It’s been a long week. Last Saturday night I was waiting for my parents to arrive at Sofia airport. On my way to find a bus or a taxi to the airport I find out it’s snowing! So I go to the airport, stand between a crowd of Bulgarians waiting for people to arrive. After about half an hour they come out and after another half an hour we manage to get ourselves into a taxi. It was kinda strange to see them walking into Bulgaria, into my life here. It had the same type of ‘shock’ effect as when I took a taxi into Sofia upon my arrival here in Bulgaria. The first night they crash at my place, the next day we try to find somewhere to have breakfast/lunch, which turned out to be a bit tougher than I thought. It didn’t suck as bad as the long walk to their hotel though 😉 From there I went straight up to the airport to pick up Janneke. The crowd that was there now was about 3 times as big as the day before. We went to my place and later that day met up with my parents to have dinner.
Monday was rainy, very rainy. Almost Holland-rainy. No, just like Holland-rainy. Rain, rain, rain all day long. We managed to see a lot, but it cost a lot of energy to control my mood. When it rains like this, people here don’t go outside unless they don’t have a choice.
On Tuesday it was back to work for me. More work on a presentation I’m giving this Wednesday. Lunch with Janneke. A few more hours of work and it was time to errr.. I kinda forgot what happened on Tuesday.
Wednesday it was basically the same thing, minus the lunch with Janneke.. plus I remember what happened that day. At some point Janneke and I met up with my parents, because they would be traveling through Bulgaria and I might not see them before they left the country, so I had to say goodbye. Janneke and I were planning to eat with my friends in Studentski Grad, but because the buses were so full and the taxi drivers did not want to go to Studentski Grad, we decided not to go. We ended up walking around, going back home, going ’round the corner to eat. I had some rakiya, which is powerful of itself, but this time I could feel it through my throat and throughout my body. Bad experience. Could not enjoy the drink. Ended up looking like a pussy who can’t even drink hard liquor. 😉
The next day I worked until around 1pm and then headed home. As I got home we grabbed our stuff and headed for the busstation. We were going on a trip to Plovdiv! Actually managed to book a private room in a hostel (Hikers Hostel), which was good. Hotels are expensive and don’t offer half the value a good hostel does. Met some Australians, Frenchman, Chilean, Canadians, Americans (one of which was a Lonely Planet writer (with an attitude)), Belgians.. That evening we walked around and saw some of what Plovdiv had to offer. Below are some pictures which you can click to enlarge. You can also go to the picture gallery.
Actually, I decided to let the pictures speak for themselves. Here are some more.
We stayed there Thursday and Friday night. On Saturday we went to the second biggest monastery in Bulgaria, called Bachkovo. Quite an interesting place to visit, although it was obviously the end of the tourist season and they didn’t really feel like having everything open the whole time (I guess we came around lunchtime). The up-side of it was that it wasn’t swarming with tourists, yet there were still too many for my taste.
Another update later, I have to get working on my presentation.
