Due to a big music festival in Budapest, finding a place to stay had proven to be a bit of a struggle, and in the end we tagged along with Antti and Sota to a place their guidebook had made sound quite reasonable. Howeevr, it turned out basically to be a university hall of residence - providing quite an insight into how Hingarian studenst live! It was an absolute dive - the room, showers, corridors, everything! It was not what we were after at all, but the sav...

The four days spent in Romania were just really hectic, with Thursday in Bucharest setting the tone. Bex and I arrived not having a clue what the best way to meet Gemma was, and in the end after over an hour of bleary eyed doubling back on ourselves we just had to tell her to get a cab all the way to the station. Finally, the three of us were together after times when it seemed it would never happen! To be honest, Thursday dragged. We tried to do some sig...

After finally arriving in Varna more than a little frustrated, the advertised "5 minutes walk from the train station" took over half an hour, and then we found out our reservation hadn't gone through. We were seriously beginning to wonder what we had done to deserve such a crappy day! Thankfully, the guy who ran the hostel (who went to our school!) found us room and we just had a n early night - with not a ray of sunlight caught. Our bad luck continued on Mond...

I just about survived the bus ride to Veliko Tarnovo, despite feeling well rough, and it was a pleasant suprise when our arranged pickup was actually there! The hostel we stayed at was possibly the most chilled out one I have ever been to - quite welcome really after a couple of heavy nights! Veliko is the medieval capital of Bulgaria and had a nice fortress that we walked around during the as per usual baking afternoon. For a Saturday night the town was p...

After a par for the course (i.e. uncomfortable!) overnight bus journey, I was glad to arrive in Bulgaria - hoping for a little easier time of it! I was supposed to be getting picked up by the hostel, but once again nobody was there. As I set off finding my own way, a local guy called Valentine came up to me and started chatting - completely in his element once he found out I was English since his dream is to live in England. He was so keen on just talking to m...