You've got to go there to come back...

For more six weeks on the road, we managed to combine the damned hard work of arsing our way across Europe with the shared public service of blogging about it. But since leaving Kosovo, a combination of birthdays, internet access, insane travel routes and our first posh hotel of the trip has made us drop the ball a bit. As we are flying to South America by way of New York in about three hours, we thought we should tie up some loose ends. So, by way of rounding things up...

A crazy overnight bus took us from Pristina to the beautiful Bay of Kotor in Montenegro, by way of the singularly uninteresting capital Podgorica (though this dirt cheap hotel should be added to the list of any budget traveller stranded in this bizarrely expensive city). Kotor's Old Town, nestled behind high walls flush against a stretch of crystal water, has to be experienced to be believed. Wonderfully preserved and bursting with cafes, shops and churches, it has yet to be colonised absolutely by tour groups. Having said that, at night the music from the bars is uniformly loud and atrocious, more resembling a high-end 18 to 30 break than a relatively undiscovered Adriatic gem. It was also in Kotor that we stayed in our first - and only - luxury hotel of the trip, with a night in the Five Star Hotel Forze Mar to celebrate Lou's birthday. In the unlikely event that you are passing by and fancy a night in a luxurious, if slightly eccentric, boutique hotel, go for this place. In a country that has started peddling naff "luxury" gaffs to Russian tourists while cutting corners and ruining coastline at every turn, Forze Mar is a real gem. The champagne on arrival, perfectly cooked Fillet Mignon and outdoor plunge pool were a few of the highlights. Those backpackers hitting town, though, could do far worse than stay in the delightful Eurocafe 33, a slightly more modest though equally charming set of digs opposite the Old Town, and run by the assistant coach to the national football team and his welcoming family.

Our time in Croatia was split (no pun intended) either side of four days in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The three days we spent in Dubrovnik were pleasant enough, with a comfy home stay room at Nina's guesthouse (find her on Hostelbookers), and an enthralling few hours spent in the quietly majestic War Photo Limited gallery, which was worth the trip in itself. The city beach was small but fun, and the Old Town itself bursting with tastefully restored architecture and pride after the Serb/Montenegrin shelling during the dark days of the Balkans conflict. Sadly, it's also bursting with overpriced, average restaurants, flag waving tour groups and annoying flashpackers who wouldn't know a hostel if it jumped out of Daddy's wallet and bit them on the arse. Worth a day trip, with an early start if possible to avoid the crowds, but I found it all a bit too much. By way of balance, I should point out that Lou was not quite as underwhelmed as I was.

By stark contrast, the three days we spent in Mostar and Sarajevo were an experience that we'll never forget, and one that Lou will write about more fully soon. From the rebuilt bridge in Mostar to the heart-wrenching museum on Sarajevo's 'sniper alley', the achingly effective tunnel museum near Sarajevo's airport to the glittering array of places to eat, drink and smoke hooka  in the capital, Bosnia and Herzegovina was possibly the highlight of our travels so far. I'll leave it to Lou to tell the story more fully next time we have an internet connection.

After a few days back in Croatia on Hvar island (every bit as beautiful as people say) in a cracking little Sobe, we headed to Italy for a week with friends and family. We ended up taking an eleven hour overnight bus from Split to Trieste after a slight problem with ferries - namely, there weren't any. The journey took in three countries, the most intense electrical storm I've ever seen, the bus nearly aquaplaning off the road while the driver ate and ice cream, and a toilet stop at a bookies full of sleeping tramps at 5am. Happy days. A seven hour collection of train journeys across Italy, then an overnight stay in a Shining-style hotel in Rimini airport due to an exploding car, and we finally made it to the stunning Marche region of Italy, staying in the equally wonderful Cassa Delle Querce (owned, I should say in the interests of honesty, by Lou's Dad). Even after the seven weeks on the road, travelling through some of the most amazing scenery and eating some of the best food of our lives, a week in this undiscovered part of Italy was a real treat. The food, history, scenery and wildlife are just magnificent, trumping neighbouring Tuscany on every level. It also has no annoying Brits and costs about half the price of a stay in its more famous neighbour. The fact that we spent it with our folks and two good mates was the cherry on the cake.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the trip so far, though, was arriving back into a rainy London for the briefest of pit stops two days ago, in advance of our flight out to South America later today. In town just long enough to get drunk with Lou's sister and boyfriend, get muddy in a park with our niece Besti and my sister Lily, and see David Miliband make way for his brother Ed, it's all been a bit mental. As is the fact that, a few hours from now, we'll be on a Virgin Atlantic flight to New York, before heading to Ecuador for three months of South American madness. Suppose I should go and pack...

