Hello, friends! I write to you all from a familiar spot: the porch of the volunteers house in Hotnitsa, Bulgaria, where I've been for about a week and a half. A steady rain is coming down, not unfamiliar, as it's rained off and on since I've been here. We've had some spectacular thunderstorms and downpours, and the weather makes a lovely background to this blogging session.
Anyway, I last left you on the train towards Belgrade, Serbia. I arrived in the late afternoon at the main station and crossed over the river to New Belgrade, where my perennial Couchsurfing host, Ivan, lives. This is my third time in Belgrade and my second time staying with Ivan. The first was a brief encounter; I had twelve hours in the city prior to taking a train to Timisoara, Romania, and we had a lovely traditional dinner (re: filled with sausages) in Zemun, a quick river walk away from Ivan's apartment.
However, vegetarianism has changed my diet a fair amount, so there was no traditional food to be had this time around. Instead, Ivan and I struck a deal: I would teach him some simple dinner recipes and, in exchange, he would buy the ingredients for our meals. Furthermore, I had plans to return to a Japanese fusion restaurant I had visited in December, and wanted to check out a burrito place similar to Chipotle.
When Ivan and I visited the grocery store, I hatched my plans for our four meals together. Vegetable chickpea curry with rice, pasta with homemade tomato sauce, and Chinese stir-fry were all easily doable, and once we found a drinkable yogurt, I knew I could easily make my Dad's buttermilk pancakes. I was pleasantly surprised to find coconut milk in the store and not so surprised that none of the employees knew what tofu was.
The next couple of days were relaxing and enjoyable. I walked the hour along the river and across the bridge into the Old Town area a few times. Once, I decided to do a walking tour of the city, and afterwards Ivan met me and we went to Marukoshi for lunch. I ordered a veggie udon dish and Ivan had the summer ramen, which was served cold. I asked him how it was, and he said it was good except for the tasteless white cheese cubes. I laughed a little before telling him it was tofu. After that I think he enjoyed it more.
In the evenings, we cooked together and watched a lot of Dawes music videos and Tiny Desk Concerts on Ivan's Samsung Smart TV. Ivan seemed really happy with the results of the dinners, and I was really happy to cook for him! I started a little Google Doc of easy recipes for him, which you're welcome to use as well!
When I was mixing up the pancake batter, I cracked an egg into the mixture and it had the brightest yolk I'd ever seen, and it turned the batter bright yellow. Ivan told me he gets his eggs from his mom, who gets them from another villager in Serbia. It was pretty awesome. I love making American-style pancakes for friends in Europe. Most people have only had the thin, crepe-like pancakes, and aren't used to the dense, fluffy cakes produced with the help of some baking soda. Maple syrup is pretty rare and expensive in Eastern Europe, so we usually make do with jam and peanut butter, if I have some on me.
After a great few days hanging out with Ivan, I said goodbye on a Thursday night, as I was taking a night train to Sofia. I'll be writing a separate post about this experience, as I hope it will be helpful to future travelers to have a firsthand account not marred by negativity, as I've seen in the only other blog posts about the adventure.
Anyway! I arrived in bright and sunny Sofia around 9am the next morning, and decided to trek the 25 minutes towards the hostel I would be staying in. Somehow my backpack has creeped back up in weight- I sense another purge will soon happen. But for now I carried on, probably about 35 pounds strapped to my back, and made it to the hostel around breakfast time.
Hostel Mostel is the third hostel I've stayed in on my solo trip. For the most part I've been able to find Couchsurfing hosts in each city I've visited, otherwise friends, farmstays, and house-sitting have filled out the bulk of my accommodation since I've been over here.
Regardless, Hostel Mostel is pretty bomb. It's around 10 euros a night, and includes breakfast, dinner, and a beer. I haven't seen any other hostel offer those amenities. I checked in around 10am, but the room wouldn't be ready until after noon, so I quickly changed out of my night train clothes (aka yoga pants and my Mill City Running shirt), donned some more metropolitan garb, and headed out into the city.
