and that is about it for our bulgarian trip. we hopped on the train and headed back to kiev. on the way back we met cool three americans from the peace corp. and hung out with them. they gave me some pics of bosnia that are really cool. but those are not for my website.

so what do you think?

well until next time ....

sunset over the dunes in nesebur

old nesebur island

albatrosses, i could never get a good perspective of them to show all how big they are. the wingspan is about 5 feet.

taking a load off from the streets of sofia

1528 "black mosque" now the "church of the seven saints" that created cyrillic

sk8 board ramp in front of a russian monument in sofia

our next destination was the black sea. we made a short stop in sofia for a night and then headed to borgas and nesebur on the coast.

melnik's surrounding "sand pyramids"

melnik from above

is there anymore wine left lyala or did we drink it all?

medieval church ruins

melnik streets and wineries

lyala contemplating the taste of the wine

wine tasting

the bus trip to melnik

later the next week, we went to melnik, the small medieval wine town that i described earlier. we stayed there for couple of days and did some wine tasting. the wine is so famous there that winston churchill had his favorite wine shipped from melnik, even during the war.

the road home from the monastery
the traffic was slow that day

i made it! the legend says that if you are too much of a sinner a rock will fall on you.

hiking mina style!

14th century bell tower

monk's quarters (built by m.c. esher ;))

the rila monastery

road to the monastery

after a couple of days, mina’s dad let us borrow the car and we went to bulgaria’s most famous monastery, rila monastery. this monastery of built by holy ivan in the 10^th century. it sheltered bulgaria culture during 500 years of rule by the turkish and the byzantines. the original monastery was destroyed and the current one was rebuilt between 1834 and 1837. we also hiked about an hour and a half to the cave where you crawl through to symbolize rebirth. it was a good day hike in the mountains.

coffee shop scene

spas

another view from the balcony

view from mina's balcony

remnants of turkish rule over a 100 years ago

we arrive in bulgaria about 6am a couple of days later and we take a bus to the town where mina and spas live, blagoevgrad. we stayed with mina and her parents in their upstairs guest apartment. blagoevgrad is a nice town that i described earlier in this log. they supposedly have 40,000 chairs for coffee shops/cafes in town. the population is around 100,000 so half the town at one time could sit and have coffee, but they all would have to listen to the same pop music. i hope that gives you an idea of just how many coffee shops there is.

romainian country side church

romainian country side

well hello everyone,

we are finally back from our three-week trip to bulgaria. thanks to spas and mina, we were able to visit and see their beautiful country. so thank you again spas and mina for giving lyala and i this opportunity. i guess i will start from the beginning.

we boarded our train in kiev about noon to leave for bulgaria. in total i think the trip time was about 42 hours. but i love riding on the train so this is just part of the vacation. on the train lyala and i had our own room most of the way. there is a conductor that makes you tea and coffee. and you always meet people. on the way to bulgaria we met a girl named gala that was from ukraine but lived in bulgaria. later she helped us get a room in sofia, bulgaria’s capital city. here are some pics of the trip.

well hello from bulgaria everyone. i cannot upload any pics because i have no way of getting them from my computer through the internet cafe. i will try to find a wireless internet cafe in sofia. right now i am in blagoevgrad, spas and mina's hometown. it is beautiful, i guess the closest comparison that i can make is asheville, in europe, plus about 1 million more coffee shops. next week i am going to the beach, on the black sea. last week we went to milnik, a kinda medieval wine town. i was cool but a bit weird because only about 250 people live there so there was noone around. it was like a ghost town, but they had really good wine. lyala and i went hiking in the surrounding mountains and walked up on a black bear. thankfully he just ran away. anyways i will post pics and write more later. bye from the land of coffee and really bad 80s pop music.