An Aussie Abroad

Day 52: Veliko Tarnovo

My last destination in Eastern Europe!  I'm here in Veliko Tarnovo, the old medieval capital of Bulgaria (before it moved to Sofia in the 19th Century).  It's in the green, forested mountains of the central north part of the country, and its setting is quite dramatic (and not dissimilar to Luxembourg City).  The pretty old town hugs the steep side of the river valley, and there is a massive fortress called "Tsarevets" atop a hill on a 270-degree bend in the river below.

It's pretty chilled here and there's not much to do apart from relax at the hostel, eat at one of the few restaurants in town, hike to a nearby monastery or find one of the waterfalls around the place.

   

   

There's a big event going on in town at the moment though: their annual International Culture Festival.  It's big in Bulgaria apparently.  I went along with a group of guys from the hostel and I was pleasantly surprised to discover a pretty professional show.  The town had invited artistic groups from all over the world to perform on stage for about 15 minutes each.  The list of countries was pretty Eastern Europe centric (Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Georgia) but there were a couple of true surprises to be had.  The Egyptians put on a great performance, the Scots showed up with a Pipes & Drums band (and I found out the Bulgarians have their own kind of bagpipe...) and there was even a group from Colombia!  Now Adri you'll have to validate whether they were really from Colombia or not, as they seemed more Panamanian to my rather untrained eye.  The guys wore white pants and shirts with red bandanas tied around their necks and wide Panama hats.  The women wore something akin to pink can-can dresses and the band over-used the pan pipes and the word "Colombiana!".  It was entertaining...

So I'm leaving here tomorrow and returning to Sofia for just one night, and I fly back to Zurich on Sunday.  I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone back there, chilling out by Zurichsee for a couple of days in the sun, and I'm planning a few hikes I've always wanted to do in the Alps nearby.  It's been a good trip over the past 1 1/2 months but I'm a bit Europed out right now - looking forward to moving on somewhere completely different.  I've also had enough of dorm beds in hostels.

Day 50: Plovdiv

Crap name, cool city.  Plovdiv is the city that Sofia isn't - a manageable size, clean, green, and generally "nice".  It's a few hours east of the capital and I desperately needed to get out of Sofia so I made a beeline stright for it.  I checked into a hostel and then went for lunch at a very cool restaurant - a converted Commie military bunker under the hill!  I then wandered up into the Old Town to see what remains of the old Roman city that once stood there - not much these days, but the amphitheatre still stands and is quite impressive.  They still hold performances there over the summer.  The Old Town was pretty nice by Bulgarian standards with cobbled strees, some well-restored Renaissance architecture, antique shops etc.  The view from one of the city's seven hills was pretty impressive too.

    

The weather was stinking hot in Plovdiv and fairly humid as well, so on my second day there I decided to head to one of the "aqua parks" in town to chill and do sweet fuck all for the day.  I'm making that a bit of a regular event these days in each place I go to, probably 'cos I'm a bit citied out.  Still, can't ask for much more than a good swimming pool, lots of sun, a good book to read and some funky tunes to listen to.  Just what the doctor ordered...  :-)

Day 48: Rila Monastery

While Sofia can definitely be missed, Rila Monastery should not be!  It would have to be one of my highlights of the trip thus far.  Rila Monastery is a functioning Orthodox monastery tucked deep in the lush, green mountains a few hours south of Sofia (built there so that the Ottomans wouldn't find it and destroy it).

The architecture of the place is fantastic: a plain stone-walled fortress on the outside with heaps of colour on the inside.  All the buildings have open corridors which face the central square.  The church in the middle of the square had some incredible murals covering every available surface inside and out.  Unfortunately we weren't able to look inside one of the 300 "cells" (the sleeping quarters) on the monastery - I was really curious to see how they lived!

   

Day 47: Made it to Sofia

I finally made it to Sofia after a fairly horrendous journey from Sarajevo.  After a full day of bus travel through the mountains of Bosnia and Serbia I made it to the town of Nis (pron. "Nish") in south-east Serbia by 6pm.  I was hoping for a quick connection to Sofia (which I thought was a just few hours away) but my dreams were quickly dashed - I had the option of a 2am night train or a 5am bus.  I elected for the train which meant I had some time to burn, so I headed into town to see the sights of beautiful (ha ha) Nis.

Let me just explain for a minute how difficult it is to do anything in a country that uses the Cyrillic alphabet - even a three letter word like "Nis" comes out as "H-"backards N"-W".  I overcame the headaches and found the main tourist highlight in town, Tvrdava, a 14th century Turkish fortress.  The other attraction - a Turkish victory tower made of Serbian skulls - was unfortunately closed.  I had a wander around and then had dinner in a coverted hamam (Turkish bath).  That chewed up a couple of hours, so after a few more beers I went to the station and found myself an uncomfortable slab on concrete to get some kip on.

At 1:30am I woke up to find the train already in the station, so I had to bolt to catch it.  The rest of the night was fairly sleepless becuase the train had terribly unconfortable and unventilated carriages  with heaps of chain-smoking Eastern Europeans packed to the gills, and a long border crossing which saw customs officials take the train half apart to find smuggled goods (they missed most of them - after the border I saw piles and piles of cigarettes and booze brought out of all sorts of hiding spots).

So I'm in Sofia now, and I have to say I don't think much of it.  There just doesn't seem to be much here for the tourist (or the local for that matter...).  It's been heavily influenced by Communist architecture and town planning (i.e. not that aesthetic nor functional) and looks very shabby around the edges.  It took me all of two hours to see the city's sights, and in lieu of finding anything else worth seeing I spent today by the swimming pool working on my tan.  Tomorrow should be good though, I'm off to see Rila Monastery (World Heitage listed site) in the mountains south of the city - stay tuned...

p.s. I'll have some pics up from the last couple of weeks sometime soon.