Dree Your Own Weird

It was while crossing the Bulgarian border when we met our first Serbians. The backseat of the bus contained four young men who understood English, happy to speak with us about their country. We heard Serbians were warm, and twenty minutes in, we found this to be true. I learned how to say hello, thank you, please, and good-bye, only to promptly forget. I was going to have to study.  In the evening we arrived in Nis ,  Serbia's third largest city and the birthplace of Emperor Constantine.  We took our numerous backpacks to the apartment, then  went in search of  Pljeskavica,  Serbia's version of the hamburger. We heard they were delicious, and to us, nothing sounded better; our last meal was twelve hours earlier. My daughter is a vegetarian though, so while Adam awaited our order, I took her to purchase a salad next door. When we joined the boys five minutes later, there was much to tell. “A small Roma boy asked me for my hamburger,” Luke rela...

We left Plovdiv and headed to the Rhodope Mountains, legendary home of Orpheus .  Travel can be romantic and rewarding, but many times it is anything but.  We had punctured a tire a few days prior, and so needed to find a replacement.  We also needed lev from the bank, and paying with credit card is out of the question in most Bulgarian establishments.  Suffice it to say, buying a tire and locating an ATM machine took us several hours in the morning; Google maps has some work to do in this country. At last, we arrived at our first stop at the foot of the mountains, Assen’s Fortress .  From the 9th century until the 15th, it guarded a key pass to the Aegean Sea.  Luke had researched the history, and succinctly fills us in below.  An “A” in History for the day.                                            A sign pointed the wa...

We arrived in Sunny Beach both hopeful and dubious. My Arizona flesh needed sunshine, and much of it, but the beach we had just left in Varna had been nicknamed the "the family beach" and Sunny Beach the "party beach." Having seen Varna, I imagined I was in for nothing short of an orgy.  Upon arriving, we were pleasantly surprised with our accommodations. You can not always trust vacation rental photos; our flat however was perfect - spacious and bright with a modern vibe. You can tell that the owner put forth her best, and I liked the economical art with which she decorated the bare halls leading to the entrance. You can check out the home on airbnb here . The nearest beach was a five minute walk downhill, and much to my delight, there were only a few sets of topless ta-tas and no pounding music or drunk millenials. Our location was at the very end of Sunny Beach's string of hotels, and therefore the quietest. Even though there...

Many travels through Bulgaria start in Sofia.  Prior to arriving, I hadn't read much on the capital city, yet I was entirely optimistic knowing only three things.  First, it was home to the St. George Rotunda, a fourth century church built during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine.  Second, it boasted one of the  largest Orthodox churches in the Balkans,  the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and third, the signs were written in Cyrillic, a script foreign to me, therefore holding a great deal of romance. And these three things were wonderful indeed!  We met up with our friends from Italy, Walter and Serena, and their beautiful girls, Goia and Beatrice.  They were to be travel companions our first week in Bulgaria, and our excitement over the reunion knew no bounds.   In the morning, we made our way to the  St. George Rotunda .  Originally erected as a Roman public building, it was soon converted to a baptistry after...