A Greasy escape and the best bar in Bulgaria

After magnifying every event in London over the past twelve months it feels like I have a hundred pages of exciting adventures to relate. But even these words are stealing time and space from the possbily quite lengthy story which I am about to embark upon.

I said a hurried hungover goodbye to Gini in Barcelona on Saturday morning, a few Sangrias the evening before taking their toll on plans for breakfasts and buses to the airport (extra sleep and a taxi being the result). On Sunday I flew from Barcelona to Gatwick (a brief return to London town) then waited for 4 hours for my connecting flight to Athens and Heather. My flight was slightly delayed and I finally arrived in the historical epicentre of philosophy just before midnight, greeted by a very bronzed lady, whom I later discovered was my darling Heather.

The following day in Athens was a quick yet adequate tour of the historical sights (luckily our hostel was located at the foot of the Acropolis), then a siesta and a tasty steak and 'Mythos' for dinner. The plan for the next few days was starting to evolve - catch a train/bus to Sofia (capital of Bulgaria) and take it from there - detailed planning I know. Our man in the hostel advised us that trains are by far the better choice than buses (Lonely Planet strongly suggesting that both are abysmal and expensive). Without delay we proceeded to train station and discovered that a train to Sofia only costs 30 euro (via Thessaloniki). Six hours of waiting in the station cafe was easily passed with some lonely planet reading, discussions with a dishevelled American and jaunts to buy bottles of water.

Finally we were herded onto our cattle truck of a carriage with a young-ish mother (two kids) and Greek girl. If our tan needed topping up our west-side cabin with roasting sunlight until sunset certainly did the job. The schedule was going to involve an 11pm arrival in Thessaloniki, followed by a 12pm train to Sofia (arriving around 7am). We were running about 30 minutes late, but still felt confident that we would make our connecting train when, virtually seconds before arrival in Thessaloniki, a girl threw herself off the train, committing suicide in the process. We then waited with raging hungers causing patience to shorten as the delay lengthened. About 3 hours later we finally crawled into the station just after 2am. The next train to Sofia departed at 6:16am, so only 4 hours to kill, 30 minutes of which was dispelled with through the consumption of chocolate milk and ham and salad rolls from the 24 hour cafe across the road. The remaining 3 hours before the ticket office opened was spent sleeping on the pavement outside the station, quite a comfortable temperature for it actually.

At 6:16am our train to Sofia, Bulgaria blew it's horn and we pulled out of Thessaloniki, bound for the southern most post-soviet/communist nation and a country I know very little about, except that my Russian studies of the cyrillic alphabet over Winter will come in very handy. I woke briefly a couple of times during the journey to see crumbling ex-state owned industrial sites, vineyards, cornfields, jagged mountains and small stony villages.

We finally arrvived in Sofia around midday, again starving to death, but with some sleep at least under our belts. In a strange sequence of spanish related events a chap who spoke no english, only spanish, asked me out of the blue to translate the broken english from the information desk lady for him. A couple of offices later we finally procured him a ticket to Croatia. Later that day, in a super cheap canteen, the song 'Vamos a la Playa' was playing (this has significant connections to the mountain climbing in Bolivia). Then tonight, the bar we went to was playing lots of Latin American music. Bizzare, more Spanish here than I came across in Barcelona.

Anyway, we chanced our hand at what looked like a good hostel and were pleasantly suprised to find that they barely had room for us (giving us the cheap option of sharing a single bed), but also serve free diner, free breakfast (of eggs and fruit salad among other delights), free internet and provide vast amounts of information.

We have just gotten back from 'the best bar in Bulgaria', according to the lonely planet. The evening was one of those great travel stereotypes, we sat in a smoky bar drinking the local beer discussing Marx and capitalism with a Pennsylvanian artist and his Polish wife. A lovely couple who we will meet again when we reach Prague, and a great start to what feels like will be a fantastically diverse adventure through Bulgaria and Romania (to start with).

There that wasn't too long? So many more little misadventures and experiences to relate, but that is the gist of what has happened thus far. Feeling like the happiest free man alive, take care everyone, but not too much.

Photos from Athens and Barcelona are up - see Photo Gallery links to the right -->