I just got back from my short two-week vacation in Bulgaria. Of course with no access to the Internet and no business phone calls.
It was nice.
I was in Sofia with Eti for a couple of days. Met friends in Sofia.
Then in Stara Zagora for another couple of days. Met some nodes of the complicated family graph (not tree) there.
Then in Bansko with Marieta for about 5 days.
And then another day in Stara Zagora and Sofia in transit to Iceland. Met friends in Sofia again.
The whole trip was dedicated to syncing up with Eti, cause we haven't seen each other f2f for some three months. The Bansko trip was the most relaxing vacation I've taken for some time. Bansko is one of the three biggest ski resorts in Bulgaria. It's fame is from more recent times than the other two - Pamporovo and Borovets. The place was until recently а mountain village and still is to a large degree with animals like cows, sheep and chicken living in it. It is not a working ski resort at this time of the year. The season ends at 18th of April, so all lifts were closed. Most hotels and restaurants (Mehana) were open though. I like summer mountain vacations more than summer sea vacations for some reason. We also went around Bansko. To hut "Vihren" (1950m above sea level). There was still a bit of wet snow there. And to a 1300 years old tree called "Baykusheva Mura" after the guy who found it some 100 years ago. The trunk is some 3 meters in diameter. Quite a big one.
The Iceland-> Bulgaria trip was through Amsterdam with a one-night stay there. Meeting Petko en-route was fun. He seems to not have enough fun around his work there.
To Bansko and back was by a car borrowed from a family friend. Apparently he had the car laying around and doing nothing in his garage, which is not usual for Bulgaria. Special thanks to him for lending the car to me. We had a minor car failure on the way to Bansko. It kept on working with proper care until we got back. I hear father has fixed the burned radiator fan electrical motor already.
Sofia to Reykjavik was through Prague and Copenhagen. The transfer was guaranteed in Prague only. The Sofia->Prague flight was half an hour late so I didn't catch the Prague->Copenhagen flight I was scheduled for. I caught a later flight to Copenhagen so I had to reschedule the Copenhagen -> Reykjavik flight for the next day, which happened just 10 minutes before the deadline for rescheduling the reservation or loosing it, which is three hours before the departure of the flight. I ended up in Copenhagen just after 22:00 local time. Caught the train to downtown but, because of wrong information indicated on the train station information screens I ended up fouling around Denmark until finally about 00:00 I was at the Copenhagen Central train station. Slept in a cheap hotel there. On the next morning I was back to the Airport by train and caught the Iceland Express flight to Reykjavik.
I'll post some photos later today.
Posted by boyan at May 27, 2004 02:44 PMWelcome back! :-)
Posted by: Marko at May 27, 2004 11:38 PM