Where the streets have no name...

We're now in C-O-Owithalinethroughit-upsidedownN-backwardsR, known in the Roman alphabet as Sofia, in Bulgaria. This switch to the syrillic alphabet has been a tough one. They give tourists maps with the streets labelled with the Roman alphabet pronounciation, which means it doesn't match with the street names we actually see. It's rendered maps essentially useless for finding specific locations, so we have done a lot of wandering the past two days.

To backtrack super quick - we spent a fourth night in Brasov in order to meet up with the boys (see Carolyn's blog for a picture of the Romanian bbq feast we were treated to). From there we decided to skip Bucharest due to lack of accomodation, stopping only in the train station to switch trains, and headed on an especially sleepless and cramped night train to Sofia. Lesson learned = it's always worth spending the extra 10ish Euro to get a couchette rather than a just a seat in a cabin for a 10 hour train.

Sofia itself is a bit of a dump compared to other places we've visited, but our amazing hostel set-up had us easily convinced to stay a second night. We've been put up in an apartment shared with only one other bedroom. The 6 of us are on mattresses in one room. We have a computer with free internet, a huge living room, full kitchen, bathoom with an amazing shower, and even a balcony! The place itself is quite nice/new too. Then we head to the main hostel for free breakfast, free pasta dinner w/ beer, and free laundry. All of this for 10Euros a night - roughly $13Canadian. Top off the day with 1.5litre jugs of beer costing about $2Canadian, and our budget is doing quite well. :)

The group of us are getting along great - with our own apartment, we joke that we're just like the tv show Friends. Looks like we'll all be sticking together for another week until Istanbul, where we lose one, but the Irish boys may be with us for a few weeks yet. The next plan is really undecided. Once everyone wakes up we have to decide where we want to head today, and where to sleep. Everyone is really antsy to do some camping, so we've been hunting for campgrounds around Bulgaria, or may just head to the Black Sea Coast to sleep on the beach.

Okay. Time for some pictures!

Sadly the only tacky Dracula thing we found during our wanderings through Transylvania.

After hiking up the mountain beside Brasov, we were treated to a georgous view!

Jeff, Rob and Carolyn are chilling on the patio of our Brasov hostel.

The girls with Maria - the amazing, eccentric and hilarious woman running our hostel that was a good part of the reason we stayed in Brasov, Romania longer than any other city other than London.



The Bulgarian changing of the guards. They do a hilarious Ministry of Silly Walks-style march, with their straight legs going fully parallel to the ground with each stomp. Carolyn and I silly-walked around for the rest of the day in their honour.