TTFN,

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Luke)

Holding out for a Hero

"Yes, that man is a hero. He is a hero to everyone here. You must be very proud."

This sentence alone, spoken by a taxi driver as we crawled through traffic-clogged streets towards the bus station, would probably have been enough to take us to Pristina, newly-crowned capital of the newly-independent Republic of Kosovo. As it was, we arrived there from Skopje with only the sketchiest idea of what awaited us in this small city so scarred after generations of vicious scapegoating, repression and bloody conflict.

Trying to find the only budget accommodation in town, Guesthouse Velania, is an impossibility without jumping in a local minicab, so we did just that. The short journey put some more meat on the bones of the sights and sounds we'd soaked up on the bus journey into the city. Scrap yards and petrol stations are oddly ubiquitous, roads and pavements in sorry repair, and everywhere the sights of local people hustling bravely to earn a living in obviously testing circumstances.

As we wound our way through the city itself, it soon became apparent that we were in a place unlike any we had visited before. We passed the delightfully bizarre "Hotel Victory", complete with a model of the Statue of Liberty sitting incongruously atop, and a few minutes later the President's Official Residence, located in a shady suburban side street, the only clue to its occupant the battery of armed police smoking outside. And we passed people - lots of them.

Young children playing in EU-funded playgrounds, oases of calm in chaotic streets; cabbies with maps of sadness etched on their faces stood next to hundreds of taxis that line the streets of the city waiting for fares that rarely seem to come; military men and women from across the world, on foot and in trucks, doing whatever it is that they do to help keep this newborn state safe and stable; young, trendy students bustling along the road chatting animatedly to each other and into their mobile phones; and women, young and old, some with their heads covered and many not, carrying out the same daily chores that we had seen across Europe, though with a strange, quiet defiance that you could feel even from a distance, through a dirty taxi window.

After meeting the owner of our rooms for the night (who is, despite the arch-romanticisation of the Lonely Planet not an avuncular Professor, but an elderly man with failing faculties but a keen sense of cold, hard cash), we dumped our bags and headed to town for a bite to eat. Our restaurant of choice, Pishat, was indeed full of locals and canny NGO-types, and watching Pristina's political elite striking deals and smoking furiously over veal kebabs and homemade bread was a sight to behold. But each time you lost yourself in the sumptuous food, free fruit-infused Rakija or the drama unfolding around us, the spell was broken by a child appearing at the table begging for coins, or a young amputee hawking fags from a cardboard crate. The tragedy of Kosovo's past and the unimaginable challenges of its future are never far away.

As we only had one full day here, we crammed as much into the next day as we possibly could, covering almost all of the central city on foot. Though Kosovans are more than used to having workers and military from all over the world living and working amongst them, the sight of tourists is still very much a novelty. It was heartening in the extreme to find that this novelty excited interested, if a little bemused, smiles and offers of help everywhere we went.

We started in the Velania suburb, near our guesthouse, with a stroll through the slightly eerie Martyrs Monument. Typically brutal and very Soviet in its design, graffiti now covers almost every part, and broken bottles litter the centre. With a scattering of KLA graves in the near distance and half a dozen crows swooping about, though, the place is satisfyingly unsettling, and passes on to the visitor a sense of foreboding and unease that carries the whiff of war, albeit in a different way than the architects no doubt intended.

