Romania Overview

Romania

Ruth favourites: The people - especially Alice, Excalibur, the lazer @ the forest party

Ruth disappointments: not getting to see more of Romania - 4 days is not much! Perhaps we will be back for this and we can see Transylvania

Steve favourites: Forest party and Excalibur

Steve disappointments: Not getting to see Brasov (Transyvania)

General:
Most women don't wear bras. Parking is scarce. Wages aren't very high. Romanians in general are not that tolerant of gay people. After seeing this sign I asked our hosts if it was a church group that posted this and she said no. I asked her if it was the common view of Romanian people and she said she didn't care and lots of people don't but that signs like this were seen as acceptable.

Romania - Bucureşti and Ploieşti - 20/5 - 24/5

Wednesday 20 May

Olly and Chris missed their train yesterday also, and Dave and Jenny were leaving today too. So the 6 of us were on the train to Ruse on the Bulgarian side of the border and then on to Bucharest together. It was a fairly uneventful trip, we left @ 7.20am and arrived in Bucharest around 4.30pm so we lost most of the day travelling. We parted ways with the Varna crew as we had arranged another couch surf. It was to be our 3rd time. We were staying with a couple - Madalina and Lucian (Lu-chee-an). We met them at the university and from there we headed to a bar (called Oktoberfest) to meet some of their friends. One of their friend also hosts couch surfers so there were a couple of Germans there too. We had a few drinks before heading home to their place. Their place was a very small unit and we crashed on the floor in their room.

Thursday 21 May

We slept in until nearly lunch time before heading into the city to have a look around. We ended up spending most of the day online trying to arrange our next few weeks worth of travel plans. A friend of Madalina's had mentioned a bush party on the weekend so we decided to stay for it rather than moving on after a few days as we had planned. We worked out to get a weekend in Belgrade we'd have to cut our trip to Germany short because it was logisitcally too hard and expensive to get to Germany from Serbia, so we decided to spend 4 days in Budapest Hungry and go from there.

We met Lucian and Madalina in the city and headed to a friend of their's shop where he sells board games, and we played a game called Shadows over Camelot, which was cool for fantasy nerds like us. There were 6 'loyal' knights and 2 hidden traitors playing for evil of which I was one. The traitors ended up winning the game (evil triumphed :P). We then headed to a nice park area to kill some time before dinner as it wasn't until 9pm. Dinner was at a place called Excalibur - a medieval restaurant, we were really looking forward to it for obvious reasons.

Excalibur turned out to be well cool. The decor was more impressive than our wedding venue in some ways - the food and drink were served on clay plates and in clay goblets without handles. There were lots of roasts on the menu, you could even order a whole piglet with 48 hours notice. There were 13 of us at dinner, and Steve, me, the 2 Germans and 3 of the Romanians ordered a 6 person feast with 2 whole chickens, pork, bacon, sausages and salad - which came around the edge of the platter of meat. The platter was so wide my plate almost didnt fit on the table. We had no eating utensils medieval style, so we all ate with our hands. The 7 of us didn't quite finish our meal, but only by a tiny bit. Steve and I had 7 beers between us and the total bill for us was around $45 Au, so expensive for Romania but still good for what we are used to at home. At dinner we met Alice, and she had a couch at her place that was bigger than the floor space we had a Madalina's so we stayed there but left all our stuff at Madalina's. We crashed at about 3am.

Friday 22 May

We didn't get up until after 12 on Friday, but we used the rest of the day to check out the city properly since we hadn't seen much the day before. There are lots of beautiful buildings in Buchrest, many of them run down and in need of restoration, but lots of ones in good condition too.


We headed out to the village museum which was a collection of relocated Romanian village buildings or recreated from originals. There were traditional dwellings dating back centuries. We weren't allowed to photograph inside or any of the churches which was a bummer as they were amazing.
We just wandered around and took some pictures before heading back to Madalina's to do grocery shopping for dinner that night and the bush party on the weekend. Steve cooked spaghetti and after we had dinner with Lucian and Madalina we took the left overs for Alice as she was doing work at home until late. We stayed at Alice's place again.

