Just back to Bulgaria and the first weekend happen to be the opening season of rafting, great! One of my friends was earlier in the Bulgarian rafting team and last weekend I joined her to do the first rafting of the year. Below you can see the pictures from these days.
I realize it was a while since i wrote here. I’ve now moved back to Sofia about two weeks ago and have done a lot of things, but most of all, spending time with my friends here. On top of this one friend from Milan came to visit Bulgaria, and we rented a car for a day trip to Veliko Ternovo. This is the old capital of Bulgaria and a very beautiful picturesque city. Below you will find some of my pictures from this trip.
Tomorrow I will go on a trip to visit friends & family in Italy, Sweden & Denmark. When I return to Sofia I will write a blog post with tips on how to pack your travel bag small & efficient.
Today I arrived back to Istanbul from my one-week-trip “home” to Sofia. I had a great week climbing, snowboarding, going to vernissages, museums, markets and meeting a lot of friends again.
To go to Sofia from Istanbul is very easy and only costs 20 euro one way. There is a lot of bus companies to choose from, and the buses departs several times a day. Because the trip is about 8-9 hours I would recommending taking the night bus at 10 pm, which makes you miss less time and you can get some sleep at the same time. The bus company I would recommend you to take is HAS Turizm which have comfortable buses, good service, few people and almost never any tourists. Also included in the price is water, tea, coffee and cake. Don’t expect anyone on the bus to speak English though, so if you want to have more control, go with for example METRO Turizm which have mostly tourists. This company is 5 euro more expensive, but guarantee your own personal media machine where you can watch movies, listen to music, use internet, play games and so on.
When you buy the ticket, you can pre-book the ticket some days in advance, or show up one hour before departure (the buses usually don’t get full). Some of the companies tell you that you need a visa in your passport and will not sell you a ticket without this, but this is incorrect. Some nationalities don’t need a visa, and for the rest of you there is a possibility to buy a visa when you reach the border. You need cash though, don’t expect to pay with a payment card.
About the customs between Turkey and Bulgaria, the bus will stop 4 times. The first stop will be a passport check in your departing country. don’t hesitate to leave away your passport, this is standard procedure and all the passports will be collected later by the bus driver and given back to you. Also here you might need to buy a visa if you don’t already have one. The price for this should be around 15 euro and you can probably pay with Bulgarian Lev, Turkish Lire or Euro. Some nationalities don’t need to get a visa, so check this before you start your trip.
The second stop is duty free shopping. Don’t buy anything that is in a closed box (like some cigarettes) because the customs don’t like this. Sometimes though the bus drivers ask everyone on the bus to ask one big box each for them, and then gives the people who does this a cigarette package each as a “thank you” present.
The third stop is the real customs with luggage check. Here everyone has to exit the bus again and place their luggage on a bench. Then some employee of the customs/police will go through your stuff, opening every closed package you have if you are unlucky. Food and beverage (in large amounts at least) is illegal to take between the countries. About half of the times this step with opening your bags will not happen, but be prepared to show everything you have in your bag just in case.
The fourth (and last) stop will be the passport control of the country where you are going to. Same thing here, you will leave away your passport, just to be collected later again by the bus driver and given back to you.
Today I have been in Istanbul for a week and have already seen and done a lot here. Here are some of my first impressions of this amazing city:
* The city is knows as “the 7 hills” for a reason. You spend most of the days walking up and down when you move around here. Moving around is kind of easy with metro, bus, tram, shared taxi, normal taxi, funicular, boat and so on. The prices are also low and you can get it even lover by buying a metal thing that you charge and use on all kind of transport (except taxi).
* People are really helpful here. On the way here for example (with bus from Sofia) we crossed the border. An old man had 5 bags filled with cheese and some fine wines/champagne. Because it’s not allowed to bring food into the country the custom wanted to throw everything away. Everyone, and I mean everyone, on the bus helped the man in different ways, and after some phone calls from some of them this was fixed and the man could keep his bags.
* Although most people here are really helpful, there are of course also people trying to trick you (as everywhere else). For example in the restaurants when you don’t speak the language.
