Author: Bas

  • Sofia revisited

    As said in the last post, I got up ‘early’ (nine) on Sunday, to meet with Tsvety, my girlfriend. We chilled out a bit, I showed her the Art Hostel where I stayed the night before, and got my stuff to move to another hotel. On our way to the hotel, some woman at the other side of the street and about 20-30 meters away started shouting: “your bag! Your bag!” in Bulgarian. I ignored it, since I couldn’t understand it and didn’t get it was aimed at us, but Tsvety noticed it and turned around to see who was shouting.

    We turned and there were three gypsies behind us, one closely inspecting her own bag and saying “huh? My bag?” Then they crossed the street and went away from us as fast as possible. Close one. Nobody in Holland would shout through the street if they thought someone was about to get something from your bag. Well, very few people at least.

    Then we got to the hotel. At some point we had a visitor, a small bird, which we took some pictures of. I’d post the pictures, but I appear to have forgotten the cable for my camera, so I promise to show them later. Hopefully before the end of the week.

    Then we went out to the park, where they would be showing the Euro Cup finals, but there were also two stages with live music before that. Got to see Eli, Boriana and Annie again, also met up with Bobi, Mitko and Ivan. Ran into a French guy I met while I was living in Sofia also.

    Watched the game with Mitko and Ivan, then afterwards stayed at the park for a while and drank a beer. On my way back to the hotel I saw about ten honking cars with Spanish flags being waved. As I looked at the number plates, turns out they were all diplomats’ cars. Festive people, those Spanish. I wonder how the Dutch embassy employees would have acted in Sofia, had Holland won the Euro Cup.

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  • 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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  • Quick Update!

    Currently in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria looking for a cheap hotel.

    So much has happened already. The 36 hour ride to from Holland to Bulgaria, via Germany, Austria, Hungary and Serbia. Seeing many of my friends again, my girlfriend, and arranging to visit a friend in Macedonia. I’m definitely keeping myself very busy. I plan on writing in detail about more or less every day so far, so subscribe to the RSS feed or to the email updates if you want to stay in the know 🙂

    More soon. Probably better to secure a place where I can sleep tonight first 😉

  • Holiday!

    Yay!

    Going on holiday very soon. Took care of everything I wanted to take care of before I left. Now the plan’s to meet up with one more friend for an hour or so, go buy some more travel accessoires, get my ass over to Anton’s house to sleep there and get on the road in the morning.

    I’m travelling with Anton’s mom and her boyfriend and we’re going by car… to Bulgaria. It’s going to be quite a trial, since I don’t like heat, cars, or waiting, but fuck it. It’s also an adventure. Maybe. Anyway, turns out we’ll be coming through Novi Sad, Serbia, where I have a friend that I met at the Balkan Youth Festival (BYF) last year. Then going to Sofia, Bulgaria to visit my girlfriend. Then going to Strumica, Macedonia to visit another friend I mate at the BYF.

    All the way down there, the landscape can be a lot like the picture below, so I’m really looking forward to submerging myself in the unknown again. 🙂

    Then it’s back to Bulgaria, where I will finally see the Black Sea coast! I’m (more or less) packed and ready to go! Here I come. 🙂

  • Hilarious Censor!

    This is by far the funniest video clip I’ve seen in a long time! Get ready to laugh your asses off!

    The Count Is Censored

  • Sandals vs flip-flops

    Sandals vs Flip-flops header

    So, I’m about to embark on my holiday to Bulgaria. Pushed forward from Saturday, to Wednesday, to Thursday, to Friday, I’ve been preparing for the trip for a while now. Seeing as it will be very warm in Bulgarian and Macedonia, I don’t want to wear my shoes all the time. So I told my girlfriend that when I’m in Sofia, where she lives, she’s going to help me pick out a pair of flip flops. She reacted as if I had asked her to help me find some sandals.

    Well… that’s for Holland. In Holland, sandals are perceived as a rather nerdy thing to wear. Flip-flops are cool! In Bulgaria, flip-flops are apparently not cool. Well, not if you want to be perceived as masculine anyway. Apparently there, it IS okay to wear sandals. Which is a big don’t in Holland.

    So obviously you understand my big fashion dilemma right now. How to look cool everywhere!? I will go not eat something now and starve myself to death so I look more like the people I admire. I’ll leave you with a question though. Or two. Two questions! No, three.

    What’s it like in your country? Are men who wear flip-flops really less masculine? Is wearing sandals in the city for nerds and old people?

    Let the debate commence!

    Sandals vs Flip-flops header

  • The Orange Dream

    Holland clears the field after losing to Russia

    It’s over. Done. During the qualifications, Dutch coach van Basten got a lot of criticism, but when the Euro 2008 was there, he amazed everyone. Fans, being skeptical and pessimistic about the Dutch team’s prospects, partly because of Holland’s spot in the ‘group of death’, were surprised by the team’s great victory over France. Hope grew, orange fever exploded and increasingly people started talking about Holland’s chance to take the cup. As Holland had another convincing victory against Italy and beat Romania with a largely substitute team, sky seemed the limit.