I had never heard very nice things about Sofia before I arrived- mostly that it was just another dirty former Communist capital. Well, I've been to plenty of those, and some I've liked a lot.
I wandered around before meeting a friend of a friend I met in Hotnitsa last fall, and was pleasantly surprised by the city. It was walkable, had some great architecture, and a general feeling of youthfulness.
Some highlights:
I stopped by the Zenski Pazar (women's market) and picked up a kilo and a half of apricots, which I promptly ate over the course of two days.
I attempted to go on the free walking tour, and after about 20 minutes got bored and ditched it in favor of the Sofia History Museum, which is newly housed in the city's public bathhouse, which is beautiful.
I met some great people in the hostel- the free dinner automatically creates community, and the first night I found myself eating with a Scotsman, a Swiss dude, and an Australian. I hadn't talked to another American in five days, until I asked the guy next to me where he was from: "Michigan."
The zipper broke on my little packable backpack, so Michigander Samir and I trolley-bused out to Decathlon, on the outskirts of the city. Samir had never been there before, and I was excited to indoctrinate him into the world of affordable and slightly decent quality sporting equipment. I bought a new backpack ($7) that unfortunately cannot fold up inside itself, but has those things you fasten around your chest and hips for support, so I suppose I'll probably use it more on short trips when I'm back in the states or on hiking adventures.
I went on a free food tour- "Balkan Bites," which aimed to introduce tourists to Bulgarian cuisine. It lasted a little over two hours, and I really enjoyed it. I met a cool American couple who recently moved to Naples, and another American living in London, Katie, who's going to be in Bucharest the same time I am. We were taken to a couple of places, including a pretty hipster bread shop that served us fancy banitsa, which is typically a cheese and phyllo dough pastry universally loved by Bulgarians.
Perhaps the most interesting of my days was when I decided to hike nearby Vitosha Mountain to see Boyana Waterfall. Getting to the base involved taking a tram to its last stop. Another guy at the hostel recommended I take the tram only three stops from the hostel and take a bus to get to Boyana Church, and then hike from there, as the route was prettier. Still undecided, I waited at the tram stop for what seemed like an eternity, until a man passing by told me that no, the tram isn't running there's a replacement bus OH THERE IT IS GO RUN AND CATCH IT (of course this is all in Bulgarian but I got his general drift) so there I went hopping across the street to catch this bus that was going in the opposite direction but whatever.
I got on the bus and noticed no one around me was punching their ticket so I neglected to buy one from the driver and sat near the back of the bus. I suppose I assumed that because it was a replacement that we didn't have to pay. Hahaha. Because this is a replacement bus, I'm unsure which stop to get off at, and eventually, of course, a ticket collector comes to check everyone's tickets. All my passenger companions pull out their punched tickets or monthly passes to show the collector. When she gets to me, I'm helpless. She doesn't speak much English, except for "20 leva!" which she barks at me. I pull out a 20 leva bill, all the money I have left in my wallet and hand it over. It's about $12 dollars. A ticket, by comparison, is 60 cents.
Well that's just great. In a last ditch effort to play the clueless tourist, I tell her I'm looking for bus 63. She escorts me off the bus, takes me to a different tram stop, and eventually hands me over to a red headed woman who speaks a little English. This woman seemed really nice and wanted to help, so I followed her onto the tram going in the opposite direction. We got off a few stops later and she leads me to another bus stop on a side street, and says that she and her husband are going up to Boyana, too, and that I can just wait for the bus with her and they'll tell me the way to go.
Through my Google Translate app and her limited English, I was able to gather that I was standing with Mitiya, a Sofia resident and retired journalist. Her husband is also a journalist, but still does freelancing work. We chatted for twenty minutes until the bus arrived. Mitiya motioned that her husband was already on the bus, so we hopped on. Then I met Boris, Mitiya's husband, who's fluent in English and was very friendly, like his wife. As the bus wound its way up the mountain, Boris told me that the hike to the waterfall was pretty difficult, and that I was welcome to join them on their low-key hike up to a mountain restaurant for lunch. I really enjoyed the vibe from these two, so I decided to eschew the waterfall in favor of spending time with them.
