Here is Elly with the next exciting instalment of our Eastern Europe Excursion!

Sunday 25^th: James Nairn had our first day in Targu Mures all planned out for us, which was lucky as we had no clue where to start. In fact, his first words to us on Saturday evening when we got off the bus in TG were ‘Are you guys keen for some paintballing tomorrow?’

Us: yeah! Sure!

James: ‘Oh that’s good, cos I’ve already booked you in.’

Sunday was to be spent with us checking out a local church, then paintball, with a beer to finish off the day.

The church service was held in a nearby disused cinema in the centre of TG. It was a pretty nice little church, maybe 100 or so youth and young adults. The band was quite good – they played at least one Hillsong song in Romanian, which was entertaining but sadly we weren’t familiar with it. Accompanying the band was a small group of girls up the front who danced to each song. I did find it baffling at first but I guess I’m not used to seeing dancing in church as a way of worshipping God. The songs provided a handy crash course on Romanian pronunciation which we found helpful, and Humphrey was relieved to see something in Latin lettering (our Turkish church sings songs in Turkish but written in Cyrillic). Even though we all skipped out early (the message was in Romanian and translating was hard), we all felt good in that church. Our impression from the small time we’d been there was that God was definitely present and it was alive and vibrant. Plus being in an old cinema added massive cool factor!

I must now slide quite considerably down the scale of sophistication and tell you about the hereby dubbed ‘Paintball Game of Death.’ For those who have never cared about such things, paintballing is banned in Tasmania, which does cause some grief among people we’ve spoken to. I’ve heard many reasons why it’s banned and it seems that the main culprit is the tough gun laws we have. Which is fair I guess, cos paintball guns do act a lot like normal firearms (in my ignorant opinion). Tasmania does however offer laser skirmish, which nearly everyone I know has played at least once. I guess it might be fun, but I’d never had the opportunity. After paintballing I’m not so sure I’ll ever go laser skirmishing. In a sentence, the general idea of paintball is you have 2 teams and a fort to protect or a flag to capture, if you’re hit anywhere at all with a paintball then you’re ‘dead’ and the game is over when the fort is compromised/flag is captured/an entire team is wiped out. Ultimately, the entire day is over when everyone has run out of paintballs (we had 100 each ~ 1 hour of game time).

So we had the ‘immigrant team’ (us) and the ‘teacher team’ of James and two guys from the school: Rob (a fellow Launcestonian) and Dave (a Texan). We donned camouflage suits and were handed guns and the first game started. I quickly had to learn some basic paintball survival skills: kneeling in mud is ok, how to run while half squatting and holding an awkwardly shaped gun, that the v notch thing on top of the barrel is supposed to help you aim, and that being shot in the face isn’t too bad. Thank goodness for the Darth Vader style helmets we were wearing! We played maybe 6 games altogether, some on a field with obstacles, and some in a pretty little forest that was on a hill.

There were some minor injuries – paintball pellets can be pretty hard after being shot out at high velocity and bruising is quite common – and so we stood around admiring each other’s handiwork.

The most impressive injury was Stu’s which was inflicted by his best friend and fellow team member Humphrey. Stu had inadvertently walked in front of Humf, which panicked him and caused him to reflex shoot from a distance of about 3m, completely shattering the ’5m rule.’ Stu’s still living so it’s all good.

We followed paintball with a bit of hanging out at Dave’s place before dinner of pizza and beer at an Irish pub (yeah, weird, I know) and more drinks at a nice little cafe-bar called Shiraz (which I’ll describe more a bit later).

The rest of our time in Târgu Mureş was spent doing the odd touristy thing or two, but really, only two words sum up how we spent the rest of our time: Shopping and Shiraz.

Lets start with my favourite, Shopping.

We spent hours shopping on Monday and it was great, followed by more on Tuesday, and a little bit more on Wednesday. We had been told many stories from Jon and Margot in the past about how good shopping in Romania was and when we arrived in TG we understood. Even though they are neighbours, Bulgaria and Romania differ in so many ways and the shop selection was just one of those ways. The exchange rate was well in our favour (~ 2.6 Lei to $1) and prices looked about as much as what you’d expect to pay in Australia…until you divided by 2.6 and realised what a fabulous bargain there was. Quality-wise, I found Romanian products just looked and felt a lot more reliable than what was on offer in Bulgaria, plus the fashion was a lot more western. I had already developed a slight phobia about shopping in Bulgaria and after 5 days in Romania I don’t think I’ll ever shop in Bulgaria again if I can help it.

I’m writing this from home in Haskovo now and we just added up how much we spent on clothes. We did quite well and now especially because of scarves and massive down filled jackets we’re ready to face winter!