Saturday 23 May

Bush party day had arrived! I was extremely excited about it and keen to hit the road. We got away a bit after 2pm and it was a couple of hours drive away as the traffic was really bad. We arrived around 4.30, set up the tent then wandered around taking pictures while it was still light (and not trashed). There were 6 arenas - a live arena on which a band was playing when we arrived, a psy arena, a funk arena, the Lollipop arena, the Pisi Love arena (say that however you like :P), a reggae arena and a chill arena. When we saw the decor at the psy arena we were convinced that was where we would stay for the whole night as it was by far the coolest. There weren't too many people around while it was light but as the light faded the place really filled up. All of the arenas had good crowds all night, and we spend a bit of time in each. The lazer in the Lollipop arena occupied a lot of our attention, and when it hit the tree canopy over our heads it looked like the videos you see of the ocean taken from under water, where you can see the sun light streaking down through the water. It was a full colour lazer and so we watch it for ages. Madalina passed out fairly early so Lucian, Alice, Steve and I hung out most of the night together. We all had the best time, Steve said it was one of the best party experiences he's ever had. I can't really put into words how fun it was... so I'll just leave it at that.

Sunday 24 May

We stayed at the bush party until aournd 4pm then drove back as we had a 9.20pm overnight sleeper train to Belgrade in Serbia. We slept in the car most of the way back. By the time we arrived at the train station we were pretty tired so we were asleep by 9.30. We were very glad at that point that we had splurged and spent the extra money on a sleeper train (instead of 25 Euros/50Au it was 50Euros/100Au each) but the trip was over 12 hours so we'd decided to go the sleeper since we hadn't done a train trip over 9 hours yet and they had been pretty uncomfortable. We did quite well with keeping our spending down in Romania even though we partied and did touristy things.

Ruth

Bulgaria - Overview - 14/05 - 20/05

Overview: Bulgaria
Since I didn't include photos in previous posts here are some from Varna


Ruth favourite things:
The break dancers and beat boxing @ The Stanton Warriors gig. Varna - the whole experience from the Flag Hostel to bungy jumping. The communist era markets in Sofia.

Steve favourite things:
Varna, Varna and Varna.

Ruth disappointments:
Not getting longer in Varna with the crew at the Flag Hostel.

Steve disappointments:
That the bungy cord didn't break when I jumped off the bridge

General:
Beer was the preferred drink of locals - 40 something women in trendy cafes still drank beer. The post office was too confusing to use - It looked like a disheveled office from the 70s.
Safety standards were non existent, I nearly fell down several open manholes in the main city street in Sofia and there were builders doing some pretty dodgey things. Pedestrians have right of way - you can walk out in front of cars even on major busy roads (within reason, obviously you need to give the car time to stop).

Ruth

Bulgaria 15/05 - 19/05

Sofia - Friday May 15

Today we wandered around Sofia taking pictures of all the nice buildings. That's really about all there is to do. We had found out that the Stanton Warriors were playing in Sofia that night so we were keen to head out as there wasn't much else on. We got to the club quite early because we had nothing better to do so we were amongst the first 10 or so people to arrive. Our first impression was WOW. We entered on the top floor where 2 of the walls had floor to ceiling graphic equalizer bars with each bar around 30-50cm wide. They bounced with the music and were coloured the same as all the rest of the club's lighting, which changed colours frequently, so the whole club would be red, then blue then purple etc.
It didn't stay empty for very long though and the club filled to near capacity. The dancefloor was down stairs as after downing a few Becks beers that cost 3 Leva (about $3 Au) we hit the dancefloor. We spent the whole night dancing and it was a great atmosphere, very fun party vibe. We had to leave at about 4.30am though as we had a 7am train to move on to Varna on the Black Sea coast.

