From Serbia to Bulgaria

11/6 – 24/6

The drive to Serbia was uneventful. We stopped off to look at an Orthodox church in a small town. The border crossing was a bit more intense than the previous ones we have experienced. We had to actually get out of the van and show the boarder guard inside it – he was kind of thorough – pulling out the container of pepper to see what the label read, but then not actually looking inside it. Once we confirmed that everything in the van were personal items we were free to move on.

The main source of excitement on the drive was the enormously fat man clad only in tiny black shiny underwear who was at the end of his driveway using his weed whacker. There were also a number of people using horses and carriages for transporting hay or themselves, we've definitely gone down the economic ladder a bit now. Or maybe they're just really into sustainability.

We arrived at our campsite about 30km out of Belgrade. The road was fairly narrow, really just wide enough for one car and hemmed in by hedges and we were quite rural and starting to wonder if we had headed in the right direction. Then we got to a carpark in a paddock that had about 20 cars in it. What were they all doing parked in the middle of nowhere? The restaurant located at the same site as the camp was the answer. It was this beautiful wide grassy tree filled area with lots of tables under the trees, a great playground for kids and a petting zoo. It was packed. We headed there for dinner to get a taste of Serbian food and were not disappointed. Beautifully tender lamb and veal slow cooked in a clay pot over a wood fire, together with vegetables.

The following day we headed into Belgrade itself. Overlooking the city is the walled fortress - where it has stood for many hundreds of years - yes older than New Zealand [M- older than Maori, even -M]. At the top of the fortress was a terraced restaurant that looked out on the river Danube. It was a great lunch spot. We were well under dressed for the white table cloth formal service that was offered but the food was yum. When we returned to the fortress the following day to go to the military museum we went back to the restaurant again. For some reason we must have been memorable diners as the head waiter came over to ask whether we preferred our meals today or yesterday.

The fortress has been sacked and rebuilt more than 40 times in it's life, so it's quite an architectural melange.

There was more lunch.

Belgrade was yet another city that made me think why can’t Auckland get its shit together? A large portion of the central area was pedestrian only and filled with tables under umbrellas spilling out onto the street with hundreds of people enjoying the early evening sun. It was so nice just wandering around and watching the world go by.

We continued to head east towards Bulgaria and spent the night in a small campsite at Jagodina where we met a retired French couple who were spending a year travelling around the continent. The following morning we went to the Manasija monastery, which was built in the 15th century. The monastery itself had amazing frescoes painted on the walls and roof. Over time a lot of these have been damaged but the ones that remained were impressive. Serbia has applied for the monastery to be on the UNESCO World Heritage list and they were doing some preservation works on the fortress walls in one corner. 

Manasija monastery - sorry no photos inside

Unfortunately the van developed a bit of a rattling clunking noise which has been slowly getting worse and the tricks we had used to get rid of it - pulse the accelerator pedal and turn the air conditioning off stopped working - so we visited the Toyota service centre in Nis. The manager was very interested in our trip and loved the van’s paint job. They changed the tired and cracked old fan belts, but the noise remained! They thought that a bearing needed changing but it was the end of the day so we were just sent away with the advice – don’t turn the air conditioning on and drive at night when it is cooler. We sweltered our way about half an hour further east after leaving the workshop. The campsite we stayed the night at was full of peacocks, about ten or so. Did you know that peacocks squawk through the night, and their calls are easily loud enough to be heard through the walls of the average van?

After an early morning wakeup call from the peacocks we crossed the border into Bulgaria and made the last of the drive to Sofia. We had booked three nights in the same hotel as Hayley and Ryan, right in the centre of the city. We still needed to get the van fixed so Mark found a mechanic with good Google reviews and we dropped the van off there. Initially we got the bearings on the compressor or idler pulley or something changed but after a few hours of work they discovered that, yep, the noise was still undiminished. Turned out the bushings on the couplings on the supplemental auxiliary driveshaft had all perished over the last 20 years of the van's life. It was going to take the mechanic a few days to source a replacement so we left the van in his hands and he very kindly drove us the 30 minutes into our hotel, giving us a bit of a Bulgarian history lesson on the way.

Uh oh.

Frank happily appreciating our scenic tour of Sophia's outskirts as we wait for the first attempted fix. Not pictured: the shortcuts through the construction site or homeless encampment.

In the morning we arrived at the extensive buffet breakfast at the hotel and had a lovely time catching up with Hayley and Ryan. Mark was very grateful to have someone other than me to talk to for a few days. So grateful and busy talking that we took barely any photos while we were in Sofia with them.

We got onto a free walking tour which showed us around the main attractions in Sofia. We could then come back to those that particularly interested us for a look around inside after the tour. We spent the day alternating between wandering the sights and stopping to eat and drink.

Hooray a new person! Please don't leave Hayley.

 We also visited the museum of Socialist art, which had many statues of Lenin and other communist worthies, including the statute which had previously stood in the centre of town looking at the country’s communist headquarters and keeping an eye on them. [M - When Bulgaria de-Communisted they tore down most of the symbology of the fairly unpopular regime, but some historically-minded folk decided to stick them all in a field rather than the more-usual smashing to rubble, so we get a look at what all the city parks would have looked like pre-1990 -M].  It was a fairly unique attraction.

A cheerful bunch with the Red Star that stood on the top of the communist headquarters

Solidarity Forever.

