Brasov and Varna

Well, my time in Europe's nearly up. I got to Sofia on the night train at about 7:30 this morning, it wasn't too bad, I was pretty tired and there was only me and a Bulgarian chap sharing a room with 8 seats, for and four facing each other, so we could lie across them and sleep, untill about 5 in the morning (thats a guess, I lost my phone so now have no concept of time, more about this later, not much to tell though) when six guys decided to add themselves to our compartment. Mita Vittua! But I slept a little bit sat up too, so I got a few hours all together. Sofia is pretty boring, hence i'm in an internet cafe doing this and listening to the pixies.

Ok, Brasov. As I may or may not have said in my last post, I was going to go to Bucharest, but I'd only heard bad things about it, ugly, nothing to see, not dissimilar to Chorley. So I decided on Brasov instead, and it was beautiful. Huge hills on all sides, small interesting buildings, very green, infact from the train most of Romania looked untouched and very green. On the first day there me and Michael just chilled out after the night train. We met a girl in the hostel, but I can't remember what she was called, and we all went to the supermarket to buy food to cook in the hostel, which surprisingly turned out to be very nice, it was pasta and we put some veg and chicken and for some reason eggs in it (I think that's an american thing, never seen it done in the UK before). Then we had a few beers, met a few people, including someone else from "Manchester". I explained that I wasn't actually from Manchester, I had just gotten tired of explaining where Bolton was. He explained that the same had happened with him and Wigan. Then we went to bed.

Our only full day in Brasov. We got up around 10 ish, got ready and headed for the bottom of a big hill that had a sign on it saying BRASOV, in the style of that Hollywood sign. The path snaked up the hill because it was so steep, but after a while we decided to try to go straight up for a little bit. This was silly, because my shoes are from Sainsburys and cost approximately 12 pounds, so I was dragging myself up with my hands, although Michael wasn't fairing much better. I don't think this method was faster than just going around the path, so we continued like civilized human beings to the top. The view was fantastic! By far the best I have seen from any high objects in Europe on this trip. We took the cable car back down because Michael said "Where's the challenge in walking down a hill". After that we walked around the town a bit, then went back to the hostel. We also met a girl called Paris in the hostel, who was an absolute brain box, knew 4 or 5 languages well enough to hold conversations and sometimes fluent, and she's only 19, very clever. She decided to come with us to Varna the next day.

On the last day in Brasov we went to Bran, or Bran's Castle. It's meant to be where Dracula lived, it was pretty rubbish. It had a few boards up saying who actually had lived there, and the history of the castle, but they didn't seem interesting enough to warrent me spending my time on them. They should have played up to the dracula thing a little bit more, it's make an excellent haunted house, with people dressed up and jumping out at you and stuff. So we took the bus back to Brasov again, then tried to get a bus back to the hostel, but got the wrong one, so we got off again and walked.

We got the train at 16:03 to Bucharest, then we had about 20mins before we had to get the next train, so we found a little shop, I opened the fridge, got some bottles of beer, closed the fridge and went to pay. Michael tried to open the fridge, accidentally snapped the handle off, balanced it back in place, even though everyone heard it and was watching him, and then walked quickly to the platform. The woman didn't say anything to me or Paris about it, so I don't think she was too bothered. After all the beers had been drunk, me and Michael fell asleep, I'm not sure if Paris went to sleep or not, but thankfully she was awake when we got to our next change and just about managed to wake up me and Michael. I went to try to get some food, and returned to find Michael doing single handed press ups for some taxi drivers.... I'm not sure why, but they seemed impressed so whatever. I went inside, and Michael said he was going to look for food, he returned with vodka, most of which he gave to me. We then all fell asleep on the next train untill we arrived in Varna.