Train to Varna - Saturday May 16

We boarded the train in the morning which took about 8 hours to get to Varna. Along the way we got to see more of Bulgaria. There were a lot of poor people, the houses were all run down. Most of the roofs of the houses looked like the frames had been wet at some point as they were all warped and buckled. People still lived in them though they looked like they could collapse at any day. There were lots of abandoned buildings too, and some that looked like they may have been bombed.

We arrived in Varna and went to a hostel called The Flag. It was the first time we had tried just rocking up to a hostel without a booking. As it happened, it was unusually full so rather than get a dorm room in the main hostel we were moved to an apartment style room with 4 beds and that is closer to the beach. We had to pay more, around 12 Euros but we don't have to share the bathroom with as many people so it's been good. The Flag is known as a bit of a party hostel but we were never prepared for how much.

The owner of the hostel is a British guy called Dave. He is a rather eccentric guy, and a lot of fun. We were informed that every night at 7pm he provided the backpackers with free beer in the common room, which is fairly small so it filled up fast. We had been told there weren't many good clubs around as the peak season has not hit yet, a lot of places are only just opening for the year now. So we had a feed and headed to the main hostel building to have beer and meet some fellow travelers. It was here that we met Elysabeth, Liz, Olly and Chris who are all from England, Rita and Natalia from the Ukraine, 4 Germans and 3 crazy French guys. We drank with these guys late into the night, and once the free beer had finished there was a 24 hour bottle-o across the road from the hostel. It was also here we discovered that breakfast was included in our room, but that breakfast consisted of toast and then straight vodka through a funnel. We were looking forward to breakfast.

Varna - Sunday May 17

We met 2 new people today, Jenny and Dave who are a couple of Aussies living in England. They were sharing the 4 bed room with us. We had slept past breakfast unfortunately but we decided today was beach day for us. We headed down to the beach with Olly, Chris, Dave, Jenny and a guy called Aaron who we met at the beach. We sat in the sun drinking beer out of 2 litre plastic bottles which seem to be the norm in Bulgaria. After that we ate at a restaurant on the beach where Steve, Dave and Olly all ordered a dish called Sprats, which were little fish that had been battered. After about 5 they got really over them, and they were competing to see who could eat the most. They all felt so yuk afterwards, Olly was the only one to finish his meal. We made heaps of Sprat jokes for a while before heading back to the hostel for free beer. We drank late into the night again, and played card games. Olly, Chris and I were still up at 8am so we headed to bed to catch some sleep before bungy jumping. We had been roped into it during the course of the night.

Varna - Monday May 18

I arrived back to our room around 8.30 and 4 steps into the door Steve's alarm went off for bungy jumping. I had a 20 minute power nap before heading back to the hostel to get the guys and head off. They slept a few more hours than me and we couldn't get in to jump until 5.30, so we sat around chatting to people and drinking until then. We had picked up beer on the way back to the hostel and so I had my first Flag breakfast - a beer bong. Not quite the same as straight vodka but my 500ml beer disappeared in one go. A Canadian guy rocked up to check in to the hostel and we roped him into joining us jumping. Dave the owner of the hostel walked us to the jump site. It was around a half hour walk and it was a busy traffic bridge not dissimilar to the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne. It was a decent drop so we were all a little nervous. Olly is petrified of heights and he was going first. Once he stood up on the side of the bridge he was visibly shaking. Everyone cheered him on and when he jumped the cheering got louder and everyone clapped. Once he was pulled back up again we all cheered him again - everyone cheered everyone else before and after jumping so it was a really cool feeling. Australian Dave jumped after Olly, then Natalia, then Steve. I videoed Steve so check out his facebook album! Chris went before me and Rita after me and the new recruit - Simon from Canada went last. Jenny, Liz and Elysabeth came and watched so there was a decent crowd of us there. The jump itself was over so quickly, it was really cool though. It felt so weird bouncing around again after, and I nearly bounced high enough to touch the bridge again - within a metre or so! We all left the jump site exhilarated, and freezing - it was cold and windy on the bridge. It was a long walk and so we were keen for beers when we got back - just in time for the start of free beers at the hostel. I had a couple and crashed for about another 20 minutes in Olly's bed before rejoining the crew. It was Rita's birthday so hostel Dave had arranged a mini celebration for her. We had chocolate ice cream cake and sang to her. Olly and Chris were awarded a free bottle of vodka for being the longest staying guests at the hostel this year - they were here for a week. Steve, Simon, Olly, Chris, Aaron and Simon all polished off the bottle of vodka via the funnel in around 5 minutes, so the night was off to a wild start. This ended up being our biggest party night probably on our whole trip, we had an absolute blast with the English guys, Jenny, Dave and Simon and the girls from the Ukraine. We played lots of card games including a crazy drunken higher or lower game and partied most of the night. The hostel is situated in a housing complex for deaf people, the hostal had been moved there deliberately as there is always so much noise. Tonight was certainly no exception. The Flag is definitely NOT the place to stay if you want to sleep. We regrettably left the hostel in the wee hours as we had a train booked to move on to Romania at 8.50 in the morning, so we said our goodbyes, swapped email addresses and headed off.

