where the government forces basically sat in this hotel firing into the crowds. it was all pretty epic sounding and really interesting, so while Bucharest might not be the most exciting city, the history is worth it.

I walked all the way over to this museum which the lonely planet said “is so good you’ll want to hug it”, well not sure is it is that good, but was cool. About Romania peasants and lots of displays with notices like

” these items are a mix of valuable and everyday items put together so they can ‘dance’ without the constraints of glass and display cases holding them back”

I wandered back along the main street desperately trying to change my left over Bulgarian currency which no-one wanted to touch, despite they are actually a bordering country. Eventually I got them changed into the more useful Romania lei which has just been adjusted by whacking off a few zero’s. This seems to happen in a few eastern European currencies where their currency is basically crap but now in the EU it has been pegged to the Euro to stop it going out of control.

I stopped by the supermarket “Angst” on the way home and grabbed some food to cook at the hostel. Chatted to some interesting english people travelling, who had pretty much picked every party destination in europe and were heading there-trying to fit it in in a month or something. When you are taking 3x 30 hour train journey’s a week, you’re probably moving too fast.

another night of Olympics-who knew sport with Bulgarian commentary could bee so interesting- and off to bed with no snoring and remarkably less oven like.

I headed to the train station in the morning and caught 1pm train heading to Brasov where I would base myself for a few days and check out Transylvania and some Dracula kitsch

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Veliko Tarnovo

August 29th, 2008

Bulgaria was turning out to be a cheap country so I ended up staying 3 nights at Veliko’s Hostel Mostel-which also happens to be the best hostel this end of Europe, it has an almost cult status among backpackers in Eastern Europe. Given that its only 7 euros a night with free breakfast dinner and beer, it does kind of deserve it.


Veliko is a really beautiful city and all old and quaint looking set around a river in the hills. The main attraction is the fortress which sits on a hill and looks over the city. In the evening there is a light show which lights up the whole fortress which looks really cool and we saw a couple of times. You can go up into it to the church on the top which has the most strangest painting of all time. They are like comic book style religious paintings, very very different but I really liked them, it was cool to see something  other than the usual Jesus and saints paintings. There is also lots of beautiful churches around in the town and lovely little streets, its just a very nice place



locked out of the church…

I managed to meet up with a great group of people there, a guy and girl from Holland, Tim and Annabell and Alex the french-Canadian and an Aussie guy, plus a whole lot of other very cool people which made the place great to hang out in. The shop next door sold 2L bottles of beer for about $2 so most nights we sat around drinking and talking the usual backpackers trash. As per usual everyone speaks lots of other languages and half the time I think people spoke English for my benefit! Even Tim and Annabel would speak english together! On the first day we hiked over to this monastery…actually I just ended up going along thinking it was just down the road, but turned out to be a 3 hour walk over hills. It was a bit harder than expected but not too bad and actually turned out to be a really nice walk through the trees. The monastery itself was really beautiful and set up in these hills. Not really any other people around apart from a strange old man who looked about 400 years old, I think he was a monk and he sat around with his walking stick looking a bit confused. Inside the monastery was being renovated and looked beautiful with amazing paintings all over the walls and ceiling. We had a look around and sat down to eat our snacks we had brought before heading back down the hill to the road where we managed to flag down a bus to take us back to town.


Annabel on our hike


we made it!

We ended up at a restaurant for a late lunch, amazing amounts of food for really really cheap. Its nice to be in a country  where you can afford to sit around restaurants. The best part of Eastern Europe (or the worst) is the hilarious level of service from waitresses who seem to think that serving you is the biggest hassle of all time. This seems to happen most places, food is never brought out at the same time and any sort of questions (like “can we have another drink?”) seem to really annoy who ever is serving you, its kind of funny. One bar we went to we could hardly order drinks as the waitress just ignored us….hmmm. But its all just so cheap, the bar we went to one night was super flash with hundreds of cocktails all around $3. the other funny thing is how much all the girls dress up and almost all of them are wearing tiny miniskirts and high heels at all hours of the day. As I have headed further north in Eastern Europe it has only got more extreame as girls look like strippers by 9am.

The next day we went with a guy from the hostel in a car to a waterfall to go swimming, it was a bit out of town and after we drove the 20 minutes we then walked up through some very dodgy steps to come into this beautiful spot with a waterfall going into a pool of bright blue water where we could jump off rocks and swim all afternoon with pretty much no-one else around. The guy who drove is was a young student in Veliko and we had a really interesting conversation about Bulgaria and it developing (or not) with the EU and how the government is useless and essentually still controlled by communists. It was interesting and sad to hear how the younger generation want things to change but cant really becuase there are too many old people with traditional ideas. Bulgaria are probably the least developed of all the countries in the EU so it will be interesting to see how things change.


We headed back for another massive meal at the restaurant and sat around watching Olympics in the evening. I was making the move the next day along with Alex and Annabell who were heading up north while Tony had already gone to Istanbul and Tim had gone back home. I was going to go up to Romania and caught the very slow 7 hour train (which was delayed by 2 hours) with an american girl called Jess and an English guy, Sam. While we were all heading to different hostels in Bucharest I would meet up with Sam a couple of days later in Brasov. The train seemed to stop for long periods of time and go very slowly, but border control was simple and we eventually made it into Bucharest

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the eastern bloc

August 29th, 2008

By the time I arrived in Sofia I as pretty shattered from my crazy day, I was still kind if laughing to myself that I had actually made it and I was still alive!

