Saturday, September 22, 2012

Varna, Bulgaria – The Black Sea

What better time to arrive to a new place then midnight? Yep, we arrived to Varna, Bulgaria via bus at midnight. The best part was we heard the taxis were untrustworthy and they usually end up taking you a longer route. I feel like most taxis in the world will try and pull this trick, but we heard it was particularly bad in Varna. As a result of this news….we walked.

Me – “Do you think it’s safe to walk 30 minutes with our backpack at night.”
Bryan – “I think we’ll be fine.”
Bryan was simply trying to make me feel better even though he didn’t know a lick about the dangers of the city. Thanks, honey.
Turns out it was just fine and we made it safely to our hostel 30 minutes later. This included stopping to eat a kebab.
The hostel was rated at as one of the best in Varna, and we quickly understood why. Party. It’s a party hostel, and while this may have been a good thing in our early twenties, we no longer accept this as a reason why a hostel is good.
The showers were ridiciously small…so small that I actually rubbed my leg up against the toilet while trying to wash my hair. Also, we woke up the next morning to find a bunch of hungover Australians. One guy actually thought it was funny that he puked in his bed…he was still drunk mind you.
Besides these two things, the hostel was okay, but compared to the other outstanding month five hostels, this hostel sucked.
So, the reason we chose to go to Varna was because a couple in Zdair, Slovakia suggested it. Then we realized once we saw Varna, the couple didn’t like Split,Croatia which was absolutely stunning and they complained about everything. Why did we listen to them?
Varna was nothing special. All that made is special was the Black Sea, but it was too cold and windy to enjoy it.
So, keeping with the positive, we people watched in the main downtown pedestrian walk while sipping coffee, went thrift shopping on a strip that had about a 100, relaxed in our hostel room, ate sushi for the first time since leaving Seattle in a restaurant right by the water, and ate my favorite traditional Bugarian soup, Tarator.
Tarator is a cold soup consisting of yogurt, garlic, cucumbers, and walnuts. It was delicious and we found our favorite restaurant near the hostel who served the best. Our waitress at this place was also a dove whisperer as she had about two or three doves fly right up to her hand to eat seeds. The doves were from the wedding across from the restaurant, and they did this with anyone who had seeds, but it was still cool. I regreted not asking for seeds to feed them as well. Doves are beautiful.
The main drag had shops and restaurants lining the place. They served corn off the cob as a street food. You’d get a little cup topped with butter, cheese or whatnot. It smelled great, and tasted pretty good. We ended up throwing a couple spoonfulls to some songbirds, who expertly ate the inside of the corn while leaving the skin on the ground.
Overall, I’m glad we made it to Bulgaria, but just a little sad we didn’t make it to the smaller and cuter beach towns in Bulgaria we passed while on the bus to Turkey. There was one town we went by that looked a little like Lincoln City on the Oregon coast. Oh well.
We’ll always remember Varna as the place where an Australian guy puked in his bed and thought it was funny.
Next stop, beautiful Turkey. Hint – I LOVED Turkey.

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