Welcome to part one of several “road trip” blog posts. We’re currently hanging out with the Nairns in Transylvania (which is just the slightly cooler name for north-western Romania) so we have more time to sit down and write about our awesome trip so far.

—

Monday 19th: After we’d spent 4-5 days hanging around Haskovo with Humf we started getting itchy feet (that’s not a comment on our bathroom hygiene) so we decided to leave as soon as possible after Humphrey had endured a 3 hour Turkish lesson with us. Elly and I were pretty blasé about the lesson because we knew Mirem (our teacher) would not be able to resist spending the whole lesson grilling her “new student” on rolling his Rs and curling his Üs and Ös. We were right – Humf was exhausted by the end of it and Mirem didn’t even notice that Elly and I hadn’t done our homework! Mwah ha ha! (evil laughter)

Tuesday 20th: So on Tuesday morning we said chao chao to David and Rob (the only surviving Australians in Haskovo at the moment) and hopped on a bus to Plovdiv.

Plovdiv is the second largest city in Bulgaria and it’s quite a nice place. Elly and I went there once for some post-birthday retail therapy – it’s probably got the best shopping in Bulgaria. It’s also got a beautiful Old Town, which is the section of the city that has retained and restored all of its historical and cultural buildings. There’s a large Roman aphitheatre in the middle of the Old Town – it was revealed by a landslide about 30 years ago! – and it makes for a rather impressive centrepiece.

We stayed at the Hikers’ Hostel in the Old Town. I mention it by name because it was a nice place – one of the cheapest places to stay in Plovdiv but a really well-equipped hostel. We made the mistake of accepting an offer to stay in the 8-bed dormitory rather than the separate 4-bed dorm we orginally booked. Three of our roommates (a Brit, a Belgian and a Swede… sounds like a Dad Joke, yes?) stumbled back to the hostel at 5am and woke us all up. There may even have been some hostel-room shenanigans between Mr. England and Miss Sweden, but I conveniently seem to have repressed any memories I might have had of hearing heavy breathing and whatnot.

Wednesday 21st: we jumped on a train to the tiny town of Septemvri – the only notable thing about Septemvri is that it you can get off the standard rail and jump on to the narrow-gauge rail the winds its way up into the Pirin Mountains.

I won’t repeat all the details of the train journey, since you can read all about it on Humf’s Amazing Blogalogue. But I have to mention it here because: a) it was great, b) it happened, and c) I have photos:

Thursday 22nd: we spent the night at a great little hostel/hotel in Bansko – a small ski resort town about 1000m above sea level at the base of the spectacular Pirin Mountains.

But I’ll fill you in on the details in the next instalment!

You can expect lots of stunning pictures of snow and huge peaks and coldness.

For now, here’s a very old-school method I devised of mapping our trip. Here’s a representation of Days 1 and 2 on the map (Haskovo is on the right… Plovdiv in the middle… Bansko on the left):