Im in sofia at the moment, again. Since my last blog Ive been to Sofia, a small town east of sofia in Bulgaria, down to thessaloniki and now im back in sofia. Why am I back in sofia? Originally the plan was to head along greece to istanbul, but there are no hostels in greece outside of athens, which would mean a week of hotels which is expensive and boring. (no-one to talk to) So Ive decided to head back up to sofia and check out a bit more of bulgaria. This place is seriously cheap :D


Its my second time in sofia, the first was about a week ago although it was pissin it down so i didnt actually see much of the city.  Getting south of hungary (into Romania and Bulgaria) the countries seem noticably different to that of the northern european countries. The actual cities are a lot more communist looking - tall concrete buildings, and less of the old parks and nice rivers etc you see in places like prague. Its not totally a bad thing and is pretty interesting, although you tend to find that most of these cities blend into one. One the of most confusing things Ive found is the amount of cyrillic used, fair enough its theyre language, but damn it help the tourist a little :p. Youd get a word which has the normal letters but completely different meaning, eg Restaurant is now Pectopant, ive had many a confused look when trying to ask for directions :p.


Before thessaloniki I was in a small town called plovdiv which is steeped with history, not much of which i can remember :p. Its one of the oldest cities in europe and apparently used to be underwater. Whilst I was there I could see that being quite possible. The pubs there were pretty good and theyre taste in music is pretty good as well as cheap beer (about 30p a pint) and its better than most of the stuff at home.


Anyway.. Ill try and get some more photo's up soon, Im always better at writing when i have a photo to show for it :)