The first stop was Bansko. I booked us into the Kempinski hotel since my parents were paying and I got to choose the hotels. They actually had a good “Pay for 2 Nights Get the 3rd Night Free” deal so it wasn’t that bad. The key here is we got free use of the spa (pool, hot tub, sauna, etc.). Of course, although the Kempinksi is a 5-Star hotel – regardless of its international reputation – it’s still a 5-Star hotel in Bulgaria. Accordingly, the electricity went out several times. They had a backup generator, but strangely none of the room bathroom lights were hooked up to it. Good thing I wasn’t using the facilities during any of the outages. The lights in the spa, however, were hooked up to the generator so we see where the priorities lie. Also the shower didn’t drain properly and the bathtub drain was broken (there was a seperate tub and shower in the bathroom). In the Kempinski’s defence, the staff fixed the problems when I complained. We used Bansko for the staging area for visiting Southwest Bulgaria.

On the way to Bansko we stopped at Rila Monastary – my 3rd trip there. The next day we went to Melnik which I had never been to. It is a quaint little village which is becoming less and less quaint as more and more building is happening there.

During the Melnik trip we decided to see another monastary about 10 km down the road. We came upon a church which I thought might be the monastary. We got out, looked around and when we got back into the rental car it wouldn’t start. I had rented a diesel VW Polo for the trip. We were on a hill so I tried coasting down and popping the clutch to no avail. We made it down to the small village at the bottom of the hill by coasting. The car would try to turn over, but when I turned the key none of the instrument gauges moved including the gas guage. I thought perhaps the gauge was broken and we had run out of gas. I talked to a local guy in town and he called someone in Melnik to bring some diesel out to the car. An hour later he showed up, I poured in the gas and the results were the same. The car would try to turn, but wouldn’t start and the instrument panel wouln’t light up. At this point the town started to get interested. Before long we had 5 guys all trying to figure out what was wrong with the car. We pushed the car up the hill a couple times to try and pop the clutch – all in vain. Finally I called the rental car company to complain and they said I needed to lock and unlock the car before it would start. Sure enough this was it. If you left the car unlocked for more than a few minutes some kind of security feature would activate that wouldn’t let you start the car until you locked them unlocked the car with the automatic RF lock.

This is the most retarded accessory to a car I have ever seen. How often do I get out of the car to go to the bathroom, get gas, look at something beside of the road, etc. – all things that don’t require me to lock the car. The answer, as I learned, is often. Well, I had to lock the car if I did any of these actions or it wouldn’t start. The entire rest of the trip had me constantly get out and lock and unlock the car before it would start. What happens if the battery in your little keychain lock dies. You’re screwed is the answer. Another example of how technology makes things worse rather than better. Not to vent entirely at VW – of course the rental company didn’t tell me this key piece of information. Of course they didn’t put the car manual in the car. Typical Bulgarian customer service.

We spend one day at Bansko and drove up to the ski area. They are building like crazy all over Bansko. What was once a small town is rapidly turning into a huge resort. Even from when I was there this past winter there are dozens of huge new apartment complexes going up. Up on the resort they were working on new trails and facilities as well.

From Bansko we drove to Plovdiv through an impressive gorge. On the way we must have passed through one of the Muslim regions on Bulgaria because we passed several small towns with mosques.

We spend the afternoon at Plovdiv then drove back to Sofia.

The next day we headed off to Veliko Turnovo. We stayed in the Gurko Hotel which I have heard good things of and all were true. Our room was on the top floor and had a great view of the river.

After VT we headed to Varna for a night. It took us a few minutes to find the hotel, but eventually got there and, again, had a great room with a view of the large Cathedral there. We walked around some of the extensive pedestrian streets of Varna before walking along the Black Sea shore for a while. We managed to see a wedding happening in the Cathedral while we were visiting. Interestingly, they didn’t close the Cathedral to visiters during the wedding so crowds of people were coming and going during the ceremony.

The next stop was Nesebar for a couple hours before continuing on to Sozopol where we were able to stay free in my landlord’s apartment. This was my 4th time to Sozopol, but my first in the off season. The town was nearly a ghost town with almost every shop and restaurant closed. It was very strange to see the town like this. The apartment was near a soccer field and we were able to catch Sozopol play Nesebar. Nesebar had the upper hand in that game.

Finally we drove back to Sofia and spend a day visiting several churches, the art museum, the ethnographic museum and a few shops for my mother to buy misc. Bulgarian stuff.

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Within hours of Jen and Jeff arriving in Bulgaria last Saturday (July 8th) I carted them to the AmCham (American Chamber of Commerce) 4th of July party (held on the 8th of July to fall on a weekend). This gave them a “soft landing” to Bulgaria by carting them to an event full of Americans. We soon got right into the heart of Bulgaria. I rented a VW Polo for the week so we could drive around and see some of the country. VW Polo’s are great cars for driving on mountain roads. They are small, agile, and almost guaranteed to get the backseat driver sick when driven properly (like a rally car). In fact, I earned the name “Rally Car Ryan” for the week due to my very professional driving skills …. err something like that.

The first order of business was to borrow camping equipment from my boss because our trip included a couple nights camping. However, this required a swap mid-country since my boss was on his was back from the sea when we were heading out into the country. We managed to coordinate the changeover near Stara Zagora (where we also stopped for lunch) then headed north to Veliko Turnovo (henceforth known at VT).

Our way to VT took us through Shipka Pass where a large monument stands with incredible views over the surrounding countryside. The monument was erected to honor those who died defending the pass during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-1878. The Russians took the pass with the help of Bulgarian volunteers and proceeded to defend the pass from 30,000 Turkish soldiers despite being outnumbered 5 to 1. After a bit of picture taking at Shipka we continued on to VT.