* If you buy a Turkish mobile card (sim card) you need to register the phone if it’s not bought in Turkey. Normally the people who sell the cards don’t tell you this (see above). This means that after some days your mobile will be locked and you need to go to a certain mobile store to unlock it and buy a new sim card. The official explanation for this is because terrorist use mobiles to detonate bombs, although some people say it’s because they want to sell more Turkish mobile phones. There are no problem with foreign sim cards though. Also, it’s not allowed to talk in mobile phones on the bus.
* The food here are a little bit more spicy than in a lot of other European countries (finally!). If you are a vegetarian you will have problems because most things you eat here include meat. If you love kebab this is the place for you, as there are a kebab place every 20 meters. The kebab meat is usually of very good quality but there is no sauce as most people in the rest of Europe is used to get.
* The store areas are usually grouped in different categories. For example there is one road with only music stores, another one with only water sport stores and so on.
* Prices here are higher than in Sofia, almost the same as in northern Europe, and some things are even more expensive. If you know where to go you can find cheap and good food for around 4-5 euro though. At the markets you can bargain and lower the price to about half of the start price.
* The Turkish language are somewhat difficult to learn but not impossible. About half of the young people here speak English, and almost nobody of the middle age or older people speak or even understand it.
* Movies at the cinema are in original language, although TV is mostly dubbed.
* Guys kiss each other on the cheeks here. Also you can’t enter a club if you are only guys, you need at least one girl to be let inside.
* A lot of web sites are blocked from Turkey. This includes for example YouTube, which you can “unblock” with a special program installed. It’s still not possible to upload movies though.
* Everything here is called something with “Turk”, for example Turk Cola, Turkcell (mobile company), Powerturk (Music TV-channel) and so on.
* There are a lot of homeless dogs and cats here, the same as there were in Sofia. Also homeless people of course, as the minimum salary here is about 120 euro which is far from what you need to live here.
* It rains a lot in this period of year, that is it rains several days of the week, not so much at one time though
* You never get bored here as there is always things happening around you with this amount of people on the streets at any hour.
When you meet someone special, should you stay in/move to their country to be a part of their life, but at the same time give up your own dreams and goals? Or should you let that person do the same (if they want) to stay in your country or travel around with you?
I guess on both questions the answer should be NO.
It was a long time since I wrote something in the blog. The reason are many, but mostly because I’ve had a full schedule the two months I have been here in Bulgaria now. I’ve traveled around by car, bus and train, visited small towns, big cities, incredibly friendly & interesting people, been trekking, caving, taking baths in outdoor hot mineral springs, bungee jumping, partying, exploring and learning. I have totally fell in love, both in this country and it’s people.
BUT – I will probably move to Istanbul for 2 months in the beginning of January. There are mainly two reasons for this. First of all I will maybe loose my apartment here in Sofia around New Year’s Eve. Instead of looking for a new apartment here, I will take a break to get a perspective on things, and look for an short term apartment/roommate in Istanbul instead. Also, I need more warm climate than Sofia right now, although this means I will miss the snowboard season here.
First of all I will fly home to my family in Sweden for a week to spend Christmas there. Then back here in Bulgaria for NYE celebrations. Hopefully at this time i have more concrete plans and an apartment.
After one week in Sofia I start to see and feel some differences between my last living place, Torrevieja, and here in Sofia.
Most obvious are the weather. From having to hide from the sun in Spain (still in October!) to having to buy more winter clothes in cold Sofia. Some days ago I was trekking up in the mountains in the outskirts of Sofia in the middle of the night to watch a meteor shower with a group of Couchsurfers, and it was below zero degrees with frost. Good think we had blankets and vodka.
Another difference is that almost everyone here speaks English or at least understands it. As usual people are a little bit shy in the beginning to speak but after a while you realize they are quite good at it. I’m still throwing out Spanish words by mistake, but have started to go to a language exchange to learn Bulgarian, as well as practicing the Cyrillic alphabet.
People here are really warm and helpful, but they seem to be wherever I travel. Just some people ignore you in the street when you ask for directions, but that is nothing new either. The rest stops and help you for 15 minutes, showing the path and distance on their GPS and so on. Maybe it sometimes have a small connection with how secure people are with speaking in English.
The prices here are incredible for still being inside Europe (almost comparable to Asia in some cases). You can get a kebab or slice of pizza for 60 cent, normal restaurant food for 3 euro, rent a central apartment with high standard for 200 euro a month, or a central room for 80 euro. Every time you get the bill somewhere it gives you a big smile =).