Adjacent to this, and in stark contrast to the litter-strewn park, is a beautifully maintained boulevard of flowers and benches leading up to the grave of former President and national hero Ibrahim Rugova. Hundreds of thousands of Kosovans turned out to mourn his death in 2006, and the monument is a fitting final resting place for the writer-turned-President who opposed the horrors of the Milosevic era before becoming leader.

We then walked from South of the town, past the university to the Bus station, passing on the way a slew of billboards, placards and fly-posters of Tony Blair, each one carrying the legend “A leader, a friend, a hero.” I won’t wax lyrical on how genuinely proud they made both Louise and I, but just note that on the day that we were walking through Pristina, Blair had cancelled a book signing after egg and shoe attacks from a handful of Stop The War campaigners. The cancellation, according to a Stop the War spokesperson, was a “victory against a warmonger who should be tried for waging a unilateral war for oil and power.” I'd be interested to see that particular individual stand up in a busy Pristina boozer and start pontificating on the issue.

Strolling back into the city centre, up Bill Clinton Boulevard, past his portrait, statue, and plaque, we hit the Government and ‘international’ area. A feeling of pride in their new-found democratic institutions is as palpable here as the sense of gratitude is to Messrs Clinton and Blair elsewhere. Though chaotic in so many ways, the sense of a society being built from the ground up, whether in the form of democratic institutions or new roads and buildings, can be seen around every corner. But though the kids clambering over the Skenderburg monument were smiling and laughing loudly, and the Kosovans from out of town leaving their signatures on the New Born monument outside the central shopping area bursting with pride, there are also terrible reminders of the horrors of history.

The Wall of the Remembered is made all the more poignant by the newly added flowers, poems and photographs. Farr less visceral though tragic in its own way is a visit to the National Museum. The number of ancient exhibits is far outnumbered by posters and info boards demanding that Serbia returns thousands of artifacts borrowed for display in Belgrade before Kosovo’s declaration of independence. You can’t help but feel that the huge empty space downstairs will be empty for some time yet.

And so it was we found ourselves in a taxi back to the bus station, after collecting our bags and a lost watch from the delightful ladies who staff the Valenia Guesthouse during the day. Any visitor here would feel the pride and sense of shared endeavour that Independence, however disputed, has brought. Similarly, the most basic knowledge of history here makes it tough to dispute Kosovo’s right to break away from a neighbour whose leaders have meted out such misery here. But I also couldn’t help but feel that, without care and concerted efforts, another splintering could occur at some point in the future. And as a friend from the region had remarked to me before, this rarely ends well.

It was during this journey that our taxi driver pointed out the new Presidential residence, and told us about his sister who lives in the UK and “is very happy and proud to do so.” He also wanted to tell us how much people here loved Tony Blair.

And off we went to Montenegro, having been dazzled by Kosovan people, appalled by its recent history, uplifted by its current rebirth, but perhaps most of all, amazed that any cabbie anywhere in the world would say this about our Tony:

"Yes, that man is a hero. He is a hero to everyone here. You must be very proud."

Say My Name, Say My Name

Over the last few weeks, traveling through a variety of diverse, and some cases politically complex places, I think we've been culturally sensitive and politically aware enough not to make insensitive or down right stupid comments.

Considering the variety of border disputes, the language variations, as well as the number of religions and disputed ethnicities, it's quite a feat. Which makes it all the more galling that I would make my first slip up in the more familiar, and relatively politically stable, Greece.

Perhaps I was feeling relaxed in the cosmopolitan Thessaloniki, Greece's second city; perhaps I was just tired from the two and a half hour delay on our train from Istanbul, or maybe jut having a stupid moment; but sat in the lovely hotel lobby, I responded to the kind and helpful hotel manager’s question without thinking.

