World Bulgaria Veliko Turnovo

Jade's Worldwide Adventures Taking the Long Way

Veliko Tarnovo 15 Jul 2009

It was about a 3 hour drive west across Bulgaria to the medieval capital of Bulgaria, Veliko Tarnovo. A cute little place with not a great deal to offer except sorbet ice cream every 2 feet. You couldn't escape if you tried. The ice cream is sold by weight so they just keep scooping into the cone/cup until you say stop then you pay whatever the ice cream weighs. pretty good system which ensures you always get enough!

As far as sights go about all the town had to offer was the Tsaravets Fortress, built between the 5th and 12 centuries. There is usually a 40 minute light show every night after dark and now, due to the economic crisis, that has been reduced to every second night. As luck would have it we were there on an off night...

We stayed in a great little hostel and got a cheap room that even threw in free breakfast AND dinner. But even that wasn't enough to keep us there for more than a night and now that I have discovered that we can get into Romania without a visa I am really keen to head there asap!

So we bought train tickets to head from Veliko Tarnovo to Brasov in Romania. The first train was a local one for about 20 minutes to the international train station that looked like a train hadn't passed through there in the last 20 years and we were starting to worry when the train was about half an hour late (and this at 11pm) but it turned up eventually. The second train was a sleeper that we caught at midnight but the police at the station wouldn't let us get on the sleeper carriage so we had to climb on in the seated carriages and creep our way to the right carriage.

The train was Russian on the way to Moscow and our carriage had a Russian conductor who paraded around in stubbies and a singlet and spoke not a word of English. Needless to say we didn't precisely recognise his importance when we first got on and refused to hand over our tickets...

During the night I was quite worried that we might sleep through the border crossing and inadvertently become illegal aliens in Romania but Luke kept leaping off the bunks at regular intervals and telling me we were at the border crossing so I would get up bleary eyed and walk to the carriage door with my passport, only to be instructed to go back (via hand gestures) by the crazy Russian.

In the end what happened was that at some point the train stopped and the Bulgarian official got on the train, knocked on our cabin door, we handed him our passports whilst we were still in our beds then he stamped them and left. Then the Romanian immigration guy came on and did the same thing. I couldn't believe it; immigration in bed! Why do no other countries do this???