The guide from the free walking tour helped us arrange a trip to the Rila Monastery the following day. After a bit of a drive out of the city we arrived at the monastery. We had about an hour wandering around looking at the church itself. Mark was able to decipher some of the paintings for me with his more extensive knowledge of the bible. [M- They liked illustrating the good bits from Revelations -M]. From the monastery we then stopped off at a local restaurant for lunch. Then it was off to the airport to get Hayley and Ryan back to the UK, but with plans that we will meet up again in about six weeks time in Amsterdam.

We jumped on a cycle tour of the city. This was a great change from walking and we covered a heap of ground. There was a bit of duplication with the walking tour when we went past some of the same sights but the highlight was the next couple of hours when we went through two of the cities big parks. The Bulgarian King was a botanist and he wanted Bulgaria to have many different types of plants so he established one of the parks effectively as a giant nursery.

Hooray no more walking!

It seemed that Sofia was overrun with walking tours so we went on a food walking tour around the city. The tour got off to a bit of a rocky start. The volunteer organisation has a system of walk-ups to the meeting place or you can pre-register. However, if you pre-register and you are not at the meeting point 10 minutes in advance then you lose your place to one of the walk ups. Unfortunately there were two groups of two people that had registered and arrived about 9 minutes and 7 minutes prior to the start time. They were not able to go on the tour as their spaces had been given to four walk ups (us being two of them). They were outraged that they had booked and were not able to go on the tour. The two volunteer tour leaders were explaining that their email registration clearly explained the cut off time and subsequent loss of place in those circumstances. This was getting nowhere and they were just yelling at the tour guides that they had booked so they should be on the tour.

By the way – the tour is free...

After about ten minutes Mark approached the four yelling people and backed the tour guides up – the rules are the rules, you were late, you are holding the 30 other people up. Another group member backed Mark and the tour guides up reiterating the same message. This seemed to be making some traction but they still hadn’t finished their ranting. Eventually Mark yelled at the tour guides in an over-the-top parody of the yelling of the four. They seemed to finally accept how ridiculous they were yelling at two volunteers about being refused entry to a free tour. They finally left with promises that they would leave very very bad reviews on trip advisor.

The two tour leaders, younger than us, were a bit shaken by it all but proceeded to take us on a really great tour of the city. They split us into two smaller groups and we were taken to five different restaurants around the city, receiving generous samples at each. Our guide Elena would explain a bit about the history of the food or provide other quirky food related tales as we wandered between the restaurants. We all left the tour with promises to leave very very good reviews on trip advisor to balance the poor ones that we knew were coming.

As the van was not likely to be ready for a couple of days we jumped on a bus to Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city, about a two hour drive from Sofia. As we pulled away from the bus station we received a message from the mechanic, the van will be ready later today… We arranged to pick it up in a few days time after our return from Plovdiv.

Our accommodation in Plovdiv was really great. Stanislav, the owner, gave a very comprehensive introduction to the house and some maps and suggestions of what to do while we were in town. Because we had enjoyed the Sofia free walking tour so much we wanted to also do the Plovdiv equivalent, run by the same group. Once again the tour really helped us with getting our bearings. The guide Kathy told us far more about the history of the various buildings in the two hours then we could have found in many hours of research ourselves. Plovdiv was on the road between Rome and Constantinople and has been continuously inhabited for the last 6000 years so there was lots to look at.

Like the singing fountain that was lit up at night and played music - it looked cool in the daytime too

 During our wandering in the afternoon we saw there was going to be a concert at the Roman ancient theatre that evening. The concert was awesome. It was a famous piano player (we didn’t know who but the crowd certainly did…) accompanied by an orchestra. The theatre was all lit up beautifully and as the concert continued and it got darker the lighting only looked better and better. The music was great, they basically played a best of classical music with many songs we were able to recognise. It was definitely one of those - wow we really are doing this travel around the world thing - sitting in an ancient Roman theatre watching a concert! 

Markie plus Roman ancient theatre

The orchestra in all its glory

The pianist was amazing!

We headed back to Sofia and were reunited with the van – minus the weird clunking noise and able to use the air conditioning again. The mechanic had recommended the Seven Rila lakes as a beautiful part of Bulgaria to visit so we went to Sapareva Banya, the small town near the lakes as a base for the hike the following day.

The next morning we headed to the Seven Rila lakes. We were joined by half the population of Bulgaria, who apparently also wanted to go hiking on their Saturday. From the carpark you catch a chair lift which takes you up 500m of elevation to the start of the hike. There is then a well worn track that you follow through the fantastic scenery. It’s pretty cool – you walk along for a bit and then around the corner comes the first lake, after another half hour of walking you see the second lake, while still being able to look back on the first one, and then you come to the third lake and so on. 

Two lakes up

I think this was lakes four, five and six

There was a little bit of snow around when we got to some of the higher parts and one of the lakes  was half frozen and had quite a bit of snow around it. Mark got half his legs in before they went painfully numb and he changed his mind about wading out to clamber onto the iceberg.

Hmmm, is this really worth it?

On the way down we went an “avoid the crowds this is marked on Maps-Me route”. We did avoid the crowds and there was a path of sorts to follow. The scenery was fabulous, quite similar to New Zealand and the Queens Drive walk in the Remarkables. 

There's a path here somewhere...

All good hiking should end with junk food so we went and had delicious pizza for dinner at a great small restaurant in town before heading back to the campsite for a well-deserved early night. Tomorrow we were hitting the road to head back towards Croatia. Our first stop on the way is Macedonia.