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James and Ellie in Europe
Day 23:
As you may have guessed by now, the vast majority of the photos that accompany these entries aren't actually of the places that we are!! We try and find one in the database that looks like it and the one here is very accurate hehe.
Our train left Bucharest just after 10am and this time we had made reservations to make sure we got nice window seats for at least the first half of the journey anyways!! We had to change at Russe (which is just over the border in Bulgaria) and no reservations were possible on the second train...
Anyways the journey was similar to other ones we have taken. We write sometimes it was uneventful but to be honest each journey is an event - rolling hills, wild flowers, deep valleys, gurgling rivers, hawks, falcons, storks nesting on station lampposts, farmers burning their fields to enrich the soil, wind farms....... it can get boring sometimes but most of the time the view out of the window keeps us going.
We got to the border at about 12:40 local time and had our passports checked at a lil station in the middle of nowhere. Unbelievably we weren't going to leave there until 14:00!!!! Rubbish!!!
We were sat with a Canadian couple (again hehe) a Polish Canadian and a quiet Rhode Islander. Our passports were returned to us straight away, as was the Polish passport that the Canadian still had, but the other three were whisked away. They had to sit nervously for over an hour before getting them back - no idea what they do with them but ho hum. We compared travelling notes to pass the time and finally got underway again...we went over a huge bridge spanning the Danube ( the natural border between Romania and Bulgaria here) and stopped again ten minutes later in Russe!!! We had two hours to wait for the Varna train so found a lil cafe and sampled the local beer and salads.
Bulgaria uses the Cyrillic alphabet and this is very confusing, but not as confusing as the fact that they nod their heads to say "no" and shake them to mean "yes" - doesn't matter how much we practiced, it just didn't work!!!
We got to Varna at about 20:30 and were picked up by one of the hostel employees in their minbus. Turns out the hostel is run by couple from South London (Bermondsey to be exact) and having a good time there is compulsory!!! We had no bed but put the tent up in the dark in the "garden" amongst the plums and pears that littered the floor. We managed to party in the bar for a couple of hours before retiring at about 1am - when everyone else hit the town to start properly!!!! Next stop the beach hehe.
James and Ellie
xx
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