I’ve already written about VT in one of my previous blogs so I won’t rehash old information. The only difference is that we stayed in a hostel (aptly named Low Costel Hostel) in the middle of town. The hostel was recently opened by a British guy. The hostel was small, but nice. We had the 6 bed bunk room to ourselves which was nice. The top floor of the hostel was a cool open area with a full kitchen and sitting pillows where we were able to relax and play some cards with the owner for a couple hours.

The next day we took another road back through the mountains (where I was again able to practice my rally car skills) and headed to Sozopol. Again, you can read about Sozopol in one of my previous posts. Instead of staying in Sozopol, we stayed at a campsite a couple km south of Sozopol called Kavatsite. The whole region was pounded with rain and floods only a week or so before we arrived and the beaches at the campsite fared better than the beaches in Sozopol so we chose correctly. We spent two nights at the campground. The camping experience is a little different from the US camping experience. There are no fires, but the campsites have electrical outlets you can plug into. So, instead of playing cards by the light of the campfire, we played cards by the light of a lightbulb (and a bright one at that). Wednesday was “Vitamin D” day (also called “Skin Cancer Day”) where we spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun and swimming in the (quite warm) Black Sea.

On Thursday morning we packed up and headed back inland – to Plovdiv. I had been to Plovdiv before, but I had never driven so I wasn’t sure exactly how to get to the old town. We drover around lost for a few minutes before I decided we could just walk to the top of the hill with the Russian soldier monument and see where the old town was. This plan worked (well, basically, we still had to make one stop to ask a policeman). We spent the afternoon walking around the old town part of Plovdiv while Jeff took dozens of pictures of crappy, falling apart buildings.

On Friday we drove down to Rila Monastery. Another great thing about the Polo is the great gas mileage. I was able to drive down to Rila and back (1 hr. 45 min. of driving each way) and still have the gas tank needle read “Full” meaning I could in good conscious return the rental car with the required full tank.

Friday night I had a surprise birthday dinner at Motto. Joel made the extra effort of walking over 10 blocks with an unboxed birthday cake (the cake company didn’t have boxes big enough for it) to the restaurant. The cake was Viennese chocolate and was pretty darn good.

Saturday afternoon involved a lot of souvenir shopping (or crap shopping, as I prefer to call it). Jen bought a nice load of crap to bring back with her to America. After a mid-afternoon nap we headed off to dinner then to the first of two parties. Party number one was a house party unrelated to my birthday hosted by one of the Hash House Harriers. We only stayed for a short while there. The next stop was the club Alcohol. Here we stayed until the wee hours of the morning before returning to collect Jen and Jeff’s bags and send them off to the airport – without any sleep (hey, they can sleep on the plane, right?).

All-in-all an excellent week and a great birthday. Pictures will be posted soon, but they’re spread over several cameras which are now located in different countries so it may take me a few days to consolidate them.

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Regardless of where I slept the night before, at 8:15am I was standing (although perhaps not completely straight) in front of the courthouse. Despite a conversation the previous day as to the location of the courthouse, Paris got lost. Joel and I went with Svelta (our cultural guide from previous trips) on the tram to the bus station while Paris was directed to take a cab there to get there on time. We still had no idea what happened to Julia and tried calling her several times. Anyway, we still ended up missing our bus which was ok since it gave us an hour to eat and drink something (non-alcoholic) before the next bus left an hour later.

After switching busses in the town of Rila we continued on the Rila Monastery, only 22 km up the road. The Rila Monastery was founded in 927 AD by Ivan Rilski. The current monastery is made up of several buildings dating from the 14th century (for the oldest castle tower in the middle) to the 19th century for most of the remaining structure. The church in the middle is painted with about 1200 murals – all very impressive. Guests are allowed to stay in the monastery, but we ended up staying at a campsite 2km up the road (although I think I would have preferred staying in the monastery). We spend a few hours in the monastery. While there we happened to run into one of Kat’s friends who we met the night before who happened to be there that day (luckily didn’t seem to remember any abnormal intoxication on my part). We also ran into a group from New York City – although one was Bulgarian, one South African and 3 Russians (although 2 of the Russians had US passports). Anyway, there were good fun so we ended up having dinner and talking with them for several hours that night. They were staying in the monastery, which has a curfew of 9pm so they had to get back inside. The rest of our group had driven with another guy they knew up the road to have dinner somewhere else. The night was a new moon and it was DARK. We started walking back to the campsite and a few meters into the darkness and we decided maybe we’ll wait by the well lit monastery for our group to pass by again. Well, we got bored waiting since nothing was open so we used the picture viewer on Paris’ camera as a flashlight and ventured through the darkness back to the campsite. We were making jokes about using the flash and trying to remember the next 10m before using the another flash. We figured we could do that until one of the flashes would show some huge bear. We made it back to the campsite safe and sound and were in bed and asleep before 11pm. On Sunday we walked up to a small chapel another 2km up the road. Near the chapel is a cave where it is said that St. John (one of them, anyway) lived as a hermit. You can go in the cave through a relatively large opening in the bottom. Inside there is a tiny hole where you can climb out through the top. The story is that if you can make it through the whole who are absolved of your sins for the next year. I’m a thin person and I thought it was pretty small, yet I saw plenty of not-so-small 80 year old ladied squeeze though that hole. I guess if the choice is live in sin or squeeze through the whole, you get some extra motivation.

We took a direct bus from the Monastery back to Sofia which was pretty much a bus ride from hell. It was hot, crowded (some people were standing because there were no extra seats), the bus could barely make it up the hills and it took 3 hours. We were all very happy to be off that bus. Next week we take the bus to Assenovgrad and Plovdiv. I can’t wait….

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