First official run–10 k, Berlin Airport Run

It’s been already some time, but I’m not exactly the most regular, so:

The 6th Berlin Airport Run – 22 April, 2012. Official Half-marathon but with a 10k option. Option which I chose for the first ever event like that for me.

It was nice to prepare with a goal. You know you have to do 10k, no more, no less. 10 kilometers and you only have to beat yourself. I did it, at least – 1:02:13 race time. So far, so good. What I didn’t think is that there are going to be so many people – I don’t really know how many thousands there were. You run on the track and you really hear the multiple drums that other’s shoes and the track were improvising. Very nice. You finish and by some accident your finish is matching with the one of the fastest half-marathoners. People applaud them, but you feel proud. You run faster.  

I finished and even forgot to stop my watch – had to kiss my girl first. She was there, right after the finish line waiting for me.

Let’s see what is next

Running half-asleep

Running half-asleep doesn’t help much:

A small trip – and hands scratched

Running with Runkeeper

Geeky? I don’t think so. I just like gadgets and having a smartphone is just a pre-text to put on of these – run tracking apps. I chose Runkeeper – not a bad app. But if I have the needed finances one day – I will fully go for a GPS watch. At least from what I see – Runkeeper makes my runs ‘curly’. In the end I wonder if I really did like that.

As from what I read over the Internet – GPS receivers of smartphones might not be that good as of the dedicated GPS watches. I hope it’s true. Some day I will do the next step of gadget-ness

What was 2011 for Alex–and what should 2012 be?

Well, I don’t want to make full year analysis. But, honestly, so many things happened the last year.

• We traveled so much – two big trips around Bulgaria, many small ones too, one trip to Turkey (Istanbul), some trips in Romania, one big trip Bulgaria-Germany, a trip weekend in France….
• We moved to Germany – at some time we decided that it would be a good thing to continue living together in Germany… so it was done
• I found a new job in Berlin – again Software Quality Assurance. A very good company, great team, wonderful colleagues. So far, so good. I am very happy with this luck
• We found a great apartment in Berlin – honestly, this is a hell rental-market here. For one apartment so many people apply with documents. And in the center the prices are extremely high, but the noise… well.
• Mü got accepted to study what she wanted on first place.
• I finally started doing something about myself – a bit of running, conscious eating, etc. So far I’m down 10 kg. Not too much – I got a long way to be back in the shape I was. But at least it’s a start.

What do I want in 2012 (Alex)?

• Lose at least 10 more kg – nothing more to say here.
• Get running seriously – hopefully I will be able to attend a couple of run events… nothing much 5k, 10k maybe. A thing to give some adrenaline, some belief in myself.
• Do some hiking – that’s a funny thing to say in flat Berlin. But if situation allows – travel is OK
• As I said travel – in the TODO list should be at least some new countries and people. I don’t yet know what – Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Czech republic… all countries I haven’t seen yet. Hope Mü wants to do these with me
• Mountains – I’m afraid to make big plans here. And small mountains are included in the hiking. But I still dream about high peaks, crampons in the summer, fresh, thin air. No words here, just wishes. Alps are nearby, that is a good thing.

Life in Germany

Well, dear friends, I haven’t been around in the last months. Mostly because of relocation. Yeah, no longer in Bulgaria. Travelling starts from Germany from now on. Berlin is my new home.

Here I am in Frankfurt, actually. That’s near where Muriels parents live:

So, I hope soon I’ll have things and travels to share from this country and the surrounding ones. Hold on Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, France…. etc.

Greetings from Berlin,

Alex

Musala–3-4 July

Well, another mountain time, another short mountain story. For a couple of weeks before I left my job we’ve been planning a visit to the mountains. This time it should be Rila, why not. And especially Musala. Unfortunately the weather forecast was not with us. Since the beginning of the week it has been like that: “Since Sunday the weather will be great”, “Saturday and Sunday there will be thunderstorms over the mountains”…. Well, who wouldn’t have started Risky but…

And we started early Sunday morning, at 3 AM. Me, Mü and Dido. Three friends and one car. 5 something hours later we were at Borovets. Fog, drizzling, nasty weather. Considering rain has been with us for all our trip until now… we started thinking: Do we really want to go in the mud of the Musala pathway. I got the idea of asking the lift people how the weather was ‘up there’. They told that it’s cold, but it’s clear, however very unstable. So…. why not – pay 10 leva each for a ski-lift ticket and be driven quickly up. This saved us 3 hours of muddy uphill. When we dropped and Yastrebets (2369 m), the weather was like that:

The first 30-40 minutes until Musala hut were great – no rain, almost no wind. Just before the hut it started raining very little. We stopped for some rest, some warm soup. And decided to continue, even though the rain continued. Rain, fog, wind, for the next 1 1/2 hours. Just before we got to the “Ledeno ezero” shelter (or hut now) it stopped raining and the weather cleared a little bit.

