We went to London.

A few months ago my dad very generously offered us some money to go on a little holiday somewhere, his reasoning being that we couldn’t possibly spend nearly a year in Europe without seeing at least one major city. We chose London because it was the only place we both really wanted to visit and the thought of an English speaking country was very appealing. London won over the closer and probably cheaper option of Venice because our friend Imogen is in England at the moment and we wanted to see her. So, off to London we went!

How did we get there?

It snowed in Bulgaria the week were supposed to leave so to be cautious we bussed to Sofia the day before and stayed the night in a rather charming hostel in the centre of the city. We went out for dinner at a place called The Ale House which was a brewery and each table had beer on tap which you helped yourself to. It transpired that Stu couldn’t pull a beer and I could (to be fair, I did once work in a pub).

The next day we caught a 1 lev bus to the airport (gotta love finding cheap airport transport in Europe!) and spent a few hours in arguably the most BORING airport in the world. Yes, worse than Launceston.

We flew with a budget airline called easyJet and they did the job – sort of like Jetstar. Arriving and clearing customs was easy peasy  and we were soon on the 50p shuttle to London-town, playing ‘Zitch [insert spotted London/British cliche]!’ For example: ‘Zitch red double decker bus!’ ‘Zitch Marks and Spencer!’ etc. Kept us entertained us for at least two days!

Where did we stay?

We stayed on the 6th floor (no lifts and yes, it was painful) of a dirt cheap hostel called Astor Quest (huh, I did NOT see a pool table). I say ‘dirt’ cheap because dirt was certainly present. It was the kind of place that makes you pay a deposit for just about everything and talks you into bringing your sheets and towels down when you check out so they don’t have to leave the comfort of the first floor. The showers worked sporadically and the toilets were filthy (and the toilet brushes had DUST on them!) They did supply you with breakfast and it was cheap so we can’t complain too much. It wasn’t too bad considering how little time we spent there.

What did we eat?

We were probably more excited about the diversity of food that would be available to us in London than anything else. Bulgarian food is nice, but we’re spoilt little Australians and wanted some of that diversity back! We enjoyed Thai, Indian, something that can only be best described as Tapas, focaccias, French flans, Cornish pasties… and of course English pub food. It was gastronomically very exciting.

Oh, and coffee! Stu did some research and we visited some cafes that served us some very awesome coffee. Stu’s favourite was Milk Bar in the Soho district but I still remember fondly the rich and creamy taste of the coffee made for us by the funny vague humming girl in Wild & Wood.

Actually, Stu made a Coffee Map of London which you can keep for reference.

What did we do?

Ooh, lots of things!  Most importantly we were joined by Imogen for most of the weekend. With the combined forces of Stu and I not being too big on the touristy scene and Imogen having recently seen most of the major sights, we ended up doing things that appear a little further down on the ‘What you should do in London’ list. Like visiting the Portobello Road market in Notting Hill and Imogen’s idea of a tour around London: walk in a random direction, pick a landmark (eg. the Gherkin), then find the least straight path to it. Was tiring and fun. We also saw Avatar in 3D (and I still haven’t lived down falling asleep in it) and had dinner with all the London Wegmans we could cram together in one apartment (ie Imogen and her brother Alex and his wife Emma and their baby Sophie).

Oh but of course, we did go and gaze at Big Ben (and the surrounding parliamenty things), Downing Street, Hyde Park, the British Museum, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Picadilly Circus, Harrods, Tower Bridge. We had a go at looking at Buckingham Palace but caught up in crowds waiting for the changing of the guard ceremony and since we were supposed to be actually meeting Imo in Notting Hill we left without seeing either.

Best fun: The London Eye. It was actually good value really and a nice way to see all of London at once and remain sitting. We entertained a nearby elderly couple by taking dozens of photos of Imogen and I jumping in the air – to make it look like we were ‘jumping over London.’ We discovered that anything that claims to be a ’4D Experience’ is actually 3D with bubbles blown at you.

What did we think?

We loved London! Even though it was only a very small taste, we’re so glad we got the opportunity to go see it and a massive THANKS to dad for making it possible.

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So now we’re back home in Haskovo and having a go at making a start at packing (yep, procrastination at it’s finest). So far we’ve made a number of piles around our living room that are looking promising. We’re trying to reduce our lives again to two 20kg packs and an up to 20kg box to post – not that we want it to be that heavy!

