First two days: from Holland to Bulgaria & first day in Sofia

After a few hours sleep on Wednesday night, I got up quite early on Thursday to take care of some final preparations for my trip to Bulgaria. In the evening, I went over to Anton’s place in Amsterdam to watch the Russia match, but also because he was my ride to Bulgaria. We watched the match, stayed up way too long (I ended up sleeping only an hour and a half), and had some interesting conversations. The next day I got into the car with Anton, his mom and her boyfriend Plamen, and we got on the road. The plan was to drive halfway down Europe, sleep a bit, then drive some more, since Plamen was the only one who was driving.

What a trip. We came through Euro Cup hosting Vienna at night, passed Budapest in Hungary, then in the morning crossed the border of Hungary and Serbia. I had slept maybe half an hour since we took off, so when we stopped in the north of Serbia for breakfast, I had slept about 2 hours in the last 48. I was over it though.

The north of Serbia by the way, or at least the part we came through, was rather dull. Huge farmlands, very vast; enough to feed a nation. Later as we passed Belgrade, the scenery got more interesting as we went through a very mountainous area on our way to Niss and then the Bulgarian border.

As I arrived in Sofia, I felt a bit at home immediately. At least more at home than I feel in Amsterdam or all the places we passed on our way to Bulgaria. I got out, said goodbye, and then went to the Art Hostel, because I had heard some good things about it. Turned out to be a fun choice. Coincidentally it is right across the street from my girlfriend’s old high school. Which is exactly where we met later in the day. We chilled out a bit, had to get a bit used to each other again, since we hadn’t seen each other in three months.

After having dinner and relaxing a bit, she went back home and I went to the hostel. I was still not really tired, so I decided to have a chat with someone the first opportunity I had. I suppose I was lucky, because I don’t think I could have found a more interesting person to speak with in that hostel. Ended up chatting ‘til 4 o’ clock, then got up at 9 again, because I couldn’t wait to see more of my girlfriend :-). 7 hours of sleep in 3 days? More than enough!

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