Of course, the shopping itself would not have been the same if we didn’t have Margot ‘Personal Shopper Extraordinaire’ Nairn taking us around the town. She and I at least had great fun. Both my mums at home in Ausland know just how much I love a good shopping expedition so I was suffering massive withdrawals, and it seemed that Margot needed some good proper girly time too, so we both ended the week with fully recharged batteries and only slightly sore banks.

At night when James was finished teaching we developed the habit of hitting Shiraz.

I’ve already mentioned once that this was the name of a trendy little cafe-bar so don’t be worried that we just spent every night drinking shiraz (incidentally, a wine we haven’t had heaps of luck finding in shops here). Rather, we spent most nights drinking ridiculously cheap beer and cocktails while listening to endless Coldplay on shuffle (not a very imaginative bunch music wise). It was a fun place to hang out and unwind from the terrors of teaching or the tired muscles from endless shopping/touring. We also grew a lot closer to James (he is the older brother of one of our closest friends Andy) which was really good too.

We’ve nearly caught up timewise in our blogging, which is a bit of a relief. I think the next post will most likely be about the touristy things we did in Târgu Mureş, which consisted of exploring Transylvanian Romania – and falling in love with it.

For now, we’re back in Haskovo for the next few days, catching up with Dave and the washing and generally having a bit of a relax, battery recharge and budget check. Maybe even let our readers get a bit of a breather before the Turkey tour onslaught

Bye bye for now!

Elly xx

Previously, on The Grants’ Bulgaria Blog…

“We left the three intrepid muskateers in Bansko, amidst the mountains of southwestern Bulgaria. Unbeknownst to them, they were being pursued by a giant green dragon (common in Bulgaria, don’t you know?) as they packed their bags and headed for the bus. Will they survive this encounter? Read on…”

Friday 23rd Oct: Boris seemed to get quite sullen after we told him we were leaving. I wonder if he was disappointed to hear we were ready to leave Bansko? He’s a Banskovite born-and-bred so perhaps he thought our 36-hour stay didn’t do his lovely town justice. We told him we’d try to come back in winter! Are you keen for that, Mum and Dad?

We jumped on a nasty old bus to Sofia in the morning and chugged our way west from Bansko and then north towards the capital. As you can see from the map above, we were sidling around the Rila Mountains which are just south of Sofia. We would have liked to visit the Rila Monastery (a stunning, thousand-year-old monastery about 1100m up in the mountains) but these things are hard to access by bus. We should have taken the lead of some of the backpackers we met in Plovdiv and done more hitch-hiking!

We made it to Sofia in the early afternoon with about 5 hours to waste before our train left. Elly and I don’t really like Sofia. It seems to have all the ugliness of a large city (smog, traffic and lots of busy, grumpy people) without the usual benefits (like good shopping, a larger range of shops/cafes, great architecture etc). Maybe it was our whingeing beforehand, but Humphrey took all of 3 seconds to take a strong dislike to Sofia. It smells bad; I think that was his main impression. I think it’s a telling statistic that we failed to take a single photograph of the city… except the horrendously Communistic train station:

Then we jumped on the train! Best part of Sofia we saw all day. (Sorry, that’s a bit mean.) We had debated all day whether to take the train or the bus… but once we saw our cabin we were glad we chose the former! It might not look much, but it’s so much more comfortable than a tiny, upright bus seat! Eauch!

There was the extra cool factor for the train: it was bound for Moscow!! The surprisingly friendly lady at the ticket office told us to make sure we set an alarm for approximately 5:45am – the ETA for Bucharest – or else we might end up in Russia. We thought that sounded quite appealing, in some ways.

The train ride was uneventful. We got up at about 3am to hand over our passports – firstly to the Bulgarians and then to the Romanians (who looked at them and said “kangaroo?”, to which we all laughed). We also stayed up to watch the crossing of the Danube River. I think a few of you even got special international SMSs as we did so!

Saturday 24th Oct:

The train arrived slightly early. That may sound like a good thing, but it meant stumbling off the train at 5:30am. I even have proof; check out the glorious expressions on their faces! Oh, did I mention it was about 6 degrees C?

We wandered around the train station for a while until a sudden realisation came to us: we literally didn’t know a word of Romanian; nor did we have even the vaguest clue of the layout of Bucharest… Time for a quick google to find some of this essential info! So we found ourselves in McDonalds drinking some very ordinary coffee so we could use the wi-fi internet.

Before long we’d scratched a map onto a piece of paper and took ourselves and our 15kg packs out onto the streets.