Only 2 weeks left in the country!

See you all very soon!

Hi all,

We had a great time away over Christmas and New Years’ in Romania. We ended up staying in Transylvania – enjoying the Nairns’ excellent hospitality – for nearly two weeks! It took so long to travel there and back that we felt like we needed to make it worthwhile. We spent about 50 hours on buses and trains, and Google Maps tells me that we travelled over 1600km. And we thought BG and RO were neighbouring countries!

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A Romanian phrase we used quite often over our trip was “la mulţi ani!” (pr: lah mooltz ahn) which means “to many years”. It’s quite a pretty phrase, I think, but also very useful. It’s used for Christmas, New Years’ Eve and birthdays.

James went to a village for New Years’ Eve, so it was up to Texan Dave and Elly and me to have/find/create huge amounts of fun for the countdown.

Inspired by rumours of the stoic efforts of Romanian nationals who stay up to watch the dawn on New Years’ Day, we planned to stay out late. We left the house at 11:30pm and made our way to the centre of town, where we could hear loud and decidedly “traditional” music. Sure enough, a swaggering, middle-aged Romanian guy was crooning away with a backing band of clarinet, fiddle and accordion. Sorry Dad, it was nowhere near as good as that sounds. Nevertheless, it felt so authentically Romanian that we quite enjoyed it, even after Elly pointed out that we were probably enduring the Romanian equivalent of John Farnham or someone with equivalent mass appeal.

At 11:55pm, someone was welcomed on stage with sufficient polite applause to convince us that he was the mayor (or someone like that). He gave a rousing speech (probably), but was interrupted by a large projector screen lowering down in front of him. He chuckled and popped around the side of the screen to continue his speech, but before long all the stage lights went out and the poor mayor got drowned out by fireworks.

They started a lesser array of fireworks with a minute to go. This confused us, because all of a sudden, without any counting down, there was cheering and bright lights and explosions! So, of course, we cheered and yelled out “Happy New Year” to everyone… only to see a 30-second countdown display appear on the screen shortly afterwards. Impressively, the real fireworks display after the real countdown was much better.

After the countdown an enthusiastic (ie. slightly drunk) young performer came on stage to sing some traditional Romanian songs. Based on the average age of those who sang along with him, we’re quite sure that the songs being performed were of the Auld Lang Syne ilk. Again, we were blissfully ignorant to the uncoolness. The singer eventually got the crowd to chant “Radul, Radul, Radul…” so we’re fairly sure that was his name.

Radul spoke three words of English: “oh”, “my” and “God”. He had a very strange habit of interspersing his long-winded Romanian banter between the songs with cries of “oh my Gaaad”, as if it was another way of saying “isn’t it great to be in Târgu Mureş tonight?” or something equally inane.

At one stage we spotted a bunch of people our age who we quickly decided were not locals. They were dancing too exuberantly. Some red hair and a Guinness t-shirt made me think they were Irish. I think Dave guessed that they were German (or was it Scandinavian…?). Anyway, it turns out they were Croatian.

There were six of them, and they’d travelled to Târgu Mureş because they found cheap flights there! They all spoke excellent English, which impressed me. I asked how they’d learned such good English and they quipped that they watch a lot of TV and spend a lot of time on the computer! But I think they were being humble – I suspect the language is compulsory there, as it is in Romania.

After the Radul Spectacular finished at 1am, the crowd dispersed and the clean-up began. We followed a large crowd, who turned out to be returning to their cars (and not to party). So we walked back to the main strip and found our Croatian friends again. They were looking for a party, too. Like us, they hadn’t realised that all the bars and clubs are closed for private parties on New Years Eve. Since we hadn’t booked, things were looking grim.

Luckily, we managed to crash a party in a nearby restaurant. We’d walked in to ask if they were open but the owner said “sorry, it’s a private party” and directed us to a Michael Jackson-themed bar up the road (eww). But moments later he caught up to us on the street and said “hey, the people said you can come in if you like”. So we did!

Turns out the party was 100% Hungarian, which made for a very multi-cultural experience: 2 Aussies, 1 Yank, 6 Croats and several Hungarians in a Romanian taverna. (Hungarians make up about half the population of Translyvania, since historically the region was a part of Hungary.) They served us sausages with mustard and crusty bread, which was highly appropriate since: a) it seemed a very Hungarian meal and b) it was 2am and therefore the perfect time for such stodgy cuisine!

