Sofia, Bulgaria - 9 May

Sofia is surrounded by beautiful mountains

This is a place I've always wanted to go, I now I'd like to go back if I had more time. The city is much better than Bucharest and the people are very nice. Like Romania, they also have great beaches and mountains I'd like to see. We arrived at about 6am and walked to a hostel in town. The owner was this very nice, but crazy woman who thought she was our mom. She kept hugging and kissing us. But it was decent and very cheap. We went for lunch at the the Bulgarian version of McDonalds, a place called Happy Grill. Its a sit down place, and Bulgarian food. This stuff is great. We basically were so hungry we order a 4 course meal, awesome salads, appetizer, and tons of grilled meat. For the 3 of us it cost about $18. Oh, with, water, coffee and beer. Bulgaria is very inexpensive, but get there fast, they join the EU in 2007, and will use the Euro shortly thereafter. We did some walking around, here's the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace. It was weird, cause it just looks like a bank with people walking all around. Then all of a sudden these guys show up and people just sort of walk around them. Thats why Ben could get so close to get these photos.

Oh, and this other guy just seemed like an Uber-Patriotic WWII vet, good dude.

Here's another Soviet monument. Check out the fourth guy from the left, whats a dude on the front lines need binoculars for???

Ben and Pappy had a friend of a friend's cousin once removed in Sofia. Pappy had been talking with her on email, so we met up with her and a friend that night and they took us out. We learned a lot about the people from them. Basically, all the students are trying to get to America. About half have already been there, many stayed well past their visas. Including these two girls, who now, can not get a visa to come back to the states. So we had to explain to them why we have immigration policies, and why we can't just have our borders open to everyone, and how every other country does it that way too. But, they weren't sympathetic. Oh well. They also didn't really like the fact that we were only staying one night. They didn't see the point in jumping from place to place, and I now realize a lot of people don't. Actually, I'm not sure I do either. I'm just trying to see as much as I can with the time and resources I have. Anyways, after a few hours, the friend realized she wasn't going to meet her new American husband out of the 3 of us, and left unceremoniously while Pappy and I were using the bathroom. But they were very nice. The next day we jumped on a bus for uncharted territory, Macedonia.