“Where are you off to tomorrow then?” he asked.
“Macedonia” I replied.
Instantly I see his horrified face.
“You can’t be.”
Oh no, I’ve said the wrong thing. I’m desperately I’m trying to thing of a way out of this.
“You’re in Macedonia now, maybe your going to Skopje.”
“Yes that’s it.”

 It’s too late the man is now taking a framed map of the ancient empire of Macedonia off the wall and bring it over to me to explain where the real Macedonia is.

Ancient Macedonia originally covered an area of land which is now largely in Greece, but also in Bulgaria,
before Alexander the Great expanded the empire as far as India. He was, in fact so great it now appears that even today, everyone wants him.

It turns out that the Greeks are furious at their neighbouring country for using the name Macedonia, and the ancient Macedonian flag as their own, when, as this man pointed out to me, the ancient Macedonians were Hellenic not Slavic. As a compromise they have now been recognized internationally as the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia or FYROM, but Greece is not happy with this and has refused to recognise Macedonia as a country, and have vetoed their applications to NATO and the EU. They incidentally don’t agree with the term Macedonian to describe the people or language of the country either.

So I would have been no better calling it FYROM, and surely, in a country that uses the Greek alphabet talking about a country that uses Cyrillic anonyms are not the way to go.

All this in mind, what do you do when you’ve accidently mentioned the Former Yugoslavian Republic of the Place That Must Not Be Named?

Well, you can either mark yourself out as an anti-Greek, FYRPTMNBN apologist or you can play to the English stereotype of the silly foot in mouth bumbling fool (think Hugh Grant films).

I started first by trying to better myself by asking an intelligent question. When he responded with “Have you heard of a county called Yugoslavia?”, I thought it’s clear what I have to do here - I went polite, bumbling fool, “oh really, oh I’m awfully sorry…”  (Don’t worry, if your Welsh, you can get a way with this too).

Having spent an afternoon in Thessaloniki’s fabulous ancient history museum it’s clear that their ancient Macedonian history is an important part of the city and the surrounding area. Thick with ancient ruins, the city itself was named after Alexander’s sister no less, and it was in this region that phonetic writing was invented. You do start to feel a bit for the Greeks, especially as the Macedonians (or those who reside in the country that must not be named) have now named their airport Alexander the Great after their great hero.

All this apart, many members of the international community point out (quite rightly) that the Greeks don’t own the history, and denying a new country with a tough past accession to the EU and NATO over a name is churlish at best, bullying at worst.

For those travelling between them its just a little confusing.

Both Thessaloniki and Macedonia – both beautiful Ohrid and mental Skopje – had an abundance of charms. I’ll write about them tomorrow – and Luke will get all excited about Kosovo, and massive posters of a certain former UK Prime Minister…

Take care,

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Louise)

Young Turks

After what was, at the time, a pretty hellish few hours on the Turkish border, when we arrived in Istanbul we wanted nothing more than to get to our cheap hotel and collapse on the bed for as long as possible. As has so often been the case during our travels, it was the kindness of absolute strangers that enabled us to do just that. The coach driver who escorted us out of the concrete maze that is the main bus station at 5am and even paid for our Metro ticket back to reality, and the kindly hotel receptionist at the Devman Hotel who didn't bat an eyelid when we turned up six hours early, but just showed us to our room with a slight smile. Like Captain Planet, their powers combined to great effect, meaning that less than an hour after our arrival in the capital, we were sleeping in our air-conditioned room.

Six hours later, we took to the street of Beyglou, the foot-loose, fancy free and unimaginably colourful maze of food and drink that was our local neighbourhood in Istanbul. Firmly established as possibly the most European area of the European side of Istanbul, its streets area a cacophony of Ice Cream sellers in traditional dress, fast food hawkers, neon shopping signs, bookshops, cafes, restaurants and the sweet smell of a Turkish summer evening. It was made all the more potent during our time there thanks to the high-profile campaigning for an upcoming referendum, Ramazan and "National Flag Day", the sort of proud, militaristic, fierecly national(ist) holiday that everyone must commemorate with flags aloft, though many do so grudgingly.

