Here goes...

I am going to try and be diligent about posting on a regular basis, but since I hate talking about myself and my experiences I will try to provide advice where possible for those of you who are thinking about travelling through the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

March 10-11
First stop...Bucharest, Romania!

*** Travel tip ***
- Never take a taxi that does not have an operating meter.  If they try and tell you it doesn't work, just wait for a cab that has one that works.  Also, some good advice I received probably applies for any new city you travel to: proceed to the "Departures" drop off area to catch your cab, not the "Arrivals" area.  This is particularly true in Romania.  All the cabs have their rates displayed on the door, but cabs that pick you up at the airport show 3.39 lei/km vs 1.39 lei/km for cabs that operate in the city (hence the reason you should catch cabs at the Departures area since they are dropping off people from the city and will operate at the lower rate!)

So of course my cab cost me $30 more than it should have because I broke all of these rules.  :)

It could have been a more expensive lesson though, since the cab driver first wanted to charge me nearly twice what I ended up paying!  I heard a horror story about an American who stayed at my hostel the week before who paid $130 for a 4 minute cab ride that should have cost about $2.50.  Stupid Americans...hahaha!!

I was only in Bucharest for one night before heading south on an overnight train to Sofia, Bulgaria.

*** Travel Tip ***
You can buy train tickets last minute on these overnight trains, but the sleeper cars require reservations that usually need to be made a couple days in advance, and if you are a little taller like me, there is no comfortable way to sleep, even if you have an entire row to yourself as I did.  Believe me, I got creative with the positions I used to try and sleep, even using my bag as part of my bed.

March 12-13 - Sofia, Bulgaria
I arrived at 7:30 am having gotten absolutely no sleep and spent the day walking around downtown and taking a few photos before meeting my first couch surfing host, Natalia.  I went with her and one of her best friends to a little tea shop in an alley where we sat on cushions and enjoyed a spiced apple tea and a mango tea and some interesting conversation.  Couch surfing is a great way to get to know locals and how they live and for them to experience a little about other countries through their visitors.  We went to her apartment and called it an early night since she had gone out hard the night before and I was severely sleep deprived.

Near the city center are geothermal hot springs that force up a not quite boiling, mineral-rich water.  The city has built about 40 or 50 spigots where the locals line up and get free drinking water.  Most of the people who do this are the older pensioners.  It is a really cool area and right next to this area is a huge building that used to be a Turkish bath house but is now an art museum.

Boza and Banitza - a traditional Bulgarian breakfast.  Boza tastes like a fermented wheat and soy shake...pretty gross and probably fools a lot of foreigners who think it is chocolate milk.  Banitza is a pastry baked with white cheese and sometimes spinach or other leafy greens.  It was pretty flavorless as well.

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, just one of the many beautiful architectural attractions in Sofia.

March 13-14 - Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Plovdiv is a really cool city, much prettier than Sofia with lots of shopping and 6,000 years of history.  It is larger than I expected but am glad that Mihail, a couch surfer who offered to host me in Sofia but ended up meeting up with me and drinking beers with me in the beautiful weather, recommended it.  The architecture in both Sofia and Plovdiv reflect the fact that Bulgaria has spent its existence being the subject of one after another empire, from the Roman, to the Ottoman, to the Russian.  Overall, I think Bulgaria could be a great tourist destination with history, shopping, great food and skiing if they marketed it right.  Apparently the resort towns on the Black Sea are beautiful beach cities as well.  The only problem for tourists is that everything is written in Cyrillic so I had a really hard time even reading street signs, let alone store fronts.

I am about to catch a 2 hour bus back to Sofia before my overnight train to Bucharest - this time I reserved a sleeper car!

Now this is a hot chocolate!  I love the hot chocolates here in Bulgaria!  They give Hot Chocolate in Chicago a run for its money for only $2!

This was an amazing meal I had last night.  Three perfectly cooked chicken cutlets in a rich 4 cheese sauce and fried eggplant with tomato sauce along with a huge beer...only $7!!!

I went to a Chalga (Bulgarian Pop Folk music) night club last night and this was the guest singer who was performing.  I went to the bar after getting lost in the winding old town streets around 10:30 and the place was empty and the bartender told me they were closed.  I was disappointed because people had told me this was the place to go, but I figured that it figures since it was Sunday night.  Of course I learned later that they actually opened at 11:30!!!  This picture was taken at 2:00AM and the place was still going strong when I left.