Battling Bulgaria

Caught a train to Sofia and eventually found our way to a smoke filled hostel (while our Lonely Planet map is pretty good, it doesn't have anything written in Cyrillic, which makes navigating the streets a bit hit and miss. Our reading of Cyrillic has greatly improved, although Bianca maintains it is a made up script. We can read alot of things now, we just have no idea what we are saying!)

Spent 2 days cruising around Sofia. 6 days of public holidays in a row meant that many things were closed but we stumbled upon some great Bulgarian cultural events (singing and dancing) and some huge parks thronging with people enjoying the sunshine. The huge park apparrently had "huge" monuments in it, but we somehow managed to miss them DOH! We did however take advantage of incedibly priced $4 cocktails which came free with cigarette smoke! (Bulgarians smoke ALOT)

We found a really cool Commie antique shop and bought some propaganda badges, a poster and a fabulous Bulgarians soldiers hat. We then went to Rila Monastery, a few hours south. The monastery was set in a spectacular valley with snow topped mountains all around. We secured a 'monk' like cell to sleep in for the night, which unfortunately did not have hot water and the mattress was about 3cm thick. We did however sleep well and woke well rested and went hiking in the surrounding forests and hills. We did take a bit of a risk with our luggage. The monastery did not have a luggage room and we were told by the staff and a policeman to just simply leave them on the sidewalk! We were a bit dumbfounded and decided to chain them to a window of the monastery (bomb threat in Sydney anyone?) Thankfully everything was there when we got back from the hike.

We went back to Sofia and were planning on leaving straightaway, however as May 6 was something like 'national Bulgaria Day' we decided to stay for one more night to see a parade with tanks, hell yes! The parade was very brief but we did get free flags and got to see lots of planes and helicopters flying overhead and tanks and anti-aircraft vehicles rolling by. After the parade we saw a crowd gathering around someone, we got closer to have a look. Having no idea who we were looking at Julian asked someone who it was, to which a man dryly replied that it was the Prime Minister. The we noticed all of the rooftops had snipers on them. Ah.

We finally left Sofia for Kazanluk by train, which went via Plovdiv, adding 2 hours to our trip (have a look on the map, it is nowhere near Kazanluk!) Kazanluk was only small but we still managed to get lost several times. The reproduced Thracian tomb (the original, which is 20m away, is closed so they made a copy...) was a bit underwhelming but the museums were good. We tried authentic rose liqour (which Kazanaluk is known for) and decided not to buy any - sorry! Bianca was still feeling a bit nauseous a couple of hours later! We have just taken a bus over the mountains to arrive in the 'student' city of Veliko Tarnovo. The weather is finally getting warmer. VT looks like a beautiful city (nestled in a gorge with a river snaking its way through) and we are very keen to check out its sights tomorrow.

Health Report: No signs of flu (Mums rest easy) ;-)

Photos to come - Bulgaria strikes again....