The next few hours were really pleasant. After a forty minute bus ride, we started walking up through the forest. A lot of other people were out on this part of the mountain, and none of them looked like tourists. We stopped briefly at a small hut where people were carrying out styrofoam trays of kofte (meatballs) and kachamak (polenta with cheese). Mitiya ordered us little coffees that came in plastic cups (like the kind you get at water coolers), and she bought me a Hostess-like snack cake.
We spent another forty five minutes walking up the mountain and chatting, until we arrived at an old forester's cabin, which had been turned into a small restaurant years ago. About two dozen people were sitting outside at roughly hewn picnic tables made out of logs. Boris ordered me a bowl of mushroom soup, a shopska salat (cucumber, tomato, pepper, onion, and grated white cheese), and a glass of their housemade red wine, along with fried potatoes for the table. It was quite the feast.
And so we sat, ate, drank, and chatted in the afternoon sun. It was a really pleasant experience, and one I would not have had if I was a better visitor to Sofia and bought a bus ticket. It's days like these that I love and will remember the most when this is all over.
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| View from my perch [porch] |
Anyway, I last left you on the train towards Belgrade, Serbia. I arrived in the late afternoon at the main station and crossed over the river to New Belgrade, where my perennial Couchsurfing host, Ivan, lives. This is my third time in Belgrade and my second time staying with Ivan. The first was a brief encounter; I had twelve hours in the city prior to taking a train to Timisoara, Romania, and we had a lovely traditional dinner (re: filled with sausages) in Zemun, a quick river walk away from Ivan's apartment.
However, vegetarianism has changed my diet a fair amount, so there was no traditional food to be had this time around. Instead, Ivan and I struck a deal: I would teach him some simple dinner recipes and, in exchange, he would buy the ingredients for our meals. Furthermore, I had plans to return to a Japanese fusion restaurant I had visited in December, and wanted to check out a burrito place similar to Chipotle.
When Ivan and I visited the grocery store, I hatched my plans for our four meals together. Vegetable chickpea curry with rice, pasta with homemade tomato sauce, and Chinese stir-fry were all easily doable, and once we found a drinkable yogurt, I knew I could easily make my Dad's buttermilk pancakes. I was pleasantly surprised to find coconut milk in the store and not so surprised that none of the employees knew what tofu was.
The next couple of days were relaxing and enjoyable. I walked the hour along the river and across the bridge into the Old Town area a few times. Once, I decided to do a walking tour of the city, and afterwards Ivan met me and we went to Marukoshi for lunch. I ordered a veggie udon dish and Ivan had the summer ramen, which was served cold. I asked him how it was, and he said it was good except for the tasteless white cheese cubes. I laughed a little before telling him it was tofu. After that I think he enjoyed it more.
In the evenings, we cooked together and watched a lot of Dawes music videos and Tiny Desk Concerts on Ivan's Samsung Smart TV. Ivan seemed really happy with the results of the dinners, and I was really happy to cook for him! I started a little Google Doc of easy recipes for him, which you're welcome to use as well!
 |
| Market in Belgrade |
 |
| Action shot of Ivan cutting into his pancake |
Anyway! I arrived in bright and sunny Sofia around 9am the next morning, and decided to trek the 25 minutes towards the hostel I would be staying in. Somehow my backpack has creeped back up in weight- I sense another purge will soon happen. But for now I carried on, probably about 35 pounds strapped to my back, and made it to the hostel around breakfast time.
Hostel Mostel is the third hostel I've stayed in on my solo trip. For the most part I've been able to find Couchsurfing hosts in each city I've visited, otherwise friends, farmstays, and house-sitting have filled out the bulk of my accommodation since I've been over here.
Regardless, Hostel Mostel is pretty bomb. It's around 10 euros a night, and includes breakfast, dinner, and a beer. I haven't seen any other hostel offer those amenities. I checked in around 10am, but the room wouldn't be ready until after noon, so I quickly changed out of my night train clothes (aka yoga pants and my Mill City Running shirt), donned some more metropolitan garb, and headed out into the city.
