World Bulgaria Sofia

Where am I this time?

So the maths is over, now for the serious business... Jul 31, 2008

As usual, the marks for the first paper were up on the morning of the second; I'd managed a stunning 3/120, although at least I wasn't last as there were twelve people who scored zero. I still fail to understand the mark scheme they use here - they gave me 2 for a trivial observation on question 1 which really didn't constitute any progress at all towards an answer, but only 1 for my effort on question 4 which got most of it but just missed the last few cases. Such is life, or at least life in maths competitions.

The second didn't go much better - at first sight I thought I couldn't do any of them, but after a few hours' scribbling I managed attempts at two; how much, if anything, the attempts would be considered worth I would have to wait and see. The solution sheet wasn't particularly encouraging; unlike the previous day there were some answers which I didn't get which, looking at them afterwards, I really should have done - although I thought I'd been slightly unlucky in that there was one question I'd failed to solve by going for a brute force approach when I should have been looking for a short cut, and one that I'd failed on by looking for a short cut when it required brute force! I spent part of the afternoon wandering around Blagoevgrad, which to be honest isn't the most fascinating of places, then went back to the halls and fell asleep. Woke up a bit later than I'd been intending to and joined Ian, Tom and the Michigan bunch at the bowling alley. They seemed slightly surprised that I'd known where to find them; I'm not entirely sure why, since they'd said they were going bowling and there's only one place to do that in Blagoevgrad. Jana, one of the locals, offered to take us all to a bar afterwards; most of the others accepted, but I demurred in favour of getting a bit more sleep instead.

My results for the second day were a marginal improvement on those for the first: 2 for each of the questions attempted, for a stunning total of 7/240. I managed to stay off the bottom because eight of those who'd scored zero the first time round repeated the feat, but a final standing of 251st out of 283 wasn't the greatest. Under most other circumstances I'd have shrugged it off, but coming as it did on the back of an academically disastrous year in Strasbourg it did worry me somewhat that I might have gone off the boil; hopefully I'll be able to get back into my stride next term, but until I do there'll still be a lingering concern. Whichever way things turn out, though, there wasn't much I could do about them for the immediate future so I tried to forget about them and concentrate on enjoying the excursion to the Rila Monastery which had been arranged for the free day. Although I'd been last year, it was still interesting to see it again (and hope to get some photos back without getting them nicked this time), and, when we'd had enough of looking round the monastery, to take advantage of the opportunity which the organisers keep reminding us that the competition provides, to make friends with people from different cultures. I'd tried chatting to the Iranians over dinner on Sunday night, and failed to get very far due to their fairly limited English and my entirely non-existent Farsi; this time I had more luck with the Singaporeans, Uzbeks and one Indonesian girl who was dashing around getting photos of everyone and taking our email addresses in order to add us on Facebook.

On the final day there was nothing scheduled until the closing ceremony in the evening, so I tried to get some of the others interested in a trip to Melnik, the centre of the Bulgarian wine industry. Only Ian expressed any interest - all I got from Nikhil was an extended discourse on how he didn't like wine - and when I came down at the preappointed meeting time and didn't find him, I thought it a reasonable assumption that he'd been out a bit too late and consequently overslept (an assumption which he later confirmed to have been correct), but thought I might as well go by myself. I duly caught the only daily bus to Melnik, arrived about lunchtime and after a bit of searching eventually found the winery. After listening to the sales pitch ("All wine everywhere else in the world is just the same, but Melnik wine is special!") and trying a few, I eventually settled on a bottle of red, reassuring the owner that I would indeed consume it within two weeks ("We do not add artifical preservatives, our wine is entirely natural!") since if I didn't I'd get it confiscated by airport security. I then found that I'd more or less exhausted the thrills of Melnik - the surrounding scenery is nice but it doesn't take too long to look at it, and if I'd hiked to the monastery five miles away I couldn't have got back to Blagoevgrad in time for the closing ceremony, so I sat at the bus stop to wait a couple of hours for the next bus to Sandanski, where I'd have to change for Blagoevgrad and then move rather rapidly to get back to the university at least almost on time for the closing ceremony. Instead of which, a bus direct to Blagoevgrad came along completely unheralded, and I got back with an hour to spare. I wonder what the point of having bus timetables here is...

The ceremony itself was more or less what I've come to expect: some platitudes from Prof Jayne about how wonderful the competition is and what a long and diverse list of countries we have represented, then a plug for Bremen University which is offering scholarships, followed by the presentation of certificates and miscellaneous freebies, featuring as usual Prof Jayne's valiant but mostly unsuccessful attempts to pronounce the names of entrants from some of the further-flung corners of the globe; when it came to one of the Chinese he just gave up and spelled out the name - I could understand that, but tripping up over one of the names from his own university wasn't too impressive. I wasn't terribly surprised that I failed to reach the heights of Honourable Mention which I'd achieved the last two years, having to be content instead with a Certificate of Participation. None of the other Warwick entrants fared that much better - 19, 18 and 12, for two HMs and one other certificate - and I at least had the crumb of comfort that I beat the entire UCL team put together (they had two entrants, who managed 5 and 0); as usual the Russians, Hungarians and Iranians shared the top places, including one of the three who finished joint first who hadn't actually started university yet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I did think the title of the competition said "for university students"... if he's going to be around for another three or four years I think the rest of us can wave goodbye to any chances of winning it.

As usual, the final dinner went off with a bang, with lots of Bulgarian food and booze, some slightly cheesy background music and general merrymaking, after which some of us retired at more sensible times than others. Come the morning we all packed our bags and departed, most to Sofia airport, but a few Bulgarians, Romanians and one Brit heading for the station. I hadn't made any definite plans as to where I wished to go, knowing that guidebooks and online timetables can't always be relied on in this part of the world - the only way to find out for definite where you can get a bus/train to is to turn up and ask. One of the locals greeted me at the station with a cheery "Hey, it's the British guy! Hey British guy, are you getting a train back to Britain?". Erm, not quite... although the idea isn't quite as outlandish as it might sound, since there are indeed buses from here to Britain (which would probably be cheaper than flying, but I know which I'd prefer), not to mention most of western and northern Europe. The real challenge comes when you actually want to get to an adjacent or at least fairly close country. Istanbul and Thessaloniki, yes - but I went to both of those last year; admittedly I didn't see as much of Istanbul as I'd hoped to, so I'll probably go again sometime, but I'd like to see one or two new places first. Train to Bucharest or Belgrade, bus to Sarajevo - although I'm not sure I fancy either of the latter two at the moment, as the protests against the extradition of Karadzic don't make it the ideal time to visit; I've already been caught up in a near-revolution once, and would be quite happy not to do so again. Any chance of somewhere reasonably close, and with a stable political climate? After a fair amount of searching I did track down a bus to Macedonia; I did go there last year too, but it opens up the possibility of Albania and/or Montenegro, which I've never been to. Off into the world I go... not planning futures or shaping years, I haven't even planned the next fortnight.