• 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.

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

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.

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~

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

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).

But Nesebar still offered us something, I haven’t seen in two years – sunrise over the sea. I woke up Muh, so this time she wouldn’t miss it like last time at Eho hut.

At around 9 in the morning we were already on the road.

So we were in Varna pretty early in the morning, but that gave us the opportunity to walk a bit more around – we visited the Historical museum (with plenty of great history gathered in it, even though there were collections, which were not shown right now due to restoration), after that we got a great walk around the Sea garden. And then, of course a walk on the beach.

After Varna we decided to skip some of the objects for the day (like Pobiti kamani – Побити камъни). So we headed directly to Madara and the Madara rider – the national symbol of Bulgaria, and another UNESCO site. They say the rider in the rocks dates back to somewhere in the 8th century. It’s about 20 m above the ground and is I think in full size – a man on a horse, thrusting a spear in a lion, and around him a dog and an eagle. Some connect this to the thracians, some to the proto-bulgarians. I don’t really know, to be honest – but still, this is an impressive piece of art for that time.

We finished our day in the nice city of Shumen, where we slept in a hotel, which dated more than 150 years – the house in revival times belonged to a teacher from Shumen.

Sozopol (Созопол) which lies about 20-30 km south of Burgas is a nice city, situated on a peninsula just where Strandzha mountain starts. The ancient name of Sozopol was Apolonia Pontika. It’s the oldest city on the Bulgarian seaside – about 3-4 millennium B.C. The old city of Sozopol has many houses from 18-19th century saved, making it a beautiful sight, combined with seaside.

After Sozopol, it was time to visit its seaside rival – Nesebar (Несебър) or Mesembria, as it was known in the ancient times. Nesebar is one of the Bulgarian UNESCO objects – the whole old city is under the ‘World Heritage’ protection. There are many churches from 5-6 Century on, that are greatly preserved, and of course – a lot of houses from 18-19th century. The city walls are partially preserved too – with all their fortifications and towers… I think this might be the thing, why Nesebar is called “Dubrovnik of Bulgaria”.