katiesfootprints: Bulgaria

I never know how to begin the next blog... so just think of it as starting another chapter in a book if you've been reading the other ones...

We finally slipped into a slumber in the lounge of the hostel in Sofia only to wake a couple of hours later surrounded by about 100 people eating breakfast. We inconspicuously got ourselves ready for the day and headed out for the walking tour. Our entertaining guide did very well given the canvas he had to paint for us – we were less than impressed with Sofia unfortunately. That night when Tom arrived we decided we might like to head to town for a while – it was dead silent outside and ended with me declaring “we are leaving tomorrow”. So after bidding farewell to Helen (hope it's not too bad back there in London town, just remember someone has to be the breadwinner!) I “expertly” gave Tom the quick version of the walking tour and we departed for Veliko Tarnovo.

VT is a beautiful little city settled in a valley in Northern Bulgaria and was the capital in the Second Bulgarian Empire. We headed out to do a little bit of city exploration and taste the local food and beer. It was all brilliant, as usual. The next day we got up and headed out on a tour we had signed up to. First stop was a village that had been created for tourists to showcase a typical Bulgarian village. We then off roaded for a couple of hours to reach the abandoned “UFO” building – Bulgaria's largest ideological monument to Communism. We broke into it and looked around for a couple of hours – it took 6 years to build, opened in 1981, cost 7million Euro's and was used for about 8 years until the fall of communism. It has now been sitting idle for the last twenty odd years becoming increasingly dilapidated as looters have taken their share (including the 30tonnes of copper that was once the roof) and the elements have destroyed it further. We climbed the 32 flights of ladders up the inside of the tower and drunk in the 360 degree views. For more and better photos take a look at this link. http://humanplanet.com/timothyallen/2012/02/buzludzha-buzludja-bulgaria/

Following this we think we went to a monastery but can't be too sure as all we did was walk through some building and out the other side before walking back through and grabbing some beers and dinner at the restaurant. A quick look around the fortress was first up for us the next day before wandering around the picturesque city that is VT on a walking tour.

That afternoon we caught a bus to Varna – a beach town on the coast of the Black Sea. I concede (especially to you Dean, Christine & Mark) that this part of traveling is a holiday and we spent the next three days relaxing by the beach, partying at night and generally just enjoying the sunshine – for what I think will be the last time on this trip. We've just arrived in Romania this morning after a train ride that took three hours longer than it was supposed to – this wouldn't have been too bad but for those three hours we weren't in control of our passports. However, they came back eventually (after dreams from both of us that we may have been semi-woken in the middle of the night to just sleepily hand our passports over to a border control imposter) and I have decided that sleeper trains are definitely the way to go.

Sofia in Sofia