    Will they win? Will we finally do it? Will this be the team, the combination, that we will speak about for generations to come?

    It was not to be.

    Russia played a great match and simply did better than Holland. No luck, no referee mistakes, they were simply the better team of the match. Holland created some hope in the second half by scoring an equalising goal, but this hope soon faded as Russia’s team clearly had more energy left in overtime. It’s the end of Marco van Basten as coach of the Dutch team, the last time goalie van der Sar played for the team (one of the greatest Dutch football players ever, in my eyes), and it must be bitter for Boulahrouz who is mourning the death of his child that was born prematurely last Wednesday.

    This means there’s only one thing left to do.

    Root for Turkey!

    Turkish team cheers after win

  • Rush!

    Letter of Acceptance

    I’ve been officially accepted to Yeditepe! Time to sit back and relax, right? Not.

    Last week: 2 final exams. This week: 1 final exam, 1 deadline for a website, some work assignments. So at this point I was already busy. Anyway, I decided to figure out how I would get my ERASMUS grant. I went to the international office and they informed me I should have my forms in before the 15th of July (I would be in Bulgaria/Macedonia from the 25th of June to the 17th of July), including a certificate of enrollment for the NEXT study year. I handed my enrollment in last Friday and was going on holiday this Saturday, so that got me quite stressed.

    “No worries, mate” I told myself. I figured I’d just take care of something that I could take care of immediately. I googled a bit to find out more about the Turkish embassy in Holland and visa. The embassy site was nearly completely in Turkish, but I found a number and called them. After passing through 2 rude receptionists and being connected to a person, I was informed that I should not call her but someone asked and she asked me why I called her. I blamed television and she gave me the number of the Turkish consulate. I called the consulate, had to go through the same annoying type of receptionists and finally got someone who knew anything about what I was asking. Turns out the studentvisum for Turkey is… 446 euros! Awesome. Perfectly reasonable to ask from a student, right?

    More stress.

    Then I did something I should do more often before asking stuff to people who don’t really know the answer either. I used my eyes and applied them to some text. I did some reading. I saw I could get an advance on the Erasmus grant, which meant I could probably use that money to pay for the visum. Also, I got in contact with the central international office of my degree factory (commercial university) and found out my enrollment for this year would be enough.

    Last time I had stress relief like this I decided it would be best not to blog about it. So I won’t.

    Nervewrecking stuff if you’re going on a holiday for a month in just a few days. Anyway, it all seems to be okay now. Still nervous about the visum, since I’d rather not borrow money for it, but we’ll see. Let’s hope the woman was confused and told me the normal or work visum instead of a studentvisum. Not counting on it though. The very worst is that I will have to go visit the consulate which is built in Holland’s pit of doom, Rotterdam. Lord, help me :sad:

    Oh! So I’m going on a holiday this Wednesday. Expect to see many stories and pictures! :cool:

  • Checkmate.

    Some of you might know I have quite a bad SoapBoxxer addiction. Well, I was just having a discussion and it offered me a good opportunity to flex my wit muscles / muscles of wit, whichever you prefer. The conversation went as below.

    Topic: Holland WILL win it all (Eurocup)

    Patofeo2: they won’t
    Spartz (that’s me): I doubt it, but odds have gone up considerably.
    Patofeo2: I have a feeling czech rep. will win all
    Spartz: Get real.
    Patofeo2: What’s the wager?
    Spartz: five!
    Patofeo2: please write the team you think will win. That way I can talk shit to you when they loose 😉
    Spartz:Czech Republic
    Patofeo2: u bastard!

    Checkmate. 😉

    .
    UPDATE

    Looks like i can relate this post to Turkey after all. Turkey just eliminated the Czech Republic from the Eurocup in the most spectacular fashion!

    Turkey last night made history in the most dramatic fashion imaginable by overcoming a two-goal deficit to emerge triumphant in their winner-takes-all Group A showdown with the Czech Republic.

    Jan Koller and Jaroslav Plasil had put the Czechs on course for a quarter-final meeting with Croatia, but Turkey discarded the script in an unforgettable final 15 minutes with three goals, including two from Nihat Kahveci, to progress to the second stage of a European Championships for only the second time.

    Telegraph

    Fucking awesome! Since I’m going to Turkey this September, I’m rooting for both Holland and Turkey! It’s great to see ‘my teams’ book succes :smile:

    Turkey 3-2!
    Picture: Telegraph

  • Brussels Trip

    Bouwe, Jouke and I visited Brussels last Wednesday. Got up early, got into the train… and off we went. Not much to report. We basically walked around until our legs were hurting, sat down, had some Belgian beer and then continued walking again.

    At the end of the day we visited Antwerp which was a very pleasant place and one for me to check out more thoroughly in the future. Anyway, I took a bunch of pics, click on any of the thumbnails below to go to the photo gallery. 🙂

    Click here to visit the Picasa photo album…

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