The hostel I was in was nice and small with a lovely old man who spoke no english, it was kind of like being in someones house. He made me coffee and there was free juice, excellent.

I had a shower and a quick walk around the city, I wasn’t planning on staying long as had heard the city wasn’t too interesting. It was a nice place, but not huge amounts to do. I walked through the parks and streets, everything in Cyrillic, which is pretty much impossible to understand.  Being a sunday afternoon things were quite. it was very eastern European, lots of grey concrete but also some beautiful historic buildings which if you read up on were all used by the communist party and KGB. There was a big river with no water through the city and the place did have a bit of a neglected feel but it was a nice place to wander. i stopped at a market and grabbed some veges to cook back at the hostel where I settled down for a night of watching the olympics and chatting with other people who were around. Last time I was in Eastern Europe 2 years ago I figured that the area had good backpackers, more people traveling for longer and a bit more adventurous people, also a good hostel scene so easy to meet people.

The next day I had another wander round seeing this massive beautiful church with domed roof and outside lots of people selling antiques from the soviets, very cool old stuff which was all probably real. I wandered down to a park with possibly the ugliest monument of time in it, the whole park really needed a bit of tidying up, all around the buildings were massive  “coke”, “McDonalds” and other signs, communism is well and truly out. I often wonder how all the older people feel about the huge changes that have happened in places like Bulgaria since the fall of communism. Every city has had some revolution and crazy history, its pretty interesting.

I also stopped by the presidential building where on the hour is the changing of the guards, which the LP suggests you watch while making “ministry of silly walks” jokes….true to its word, a bizarre display of slightly off timed guards walked very stupidly around and switched places. it was entertaining save for the Japanese tour group who rushed out of nowhere falling over themselves to get photos as close as possibly without touching the guards.


Before my bus I went down to a market with some people from the hostel and brought a big bag of raspberries and some more fruit for the journey. Bulgaria is very very cheap, which is most excellent after Turkey, I need to get back onto budget.

I caught a tram down to the most confusing bus station ever, apparently there is an english speaking info centre there but obviously for the LP to include the location of this would be too sensible. Instead I wandered aimlessly amongst the 100 different bus offices, all in cyrillic and eventually just walked into one and somehow ended up with a ticket for a bus leaving now.

The ride was uneventful other than the bus driver chain smoking the whole way with the window down. We arrived in Veliko Tarnovo after about 3 hours. Bulgaria has a crazy thing of shaking their head to say yes and nodding to say no, so when I tried to check if we were actually in Veliko, it was kind of confusing. But eventually I worked it out, rung the hostel and a kiwi guy who worked for them came down and picked me up.

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the weirdest day ever

August 28th, 2008

It seems that I cannot cross a border without everything being strange. Crossing into Bulgaria was no different, although just one part of my very weird and possibly life threatening day.

It began with my 3am bus, after trying to get an hour or so sleep before. The bus arrived in the border town around 7.30am and I set about trying to get a bus to somewhere in Bulgaria, no one really spoke english but a guy wrote the name of something down on a bit of paper and sent me on a local bus…I assumed I was heading to another bus station to get a bus to Bulgaria, however after changing buses I was dropped off at the edge of an industrial waste land which happened to be the border.


(what I was dropped off in front off…so welcoming)

“Bulgaria?” I questioned weakly and was pointed in the direction of rows of cars. So I began the long walk through the border which is not set up for people walking at all and I dodged the cars and got a lot of funny looks. It took me about 45minutes to walk through the whole thing hoping that there would be a bus at the end of it all. I had to show my passport about 20 different times and to loads of different checkpoints as I wasn’t really sure where I was supposed to be going. Eventually I emerged at the other end to find out there is in fact no buses anyway. I was about 15 km from the closest town, Svlingrad where there would be buses but had no way of getting there.

I was pretty tired from the early start and sat on the side of the road to consider my options. Once I stood back up with still no clues about what to do a truck driver who was pulled up said something to me in Turkish, I replied with “Svilngrad?” and somehow I worked out that he would take me there. At this point I realised that getting into a truck with a strange driver who spoke no english could possibly be dangerous but also that I had no other option.

Anyway, he seemed nice.

So I jump in this massive big truck, he is actually driving to Belgrade and through Sofia (the capital) and decided to take me there, although I don’t really get this until we drive past the turnoff to Svlingrad. So begins my very strange 5 hour journey to Sofia with the truck driver who spoke no english. We stopped at a few truck stops where the other old men looked at me very strangely and the driver brought me breakfast. It was all very very weird. He was also insistent that he could drive me to Belgrade and then to Germany where he was eventually heading, really I kept saying that Sofia was fine.

After a long long time we were getting close to Sofia, however the turnoff to Belgrade was before the city so I am dumped on the side of the motorway again, with no clue about what to do. I asked some policemen about a bus and they said it was a kilometer down the road so I picked up my pack and started to head off down the motorway. At which point a car pulls up and a chick who speaks perfect english, is like “what are you doing?” I kind of explain to her that I am going to Sofia and she looks very concerned and tells me to get in the car and ends up taking me right to center of town, telling me that I really should not take lifts with strange truck drivers and Bulgaria is too dangerous to travel around alone!

After a 10 minute walk I find a hostel, its 5pm and a good14 hours since I left Turkey, its was a long and bizarre day.

Next time I will check the bus schedule

Posted in 1, Bulgaria, TRAVELS 2008, Turkey | 1 Comment »

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