Immediately we noticed that Romania has a very different feel to Bulgaria. While we saw glimpses of the same rows of faceless concrete apartment blocks that characterised Bulgarian cities, Bucharest still has oodles of buildings with character!

The language is vastly different, of course. We didn’t find this out until later, but quite a large proportion of people in Romania actually speak Hungarian – especially in Transylvania (the northwestern third of the country), where we were headed. It was quite a thrill to hear a Latin-based language and recognise a decent percentage of the words because of it!

I’ll talk more about our thoughts on Romania in another post, I think.

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We decided to walk to the bus station from the train station. Doesn’t sound too hard, does it?

Well, it was a daft idea. Luckily, we don’t know who to blame for it, but we do know (don’t we, Humf and Elly?) that I, Stu, was the one left to do all the navigation in the streets of Bucharest.

After three-and-a-half hours of resolutely refusing kind offers from greedy taxi-drivers, we arrived on foot at our bus station. Within half and hour we’d jumped on our maxi-taxi (which is what Romanians call mini buses) and departed for Târgu Mureş. It was a very strange way to make an impression of Bucharest. I don’t recommend it; we’re hoping to be able to see a little more of it on the way home!

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Ta-da! We had made it to Târgu Mureş. It was there that we met up with our good friends Jon, Margot and James Nairn who are living and working in Romania.

We had adventures, some of which Elly will thrill you with next time. Stay tunes for descriptions of the wonders of shopping in Romania and possibly even how fun playing paintball is!

Cheers,

Stu.

Hello everyone!

Long time, no post. Well… it feels like a very long time for us since we’ve been on the road. Detailed posts of our travels will follow, but I thought it would be a good idea to give you a run-down of what we’ve been up to.

Tuesday 20th Oct: we left Haskovo on a brisk morning and caught the bus to Plovdiv (pop. 450,000), about an hour to the northeast. We wandered around the lovely old-town and stayed at a cool hostel up on the hill. Apart from being woken up at 5am by three drunken backpackers as they returned to their (and our) dorm… it was a good time.

Wednesday 21st Oct: got on a midday train to Septemvri (pop. bugger all) to connect to a wonderful narrow-gauge train to Bansko (pop. 10,000) – which is a ski resort town up in the Pirin Mountains. The train took 6 hours – whereas the bus would be 3 hours – but it was incredibly picturesque (we took 150 photos and Humf took 200).

Thursday 22nd Oct: stayed at a lovely hotel hosted by the gregarious and hilarious Boris. He organised a driver to take us up the mountains. We were dropped off at Banderitsa Hut (altitude 1800m) where we started the walk up Mt. Vihren (the highest peak in the Pirin mountains – 2914m). Wow – what an amazing walk! We walked up into the snow (from about 2000m up) and just kept ascending. The sign said 3hrs to the peak, but we took over 4 hours to get to Vihren Pass (alt. 2600m) and decided to call it a day. We have some great photos to share (soon!). We exhaustedly hitch-hiked back down the mountain (after walking for an hour!) and slept for 11 hours that night!

Friday 23rd Oct: said farewell to Boris (who seemed disappointed to see us go) and caught a bus to Sofia (due North – the capital of Bulgaria with a population of about 1,500,000). Sofia is not our favourite city – and Humf was less than impressed with it. But we wandered around for the afternoon before catching the overnight train to Bucharest. Our train was great! So happy we didn’t get the bus instead.

Saturday 24th Oct: arrived in chilly Bucharest (capital of Romania, pop. 3,000,000) at 5:45am. We sat in McDonalds and drank awful coffee so we could have wi-fi access. We needed to look up some essential information, like the Romanian words for “yes” and “no” … and where the bus station was. We were all so tired we didn’t think to get a taxi so instead walked for 3.5 hours around the (beautiful) city to find the bus station. We then caught a mini-bus to Târgu Mureş – where our good friends Jon, Margot and James Nairn are living.

Sunday 25th Oct: we went to a Romanian church service and sang some Hillsong tunes with Romanian words. That was cool. Then James took us to play paintball against a few of his friends. It was awesome! Humf shot me from about 3m away (his reflexes were quicker than his ability to remember the “5m rule”!) and I’ve got an impressive wound from it – don’t tell him, but it looks much worse than it feels!

Monday 26th Oct: we’re about to go shopping around Târgu Mureş but have been prevented from doing so because I’m sitting here blogging! Oh nu.

So, this is my promise that we’ll be blogging in more detail – with awesome photos – very soon!

Also, check out Humf’s blog soon – he’s closer to writing a proper post!

Cheers

Stuart.