Varna - Tuesday May 19

Steve's alarm didn't go off, so when Jenny woke us at 9am to ask what time our train was there was some swearing. Steve wasn't in very good shape and wanted to sleep more so I headed to the hostel to pay another night. Everyone was surprised to see me again for obvious reasons. Olly and Chris are leaving to head to Bucharest - Romania today too but on the 5.30pm train via Ruse for a night. We may catch them in Bucharest but we have a couch surf lined up so we'll see. We rebooked for tomorrow morning and we just had to repay the reservation fee not the fare as the tickets are valid for 2 months so that was lucky.

We are aiming to spend at least 2 weeks in Germany, but we are set back a few days now in Varna. We still want to do Romania, Serbia, Hungry and the Czech Republic before then, and we fly out of Berlin to the UK on the 10th of June. We only have couple of weeks to do all those countries so I think this month will feel very rushed. Once we hit Germany we can chill a bit more, Varna has been so much fun though so I'm happy to have been here longer. I could do with a recovery day today though as I only had 40 minutes sleep in the few days before.

Ruth

Bulgaria - Sofia 14/05

We left Thessaloniki at midnight on the scariest looking train ever. The train was really old and run down looking, the lights were off so it was completely dark inside and there were people who looked like homeless people hanging out the windows smoking. It had been raining and the windows were down so it looked like water was dripping into the train. We were told there were sleeper cars but not told they cost extra once you got on (doubled our fare from 15 to 30 Euros each) so we just stuck to what we had. We got a room to ourselves so we were able to lie across the seats, but the door didn't lock so we agreed that one of us should stay awake just in case. I was going to type the blog but we didn't want to advertise that I had a laptop. Steve started nodding off within 5 minutes however, so we decided to just sleep - we locked all our bags together and used our sleeping bags for pillows. We really feel like back packers on days like this!

We got woken in the middle of the night by the police when we got to the Bulgarian border. Greek police stamped my passport out of Greece and the Bulgarians stamped me in - I got a 30 day visa at the border. Steve had to get my passport back for me as I had fallen asleep again by the time they'd sorted it out. Steve has no stamps in his passport yet, as he is traveling on a British passport and considered an EU citizen. Woke up at around 5.30am and we had another hour until we arrived in Sofia.

When we got off the train in Sofia, the train station was very run down. The escalators down off the platforms looked like they hadn't worked in dozens of years as they were all rusted and taped off. The toilets in the station were like the floor style ones in Thailand and you had to pay for toilet paper just like Thailand. We got the tram to the city, although it was very hard to work out if we were getting the right one as almost no one here speaks English. The trams were also very old and run down, even older that the 70s ones that get around Melbourne.