The hut was completely empty, excluding the host and the woman that helps her. The many tourists and groups we met already were somewhere down the mountain. Understandable – after all the ski-lift doesn’t work on Monday and Tuesday, and they didn’t want to go all the way down Musala pathway (steep downhill). It was very cold, even for Musala, even for beginning of July. This year the “summer” up there is coming a little bit late. So we got a very small room (usually used for special guests only ) with a heater. The bad news is that it’s with two beds only, but we’ll make it somehow. The rest of the day was pretty much eat, sleep a bit, eat some more, sleep some more. And this until 6 AM the other day. Oh, great sun, sneaking from the small window of our room.

I had to jump and try to wake the others – of course, we have so many things ahead of us for the day. But our joy didn’t go for longer – clouds, fog, chill wind again got around the high mountain.

Still, it was doable. And we started up. Just to make it 5 minutes before Musala peak. A steep, frozen uphill with a lot of snow still remaining. This is where me and Mü headed down and Dido stormed up the summit. When we got down I called him – he made it safe, took a pic and is heading down now.

Some rest, packing quickly and we had to head down to Borovets. Our car was waiting there for us.

But not before one last picture with the shelter as background:

And we got to the resort just in time for a perfect weather down the mountain – no fog, no rain, just great. Unfortunately our muscles were already sore, so…. enough mountain trip, instead we’ll transfer that to our ‘auto-tourism’, in which we are already so good…. but for this – later.

22-24 May, 2011–Romania mud volcanoes, Brasov, Bran

For one more time we decided to go to Romania for a couple of days. Combining the 4 days we had as holidays in Bulgaria with some auto tourism in our north neighbor country.

The plan was the following – Bran, Brasov, Sinaia. Three great cities in the outskirts of Bucegi mountains (part of the Carpathians).

Well… yeah, kind of. This time I wanted to add something that a CouchSurfing guest of ours recommended 10 months ago – the Berca mud volcanoes.

It wasn’t exactly on our way, but who cares. I was curious to see exactly what ‘volcano-ish’ they had. And I was impressed. I was expecting something small. And this wasn’t small – a big field, surrounded by hills. A hill of grey clay with some small geysers. Not exactly like big ones – some were like boiling water with big bubbles, others looked like almost silent piles of poo, which gave strange sound from time to time. An amazing view.

We read that the form from a 3km deep gas which raises through layers of clay and water, thus erupting mud on the surface. They clay then dries and forms cones around the ground

Interesting.

Of course I couldn’t resist and play around with the clay…  who would. I brought the inner child then, allowing it to mess a little bit with it.

Second stop had to be Bran, the so called ‘Dracula’ village, where the castle was built. Our GPS wanted us to go back through Ploiesti, but no-no…. we’d rather make a few more kilometers than get back. It was totally worth it. Riding through picturesque mountain roads, beautiful landscapes, a big dam, some pouring rain, which stopped most of the Romanian cars for a rest until it cleared. 140 km adventure in the mountains – wonderful.

Then to the Bran castle. A cute, small castle on a rock. It shouldn’t be called Dracula, really. I think Vlad Tepes didn’t even live there… whatever. Nowadays it’s something like a historical museum with a short rope-guided tour around some of the rooms. Interesting enough. The small village beneath the castle was free to visit the last time we went there – now it had additional entry fee…. that’s a progress.

Of course a visit to the nearby market and buying some traditional smoked cheese is a must.

This time we decided to stay at the highest point of Bran. I’m not going to skip the name here, because these people deserve it – Vila Bran. A great complex of 10 houses, big restaurant, plenty of activities to do (wall climbing, archery, tennis, ping-pong, fitness, horse riding, etc) – all the activities free. And the price was reasonable, we like it there.

The next morning – to Brasov. A couple of times I’m only passing through this small city, but this time no…. it was time to see it. A beautiful city with western architecture (as I learn, German)… it even has a German name – Kronstadt. So we were there extremely early – not even at 10 as you can see from the sun-clock of the German church. Great.