It soon became apparent, even as we strolled the streets on a balmy evening, that Istanbul is not really a city you visit or look around - it's an experience that grabs you by the throat, pumping an array of sights, sounds and smells into you while defying you to not love the place, however overwhelmed you feel. It's east meets west, sexy street smart meets deadly orthodox, utterly devout meets outrageously debauched. And we fucking loved it.

What were the highlights? Lou was utterly bowled over by the Blue Mosque, and while I was entranced by the buzz of the call to prayer outside, I was left a little cold by the interior. Take a look at the photos and judge for yourself. As a huge fan of both underground lairs and James Bond, I loved the Basilica Cistern, an utterly enchanting underground set of canal-like rivers that provided water to parts of the city tens of thousands of years ago. It also featured heavily in From Russia With Love, which can only be a good thing. The bazzars - both spice and grand - are also a joy to behold, little towns in their own right where the cut and thrust of local commerce battles for attention with the mor obvious tourist traps. A simple stroll through Beyglou, Sultanahmet or any other area of the city is also a highlight in itself. A bright canvass whose picture evolves as the day progresses, every corner turns up a new surprise, every hour a subtle change in tone and emphasis. Magic.

Two standouts, though, are admittedly the two that every guidebook will shunt you towards - and, having visited, rightly so. The Aya Sophia, an indescribably vast Orthodox Church-turned-Mosque-turned-museum, was for many thousands of years after its construction in 360AD the largest indoor space in the world. After being de-consecrated by Atta Turk in the mid 1930s, it became a museum, in the loosest sense of the word. There's not much by the way of explanation or context, just a sumptuous visual feast that will captivate any sane visitor for hours. Beautiful Orthodox frescoes jostle for position with gargantuan Muslim calligraphy discs, while shafts of light cut across the vast space illuminating paintings, sculptures and tombs. It's the perfect place to lose yourself - which we duly did.

The second "must see" was the Topkapi Palace, home of Ottoman Sultans for hundreds of years until the 1850s. So vast and beautiful that even the masses of tour groups couldn't detract from it, the palace is a treasure-trove of rooms, buildings, chambers and gardens bursting with paintings, tiles, glorious arches and treasures - literally - worth more than their weight in gold. As well as featuring in a lively Peter Ustinov movie, part of the palace remains a place of pilgrimage for many Muslims and lays claim to objects such as Moses' staff, some of Mohammed's teeth and much, much more. While the provenance of the artefacts might be doubtful, the chanting was undeniably beautiful.

As we cruised the Bosphrous on our last morning, looking at the Asian side of the city that we'd not even visited, we resolved that we would definitely be back in Istanbul at some point soon. To have visited so much in a city, yet actually seen so little, was both gratifying and frustrating. A city of almost limitless treasures and experiences, Istanbul has to be seen to be believed. Book your ticket now.

Until Greece,

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Luke)

What's in the box? (See what you got)

As Luke said, tickets for the sleeper train from Sofia to Istanbul were all sold out when we got to the ticket office. So instead of waiting another day we decide to travel in what most locals consider the luxury option- coach.

Unlike Luke, I'm not a train enthusiast (he's keen to point out enthusiast, not spotter), but do like travelling by train, particularly for 10 hour journeys. For starters, I'm one of those people who gets car sick, (or coach sick) so I find it hard to read a book on a coach. I also like the freedom to walk about on a long journey, and enjoy the luxury of having access to a toilet over such a long period of time (and before anyone quotes the "these days coaches have all the mod cons like toilets on board and air conditioning" line, trust me - they don't in Bulgaria). There is also the obvious fact that on a train you can move carriages if you happened to be sat near someone who smells, talks to themselves or looks threatening. [Please note : I do none of these things. Luke]

But, having decided to try out the coach, we boarded our luxury vehicle at 8pm. The ticket vendor explained we would depart after the driver had eaten, as he was observing Ramazan and hadn't eaten all day having just driven from Istanbul. He ate his impressive spread on the coach, and I was commenting on the dedication and commitment this must take when Luke pointed out he was washing down his great feast with half a bottle of brandy. Is he such a dedicated Muslim?, you may ask. Is he going to be able to drive now?, I was certainly asking. Fear not, he was not driving back - he was in charge of passports, smoking a lot at stops and I think, though couldn't testify, smuggling.