I've been doing a kind of hap-hazzzard unorganised kind of travelling, and I assumed that we were doing this stop the same way, so when we got to Varna at 8:30 I intended on going to the beach with our stuff untill a reasonable time, then finding a computer and getting the directions to the hostel. It worked fine in Berlin and Bratislava, except you have to replace beach with city centre. But Michael had the biggest bag in the world and Paris had a suitcase, so it wasn't really practical to go to the beach. Paris had a guide book that had the hostel marked on it, we got the bus there, even though I wanted to walk, and had a look around for it. After a while I asked in the shops and one girl said it had moved location but she didn't know where to. We asked a few places where an internet cafe was and eventually found it but it was closed. Then Paris was trying to get a connection on her laptop. By this point everyone's conflict of interests was starting to show, I made clear that I was bored of hanging around, went on my own, got some cash, found a map in a hotel, found an internet cafe and marked on where the hostel was. I arrived at the hostel and the owner answered the door in a towel and said he'd be with me shortly. About 20-30 mins later, he answered the door to Michael and Paris, still in his towel. After a while he gave us our keys and our beds, we all apologised to each other for moaning earlier on, and we rented some bikes and rode down towards the sea. It was a good day, we had a ride around, got some food, went in the sea. I had a sleep on the beach, and when it was going to start raining Michael decided to wake me up by jumping on me, so that explains those photo's on facebook! That night Paris went out for a meal with the hostel, me and Michael went somewhere else, and just asked the waiter to bring "3 different things that are good". He brought pizza, can't remember what was on it, chips and cheese, and some chicken thing. It was all very good, we also had 2 pints each and the total came to a whopping 21 Leva, about 10 quid. Then we bought some beers and went to the beach. We went back to the hostel for a trip to a bar and a hot spring natural bath thingy, it was pretty good, even if the water was a little bit slimey and there was a guy that lost his wallet/got it stolen. We got back about 4 in the morning.

I awoke with a bit of a hangover, but there was free vodka at breakfast as long as you drank it through a funnel, and this was my only morning in this hostel, so I had no time to waste. It was pretty disgusting, and the guy pouring it into the funnel managed to get some in my eye. Anyway, the day before the three of us had decided we would go on the hostel guided trip to the most easternly point of Bulgaria, Cape Kaliakra, or something to that effect, but we were told that the driver had called in sick, so Dave, the hostel owner asked a guy called Paul, who had arrived last night and I had briefly spoke to, if he would drive us and Sylvia, another American, because Paul had said that he used to be a coach driver. Paul said yes, so Dave gave us his car for a day and told us the rough direction to head in "keep the coast on the left". We drove for a bit, and saw a monestary, so we stopped and had a look around. Then we moved on a bit more and went to another beach, called golden sands, got something to eat and had a swim. Then we moved on again to the Cape. It was really impressive, huge drops on either side down to the ocean, got some good photos, or Sylvia did with my camera anyway, then we had to head back because we were meant to be back at 6. We got back to Brasov at 6:30 but we couldn't find the place where we had taken the car from, so eventually we just put it back somewhere else and got back to the hostel at 7, just in time for free beer, Dave wasn't bothered at all. I said goodbye to Michael and Paris, as I had to get a night train to Sofia, and they went out to get something to eat. It was fun travelling with other people, but I think because of my complete lack of organisational skills I should be wary of doing it again, I think I could cause a lot of people to get stressed out. It's great being with people when you're just doing the fun stuff, drinking, seeing the sites, etc, but for the boring necessary bits, like finding the hostel, it becomes a problem if there are other people there and no one knows where it is.

Oh yeah, my phone, i'm not entirely sure what happened to it, I noticed I didn't have it when we got to Golden Sands on the car day, but I thought I may have left it at the hostel, when I got back to the hostel it wasn't there and no one had seen it, so I either lost it or got pickpocketed at the monastry I think. Either way its gone now, at least it's one less thing to look after untill I decide to get another.

Tomorrow is the last day of the rail pass, so i've done the hardcore thing of night train to Sofia, day in Sofia, night train to Istanbul. There doesn't seem to be much in Sofia anyway.

Cheers for the comments, keep them coming so that I don't feel like i'm boring everyone.

bye bye