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We had a good time. Since then, we’ve returned to Bulgaria after an epic 2-train journey of 28 hours. We’re looking forward to staying right where we are until it’s time to catch a plane to ‘Straya! Here’s the plan until then:

- Start school (term 1) this coming Monday;

- Teach for about 8 weeks;

- Have a week off around my birthday (March 9);

- Teach another 2-3 weeks;

- 2 days after the end of term 1, we fly home (April 4)!

Writing it down like that has really made it seem like no time at all! It’s less than 3 months until we leave! We are of course very excited to be going home, but I think as it approaches our feeling will become increasingly mixed. Stay tuned for our philosophising about that particular experience in later blog posts! For now, suffice to say that we’ve talked about it (what else do you do on 4 x 12 hour train rides?) and set ourselves some goals.

Essentially, we want to make the most of the rest of our time here. It will be very tempting to “tune out” towards the end of our trip instead of allowing ourselves to be stretched and challenged until our last day. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the various cultures (let alone languages) we meet every day, so there plenty more “experience” to be had by us before April. Feel free to ask us how we went with those goals in a few months’ time!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers

Stu.

Merry Christmas faithful readers! If you are reading this on Boxing Day, then you are indeed dedicated, so thankyou!

We hope you all had a good day yesterday with lots of good times and little stress. We’re here in Romania with Jon, Margot and James Nairn and really enjoyed ourselves!

Here’s a short (yeah right) run down of our day:

8am: We wake up and turn on our laptops. Soon the apartment is filled with the joyful tune of ‘boo di doo boop’ as family in Australia – who were by that stage well and truly over-indulged – called us on skype to tell us all about how fun it is to have Christmas in summer and to ask if it snowed. It didn’t snow, but there’s still week old snow out there so we’re not complaining.

9-10am: A batch of chocolate filled croissants emerge from the oven and Team Jon and Stu go hard on the coffee making. Yummo!

11:30am-ish: The other Christmas orphans – Texan Dave and Canadian Andrea – arrive which means we can divvy up the presents and rip into them.

We’ve become severely disenchanted by the shopping in Haskovo, so I was impressed and delighted by how thoughtful the presents were. Of course, we are biased towards Romanian shopping! I love the orange spiral earrings Margot found for me, they’re so fun! We are also very taken by the cute little European-esque Santa ornament, he will definitely be treasured for the rest of our lives. With those and the beautiful candle set and big box of choccies we were really spoiled by them!

We in turn presented the Nairns with a ‘Snowed In Survival Pack’ which will aim (probably in vain) to get us socialising together and not on our computers if we do indeed get snowed in. The pack included the last bag of Humphrey-roasted coffee, Bulgarian wine, home-baked brownies and a 1000 piece puzzle of Sighişoara. Fun times ahead!

1pm: LUNCH!!! Jon and Margot created a wonderful lunch of roast chicken and veggies for us. It was probably the first Christmas where I appreciated hot food! They very thoughtfully made sure to include lots of root veggies (potato, carrot and parsnip) that we’ve sorely missed because of uranium avoidance. Dessert was homemade apple pie and custard with ice cream. I inadvertently started everyone off singing the Happy Birthday song with ‘Merry Christmas’ substituted in. Quite strange.

After lunch: More skyping. The non-Australians were shocked to hear that my brother Fred woke our parents up after midnight just to tell them I was on the phone. It was quite a foreign concept to them that we would treat our parents with such disrespect! The rest of us found it pretty funny and not at all unusual. We continued the introduction to Australian irreverence as we played a game called Dutch Blitz which involved Margot declaring that James needed more alcohol so he would stop winning and James launching a counter-attack against her. How dare a son treat his mother like that! [Dutch Blitz is a great card game, but I think you can only get it from the US]

Now: We just watched a funny little animated movie called Igor together before the parentals went to bed and Andrea went home. The boys are now watching a horror movie ’30 Days of Night’ which I think has vampires in it. The movie is set at night, when there’s snow on the ground and after the viewing, Dave himself will have to walk home alone in the snow in Transylvania – the birthplace of vampires. How fun for him!

Boxing Day plans: I think sleeping in, puzzle starting, left over eating and beer drinking are definitely on the menu.

Hey, we sound like a family!

Merry Christmas everyone,

Love Elly and Stu xx