So what was so much greater about the coach, that Eastern Europeans love so much?

1. They hand out free coffees and soft drinks, and you could help yourself to free bottles of water (remember what I said about toilet facilities).
2. You got to stop at a selection of bizarre shops at which you could buy cheap goods to take over the border. Such goods included bumper packs of Milka chocolate bars, a giant remote control tank, huge pink panda toys and a fake Disney Princess foldaway double blanket.
3. My favourite, there was Turkish television on live for the whole journey.

Sadly we only caught the end of the Turkish "Survivors", but we were just in time for the prime time Turkish “Deal Or No Deal?” or "Var Misin? Yok Musun?"

Deal or No Deal is the perfect show to watch if you don't speak the lingo, as it is pretty mind numbing in any language, and you really don't need to understand what anyone's saying to see what's going on. Whilst they still have the same organised  zaniness as the UK version, they take it more seriously than we do with lots table banging and even some poetry reading from one of the box holders. They also have the added bonus of not having to have the smug, Tory-bearded face of Edmunds on their show. They do however, manage to drag their show out for even longer -I know, I wouldn't have thought it possible -even longer, than the ridiculous hour it drags on for in the UK.

One episode lasted two and a half hours. Two and a half hours. That's longer than a football match, longer than a feature film, and surely longer than any sane person would want to watch another person opening a box. Next week paint drying for beginners...

Is this what you call luxury?!

I'm becoming more of a train enthusiast every day

(Posted by Louise)

Highway to Hell

It's amazing the thoughts that stream through your head when you find yourself running across a deserted border crossing at two in the morning, your coach disappearing through the checkpoint  in the distance leaving you and your wife stranded with only some shit pizza and a few quid in Bulgarian coins for comfort. Strangely, my first thought was "God, I wish I was back in Sofia right now". Which is not, as I think even the most ardent Bulgarian patriot would agree, something which one hopes for very often.

We'd arrived in the Bulgarian capital about ten hours earlier, after our relaxing stay in Rila. As that evening's overnight train to Istanbul was full, we'd thrown caution to he wind and booked an overnight coach instead (you can read Lou's thoughts on Eastern European coach travel a bit later). That left us with best part of the day to explore Bulgaria's oft-maligned capital.

It is, in almost every sense, a city of two parts. The vast majority is bustling, ramshackle and alive with the intoxicatingly friendly buzz generated by the commerce of poverty and the extraordinary kindness of the local people. It is also, by any measure, pretty damned ugly. Pavements and roads are in poor repair, buildings dilapidated and bins overflowing. Though the sounds from the dusty playgrounds that populate the side streets are of happy children, the parks themselves are in sad repair, as are the fume-belching buses that wind their way through the city. In fact, the whole place seemed crying out for a hefty whack of European cash to help sort out the infrastructure and help the Sofians help themselves.

Twenty minutes later, after we'd walked past the Paul Smith boutique and Rotary Watch store into the "Old Town" that houses Bulgaria's Presidential residency and the Shearton Hotel, we found ourselves in the - much smaller - other part of town. Pavements are smoother here, the parks bustling with outdoor cafes and music, and the buildings beautifully preserved and gleaming in the afternoon sun. Government types and the Germans, Americans, Japanese and Brits working here can choose from an array of shops and restaurants that are undeniably priced way out of reach of most locals. European flags fly here too, along with the signs proclaiming the investment that EU membership has brought. There's no denyng that they've done a good job in this part of town. You just hope that the cash, and the planning, starts flowing round the city - and the country - soon.