We arrived at the hostel and we were allowed to check in (it was 8am) so we slept for another few hours before heading out for an explore around. We just wandered around checking out the buildings, having a feed and beers - nothing very eventful. At around 11pm we headed out in search of some happening night life. We found a club with bad music, expensive drinks and the only other patrons a bunch on English yobbos. We left and walked around until we found a cool little bar that was playing rad prog/house and stayed there for a beer but it was empty and we were tired so we went back to the hostel and slept.

Ruth

Greece Overview

Ruth's favourite things about Greece:
Santorini, Giannis and Alex, Thessaloniki street/cafe culture, Almonds - they're done differently to Australian almonds, Metaxa!

Ruth's disappointments/dislikes about Greece:
Not going clubbing, that we don't have longer there...

Steve's favourite things about Greece:
Ouzo, couch surfing, Thessaloniki

Steve's disappointments/dislikes about Greece:
None!

General notes:
You can drink and smoke anywhere. You can park a car anywhere. Lots of one way streets. Not many English speakers. The national drink seems to be coffee. Common beers are Amstel and Heineken. Internet is expensive. Most shops including supermarkets and pharmacies close on Sundays. Greeks only turn their hot water services on for 20 minutes before showers, then turn them off again. Most houses have solar panels installed. You drive on the right side of the road. Footpaths are narrow.

Thessaloniki, Greece 13/05

Thessaloniki Wednesday May 13

Alex went to work for the day so we ventured out into the city. We posted some more clothes home as our packs were getting a bit heavy. Wandering around the city reinforced that I reeeally love Greece. There were so many cool cafes along the main square and the outdoor seating was all trendy couches not plastic or wood chairs. It was a beautiful day, I am back in shorts and t-shirt weather and there were a bunch of 12 year old girls having a water fight in the main square.

Didn't really do anything eventful, just wandered around and enjoyed the great atmosphere, ate good food and checked out some of the many Byzantine era churches.

Alex finished work at 5 and we sat around talking all things music, listening to techno and being shown all sorts of new drinks. Alex boiled down Metaxa and added cinnamon and sugar - you shoot it while it's still warm. Yum.... We also had some weird fruit spirits. We had a train to Bulgaria at midnight so we left his place around 9.30. We left with the feeling we hadn't stayed long enough though! And there were heaps of cool things happening over the weekend we will miss but it's time to move on - we can't stay everywhere for the weekend :P Alex was an awesome guy so hopefully we end up back in Greece some time so we can spend a bit more time with him.

You can see in the background the little stove Alex used to cook down the Metaxa ;)

Ruth

Athens - Thessaloniki, Greece 10, 11 & 12 May

Athens - Thessaloniki 10, 11 and 12 May.

We stayed in Athens long enough for Steve to get his Greek tattoo. Just cruised around checking our more cool ruins and trying to find good Greek food. There were 10-11 people staying at Giannis place so it was a mad house! There were Americans, Swiss people and Albanians. We got the bed luckily because I spend a day bedridden and run down, and I seem to have very bad hay fever in Greece, even Steve has been getting it a bit.

I spent $15 calling Nige for his birthday and the bastard doesn't even remember! Must have been a good birthday then ;)

We booked a train and headed to Thessaloniki in Northern Greece where we lined up a couch surf with a guy called Alex. He is in love with techno, so we had plenty in common with him. It was good to meet him because I at least still got a Greek techno experience even if it wasn't exactly what I had in mind :P

Didn't get up to much with Alex that night as it was a Tuesday night.

Ruth

Santorini back to Athens 09/05

Santorini Saturday May 9

Today we had to check out of the hostel and head back to Athens. We took the ATV for a spin to kill some time and took some more nice photos. Enlarge the one below and spot the random building.

Sunset on the ferry:
This picture was taken on the ferry. The blue in the background is the actual colour of the sky, it was so vivid.

We arrived back in Athens late and due to me only getting 2 hours sleep after our beach expedition and the cost of taxi's we didn't go in search of techno clubs like I had wanted to - the nearest was 12kms and taxi's double in cost and add tips after midnight. We also left in time to miss a full moon party on Perissa Beach. Life is so tough!!!

Ruth