The food is great. Not only cheap as I mentioned above, but the variety and quality of the food here is really good, and I find so many food dishes here that I have never seen before. On top of that they need to write how many grams every dish is in the menu (it’s the law), which is very helpful. Be prepared though that it can take a lot of time to get the food, and that you won’t get it at the same time if you are a large company dining together.
So far I really like it here and plan to stay for at least 3 months (until January). In this time I will also check out other cities and countries close by as this area has a lot of unexplored places for me.
For the last week I have been traveling and meeting people so I’m a little bit late with the postings in this blog. Anyway, one week ago I went to Granada (on my path Torrevieja -> Granada -> Fuengirola -> Madrid -> Sofia). I was supposed to meet and stay at one CouchSurfers place, but she never answered my calls so I found a cheap central hostel instead. For me it’s always worth living central in a city just to save time, if not the bus/metro-ride itself is interesting or the area you have found. In New York for example I lived in the outskirts of Manhattan in wonderful Spanish Harlem which is a must see in my eyes, and still close to the Hyde Park and the rest of New York if you have good walking boots.
Ok so now back to the topic. Granada was just lovely as every Spanish person I’ve ever met before have told me. A lot of tourists of course, but still very easy to find “hidden” spots you can have for yourself or to spend time with locals. One of the highlights of the city was my walk up to the hills in Sacromonte. There are a lot of people here living for free in caves where they have furniture and all the living capacities they need. I had heard that there was a museum where you can see one of these caves, but I could not find it and just climbed up the hills random. Suddenly I was lucky and walked straight into the area where all these caves are.
Sacromonte caves in Granada
The best thing with this area was that it was totally deserted of tourists, apart from a group of 7 young persons I met and joined. These persons were local students that had just arrived 2 weeks before from Canada, France and Poland. After looking at the cave area we had a picnic break and then did some more trekking up the hills for some hours. Finally we found the way back and went to one of the guys apartment. After some drinks and snacks we went on to his favorite Marrakesh restaurant. The food and tee was great, as for the company, but the best thing was the restaurant owner who spoke 7 languages fluent (Arabic, Berber, Spanish, French, English, German and Italian)! He was also able to switch between them without a problem, sometimes in one and the same sentence. And his humor was great, joking around with us and sitting down at our table for a long time with the result that the food became almost cold before we started eating. Great day and evening and always fun with new friends!
More caves in Sacromonte, these even with solar power
Alhambra in Granada, view from the Sacromonte caves
Picnic and later trekking with Granadian students from Canada, France and Poland
It’s the last day here in Torrevieja and I’m thinking back to all the people I have met here. A lot of them I have met in my favorite pub and the rest I have invited to that place instead. This place is like my second living room and is very relaxed with great and interesting people. I’m not sure if I ever felt so home and relaxed as there, which of course makes it even more hard to live this city and its people.
Every Sunday (and also unplanned jam sessions) some friends who are in a band called Brainfood Soundsystem plays live reggae at “my” place. I love the positive energy of these guys and here you can find a sample:
Also check out their MySpace page
http://www.myspace.com/brainfoodsoundsystem
Tomorrow morning I head out for Granada for some days, then Fuengirola and last but not least Madrid where I will fly (move) directly to Sofia.
Today I talked with the guy who will rent an apartment to me in Sofia, Bulgaria, because I wanted to know where and how to get the keys when arriving two weeks from now. He then told me that he had changed his mind about renting out the apartment. This puts me in an interesting situation as I already have bought the tickets to Bulgaria and canceled my current apartment here in Spain. I was in an (angry) shock.
Lucky for me the weather here has also changed from rainy storm to a warm blue sky. As I needed a break I went down to the beach for a swim right after sending out some requests to people about a new apartment. The beach had already been somewhat renovated and had just the right amount of people (mostly locals) suntanning. The water was clear and warm, not full of trash as I thought it would be after the floodings. When I came back to the apartment one hour later I already had two mails about apartments in Sofia, so everything looks bright again. I also found places to stay in Granada and Madrid which I will see on the way to Sofia.
This should be a lesson to me to have backup plans more often, but also a good knowledge that whatever happens everything usually works out anyway.