In short Sofia was a city you couldn't help but like, but could in all likelihood never see yourself returning to.

Unless, that is, you find yourself shaking with panic at a Turkish border crossing, trying to buy a Visa in the wrong currency as your coach - and all your belongings - crosses the border without you. Then Sofia seems like the most attractive place in the world, which was exactly the thought running through my mind as I ran, in best Challenge Anneka style, looking for an ATM that the irate border guard had told me existed at the rear of an empty building. In the end, the guard came to help, I got some cash, and we made it into Turkey just fine. And so Sofia was filed once again in the box marked "nice enough, but never again", and we trundled onwards towards Istanbul.

TTFN,

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Luke)

Gotta Serve Somebody

Apparently, one of the joys of travelling is meeting and travelling with new people from around the world, embracing different cultures and backgrounds. And so it was that we met Marc from Cardiff (a Cardiff City fan like Luke) in Belgrade. Marc had the joy of sharing an overnight train journey with us to Sofia. Despite the fact that the train compartments were like a sauna, the train journey itself was very enjoyable, and we arrived, only an hour later into Sofia, than scheduled.

We had had already decided that we weren't going to stay in the city but would head straight out into the country for some more camping again, near to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Rila Monastery.

Sadly, we'd missed the only bus of the day, so had to get a 3 hour train to Balgoevgrad, then a 45 minute bus to Rila village and finally a half hour bus from there to the monastery -the “short walk from the village” we'd read about actually being a 22 kilometres trek uphill. The monastery is literally on the side of a mountain, in the fantastically beautiful Rila national park. You can imagine our joy, when we discovered that our camp-site was a 2 kilometre hike uphill from the monastery itself...

I won't pretend that we are some sort of intrepid explorers, but visiting Rila was a more more alien exerienc than the rest of our European trip so far, testing both our skills and patience. Having joined the EU less than three years ago, Bulgaria is a fast changing country, but outside of the Black Sea coast and the main cities, it doesn't yet have the transport infrastructure of its neighbours. Furthermore, opening times, sign posts and bus time tables, let alone tourist information are all hard to come by.

However, despite this, at every turn there seemed to be people keen to help us and give us directions despite our inability to speak Bulgarian, keen for people to visit and enjoy their country.

Bulgarians are also intensely proud of the Cyrillic alphabet that they, not the Russians, invented. Just to prove that it is their alphabet the Bulgarians use several extra letters that no one else uses just to confuse.


The Bulgarian language and alphabet, along with it's own Orthodox church stem back thousands of years, and Bulgarians credit the monasteries, particularly Rila, with keeping these traditions alive under 500 years of Ottoman occupation. This is one of the reasons why for many Bulgarians Rila Monastry remains a place of pilgrimage to this day.

The monastery itself was awe inspiring, truly beautiful and wonderfully maintained. With reaching arches in black and white, and a church covered in vivid murals, the whole place was made more stunning still by the scenery surrounding it. It is definitely worth a trip, and if anyone is thinking about it but doesn't like camping, you can stay with the monks for 15 Euros a night -  where they have their own restaurant!

The camp-site was not quite like it's German equivalent, being as it was several chalets, and a small stretch of grass (rocks) for tents. That said the bar and restaurant were really good. We were able to try some traditional Bugarian food including Kavarma, a kind of stew, and some Bulgarian Champagne (sparkling wine).

As we were in the middle of nowhere, we were surrounded by mountain ranges and colourful wildlife, including some huge bugs I'd never seen before! I'm sure we will surprise everyone by saying we did yet more hiking, this time crossing rivers and rocky paths, in the mountains around the monastery.

We were sad to leave this enchanting place after two nights and make the long journey back to Sofia. Rila Monastery is one of Bulgaria's greatest attractions but is still yet to be ruined by intensive tourism. I hope in the coming years when it inevitably gets more and more visitors it still retains its peaceful charm.

Louise and Luke

(Posted by Louise)