Last night in Sofia

After dearest mom took off, I decided to stick around Sofia for one more day/night and do a little reading/writing and take it easy for a bit longer before shoving off once more. I thought it would be relativly easy to get a spot in a hostel, but stopping by the recommended `hostel mostel´ I was sorely mistaken as they were booked for days, but kindly directed me to the `hostel sofia´ down the road.

While not the cleanest or most spacious hostel I´ve stayed in, by any means, hostel sofia was cozy with friendly people. I thought it was going to be a calm, relaxed evening until I discovered that there was an extremely emaciated, chain smoking (with smokers cough to match), racist extremist, bulgarian woman amongst the rest of the averagely docile backpackers. Having blocked out her racial shouts at the TV for over an hour, I decided to call it an early night. It was only once I´d crawled into bed and had just fallen asleep that an incredibly loud, flemy smokers cough roused me with the realization that the woman was staying in our room! The rest of the night was spent unsuccessfully trying to block out the wince inducing cough, with scattered glimpses of sleep surprising me now and then.

And then it was off to Sarajevo...

Bulgaria

After 4 1/2 weeks in Turkey it was finally time to take off and head towards Croatia. After a 12hrs on a bus, and 4hrs stuck crossing the border into Bulgaria, I finally arrived in Sofia where I have been taking it easy and catching up with my mom who is here on business for a few days. I have to admit, its been quite nice to stay in a hotel, have a nice piping hot shower, big meals with pork, and pretty much do nothing. We did manage to get out and go see 'Pirates of the Caribbean' last night, which was fun...I've still got to catch 'Superman' though.

Mom was nice enough to bring me a fresh supply of books to keep me busy for a while: Blindness by Jose Saramago, and The Arabs and The Africans both by David Lamb. I also managed to get a copy of Shantaram from Audible.com, which should keep me busy for a while. I'll post reviews as I finish the books.

I'll wrap up my time in Bulgaria in the next couple of days and head through Serbia and Bosnia over to Croatia and then work my way up the coast an into Slovenia over the next several weeks, at least that's the plan so far...