You got to like Brasov from the moment you see it. Nearby mountains, architecture, oh man… even the eateries there. We found a bakery which was called ‘The German bakery’, I think. The best pie I’ve tried so far.

Of course we didn’t miss to visit the gothic cathedral in Brasov – the Black church. The biggest gothic cathedral from Vienna to Istanbul, as they say.

One major drawback – sleeping in Brasov. C’mon people, really. With the presence of big resort cities nearby, the price of a hostel, hotel, etc. shouldn’t be this high. After a couple of tries we decided that it’s not that much worth it. And went to Sinaia. We were right – for the lowest price we got in Brasov, we got some luxurious apartments in Sinaia. And we could combine it with a walk in the nearby park.

Do you even have to ask… I saw the lions

The final morning before we headed to Ruse rewarded us with a visit to the Peles castle. We didn’t expect to have so much luck – we read that it’s open from 11:00 AM (Tuesday) this day, which was already a little bit too late for us. So we decided we go, see it again, and return. Instead, we stumbled on a group of German tourists which had nothing against us, visiting the castle with them (it was opened 1 1/2 hours before that for them). So…. luck was with us.

One final picture of the whole group

The whole gallery can be seen in my Picasa Web Albums ~HERE~

The final gallery and map of our trip

I am making this as a separate post with a map of our auto trip around Bulgaria with Muhs parents.

And of course a link to the small Google Picasa album (click on the photo below:

8 April, 2011 – Shumen, Razgrad, Sveshtari

The last day of our trip started early morning in Shumen – the city of Shumensko, one of the best Bulgarian beers. After a quick breakfast in the hotel we started to the Shumen fortress.

The fortress is just above the city, on top of the Shumen plateu. We found many people already inside there, working on renovation of the site – one of them told us about an opening on the 30th of April, with scenes from Medieval ages, light show and stuff like that. Though we couldn’t see it.
The small museum of the fortress shows found treasures and tools from 12th century B.C. on.  The first settlers there were the thracians. About year 15 A.D. the romans captured the lands south of Danube and the fortress became theirs. After the creation of the Bulgarian kingdom, the Shumen fortress was in the boundaries of the kingdom.

Following this one was Razgrad. The museum Abritus (the name of the Roman village from 2-4th century A.D.) was showing a lot of interesting relics – some from the roman village of Abritus, some Thracian even from the Sveshtari tomb, and of course later ones from Bulgarian times.

The last and one of the most impressive in our improvised tourist trip around Bulgaria was the Sveshtari tomb. It’s again an object from the UNESCO World Heritage in Bulgaria. It was discovered in 1982. The architecture of the tomb is considered to be unique, unlike the other one in Kazanlak, this one contained a lot of statues of women, carved in the walls (the other had plenty of paintings).

A handful of spring in Southern Romania

In May, Romania is blooming. It is as if you were entering a miraculous world. It is a place, where fairytales may be real, or where an unknown, secret childhood of yours may have taken place. It feels like you’ve been travelling for a long time and finally returned to this place, which an inner voice tells you to call „home“. The villages are flying by and your eyes catch small simple houses with colourful ornaments. Old people sitting in front of their houses on wooden benches. Horses carrying coaches loaded with building material. The freshly green trees next to the street wearing white skirts. The sky above bearing nothing but perfect clouds and the hope of spring.
In the lowlands of Wallachia there lies a medium sized city with the name of Târgovişte. Early in the morning, in welcomes you with silent streets and sleeping buildings. Holding the past of being a capital in the middleages, the city presents the wonderful Royal Court. Legends rank around this place, as Vlad Tepeş – also known as Dracula – has been ruling here.
Going further, closer to the Southern Carpathians, you will reach one of the oldest cities in Romania: Curtea de Argeş. Entering the Royal Church right in the center of the city, you’re impressed by the wall paintings on it, dating back to several centuries and explained by a guide who makes you learn more about this church than you knew about any other. A walk to the exceptional train station is definitely worth it.
Heavy dark clouds arriving make the cathedral of Curtea de Argeş even more impressive as it’s illuminated by the last sunlight. The legend says, a woman has been buried alive inside the fundaments of the cathedral, in order to shorten the time until its completion.
As the raindrops start falling, you’re heading back to where you came from and wonder about all these strong impressions, that Romania left on your mind.