I had never heard very nice things about Sofia before I arrived- mostly that it was just another dirty former Communist capital. Well, I've been to plenty of those, and some I've liked a lot.
Some highlights:
I stopped by the Zenski Pazar (women's market) and picked up a kilo and a half of apricots, which I promptly ate over the course of two days.
 |
| Pro tip: If you want the best of any type of produce, find the stand with the longest line. |
I met some great people in the hostel- the free dinner automatically creates community, and the first night I found myself eating with a Scotsman, a Swiss dude, and an Australian. I hadn't talked to another American in five days, until I asked the guy next to me where he was from: "Michigan."The zipper broke on my little packable backpack, so Michigander Samir and I trolley-bused out to Decathlon, on the outskirts of the city. Samir had never been there before, and I was excited to indoctrinate him into the world of affordable and slightly decent quality sporting equipment. I bought a new backpack ($7) that unfortunately cannot fold up inside itself, but has those things you fasten around your chest and hips for support, so I suppose I'll probably use it more on short trips when I'm back in the states or on hiking adventures.
 |
| Tent display in the Decathlon parking lot |
 |
| Katie and I met later that night at a rooftop bar, where we could watch the sunset. |
I got on the bus and noticed no one around me was punching their ticket so I neglected to buy one from the driver and sat near the back of the bus. I suppose I assumed that because it was a replacement that we didn't have to pay. Hahaha. Because this is a replacement bus, I'm unsure which stop to get off at, and eventually, of course, a ticket collector comes to check everyone's tickets. All my passenger companions pull out their punched tickets or monthly passes to show the collector. When she gets to me, I'm helpless. She doesn't speak much English, except for "20 leva!" which she barks at me. I pull out a 20 leva bill, all the money I have left in my wallet and hand it over. It's about $12 dollars. A ticket, by comparison, is 60 cents.
Well that's just great. In a last ditch effort to play the clueless tourist, I tell her I'm looking for bus 63. She escorts me off the bus, takes me to a different tram stop, and eventually hands me over to a red headed woman who speaks a little English. This woman seemed really nice and wanted to help, so I followed her onto the tram going in the opposite direction. We got off a few stops later and she leads me to another bus stop on a side street, and says that she and her husband are going up to Boyana, too, and that I can just wait for the bus with her and they'll tell me the way to go.
Through my Google Translate app and her limited English, I was able to gather that I was standing with Mitiya, a Sofia resident and retired journalist. Her husband is also a journalist, but still does freelancing work. We chatted for twenty minutes until the bus arrived. Mitiya motioned that her husband was already on the bus, so we hopped on. Then I met Boris, Mitiya's husband, who's fluent in English and was very friendly, like his wife. As the bus wound its way up the mountain, Boris told me that the hike to the waterfall was pretty difficult, and that I was welcome to join them on their low-key hike up to a mountain restaurant for lunch. I really enjoyed the vibe from these two, so I decided to eschew the waterfall in favor of spending time with them.
The next few hours were really pleasant. After a forty minute bus ride, we started walking up through the forest. A lot of other people were out on this part of the mountain, and none of them looked like tourists. We stopped briefly at a small hut where people were carrying out styrofoam trays of kofte (meatballs) and kachamak (polenta with cheese). Mitiya ordered us little coffees that came in plastic cups (like the kind you get at water coolers), and she bought me a Hostess-like snack cake.
We spent another forty five minutes walking up the mountain and chatting, until we arrived at an old forester's cabin, which had been turned into a small restaurant years ago. About two dozen people were sitting outside at roughly hewn picnic tables made out of logs. Boris ordered me a bowl of mushroom soup, a shopska salat (cucumber, tomato, pepper, onion, and grated white cheese), and a glass of their housemade red wine, along with fried potatoes for the table. It was quite the feast.
And so we sat, ate, drank, and chatted in the afternoon sun. It was a really pleasant experience, and one I would not have had if I was a better visitor to Sofia and bought a bus ticket. It's days like these that I love and will remember the most when this is all over.
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