Bulgaria
I took a night bus to Bulgaria from Thessaloniki, Greece. My visa was expiring and I had to head somewhere - so why not Bulgaria?! To be honest, I don't remember much from my journey to Bulgaria. I was exhausted and freakishly was in a sleep walk on my journey there. I remembered getting shuffled around at 2am, trying to buy a bus ticket. At this point, I was almost too seasoned of a traveler with a mind-set of ... eh, I'll get "somewhere, eventually."
And, that I did! I landed in Sophia, Bulgaria. Stayed with a real nice girl around my age. She hosted me for a couple of nights and spent a day/night exploring the city together. She took me to this awesome bar in the old town that was in a barn. Still dirt floors, wood balcony and candles lit everywhere. It was so raw (and also broke every single American law imaginable). Those types of places tend to be my favorite :)
Sophia is a cool city, currently there is a huge start-up boom. All the talk is about tech start-ups and entrepreneurial endeavors. My biggest take-away is that the younger generation is determined to develop their current social and economical situation. This is a pretty typical response that I discovered through any ex-soviet countries. They've reached a point where they are tired of waiting for Russia to come back, or for someone to provide opportunities for them and are now pushing to create those opportunities for themselves. It's pretty inspiring. There is a raw and experimental attitude that you can see through the layers of the abandoned mentality.
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I'm not in many photographs from these last years - but I always managed to take an overnight bus selfie to send to my family. No sleep, two scarves, down vest and wool - the typical ensemble
Lunch in Sophia. Same ingredients as surrounding countries but prepared differently. I was really digging the shredded feta
Every city (or most) offer a free walking city tour. I usually tried to do at least one in each country. Tours are led by a local student usually. Touch base on history and current events. This was in Sophia. We ended up reenacting how Bulgaria gained it's independence on these steps.
I always found myself on these random buses going far into less-traveled neighborhoods, therefore, nobody ever spoke English and I was always one of the few people riding. But I loved it! It's the best way to engage with some of the locals.
Eventually, I made my way to Plovdiv. A super cool city with a lot of history. I've thoroughly enjoyed being able to learn my history through traveling and experiencing history through story-telling. From Turkey, to Greece, to Bulgaria - the history is intertwined but with differences that you can understand where borders were drawn. To learn of different sub-groups and how those developed in response to geography is truly fascinating!
I randomly stayed at a hostel in Plovdiv. I was enroute to Varna to catch the ship to Georgia so I was kind of filling time till I needed to leave. But I loved it there! I ended up working at the hostel, it was perfect. There was another guy, Adrian, from France who was working there and then a Canadian that traveled there on the same train as me. I stayed for a little over a week. The hostel was awesome, set up like a super relaxed apartment with rooms off the kitchen. Everyone was extremely chill and felt like a friend's house. I crocheted a lot of hats/mittens and got to be apart of MANY philosophical conversations. For some reason, almost everyone who came and stayed that week, were all philosophy majors. It was strange but really interesting. I started to get swept away in the questions and this was the beginning of really realizing that I was starting to Float. Mitch, the Canadian, had never stayed anywhere for more than 3 months in the last 5 years. It seemed everyone was floating around me.
Anyways, not to get too much into that. I got to listen to the bag pipes, traditional Bulgarian music. One local guy would bring his bag pipes in and play for us haha.
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Reflections
View from the balcony at the hostel I was working at.
Morning run to one of the seven hills
In any of these countries, you are almost guarenteed to find a giant statue on the hillside.
So many great textiles
The bag-pipes
I quickly became obsessed with this little egg shop. You will find many stores in this region that all sell one item, and one item only. I thought this place was so cute and conceptually, amazing! You get to select how many and of what size of eggs you want and she packages them up in a cute little basket/crate with some string tied around it.
In a jumble, I left Plovdiv and boarded the early morning train to Varna. Took the train across the country and wound up at the sea. Nothing is on a schedule here. I was delayed catching the ship due to weather but eventually made my way on the water. Met some people, traveled to this rock garden thing in the middle of... who knows?
