Jul 27, 2008 - The joys of eastern European travel

I do wonder what the point is of requesting IMC entrants to submit their arrival details in order for the organisers to arrange transport from Sofia airport to the competition venue; for the second year in succession I arrived at the airport to find no such transport available, leaving me to the joys of another night in Sofia. This had the desired effect, as I woke up at about 6 with my possessions intact, successfully procured a ticket to Blagoevgrad and caught the 6. ... Arriving in Blagoevgrad soon after 8, I couldn't remember exactly where the halls were, but hung around until I found some people wearing IMC T-shirts and followed them. ... Registration wasn't open, but I did at least procure a room key, dumped my stuff, collapsed on the bed and slept the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon.I do wonder what the point is of requesting IMC entrants to submit their arrival details in order for the organisers to arrange transport from Sofia airport to the competition venue; for the second year in succession I arrived at the airport to find no such transport available, leaving me to the joys of another night in Sofia. This had the desired effect, as I woke up at about 6 with my possessions intact, successfully procured a ticket to Blagoevgrad and caught the 6. ... Arriving in Blagoevgrad soon after 8, I couldn't remember exactly where the halls were, but hung around until I found some people wearing IMC T-shirts and followed them. ... Registration wasn't open, but I did at least procure a room key, dumped my stuff, collapsed on the bed and slept the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon....

Aug 5, 2007 - Stockholm, Rome, Sofia and Blagoevgrad

I managed to get the right bus to the city centre (after having declined the same bloke who asked me four times if I wanted a taxi), turned the map the right way up (fortunately, after one attempt before going to Odessa and a bit of brushing up for this time, I can read Cyrillic reasonably well by now - I'd have got hopelessly lost otherwise), found the bus station, found that buses to Blagoevgrad take two hours, knew from last year that there probably wouldn't be anyone around if I turned up that late and that nothing happens on the first day anyway, and thus decided to crash in a hostel in Sofia for the night and endeavour to get to Blagoevgrad the following morning. ... I headed back to the bus station in the morning, managed to find a sign advising me as to from which desk I could procure a ticket to Blagoevgrad; I duly went to said desk and found no-one there. ... Trying outside instead, I found a bus with a sign on the front informing me that it was going to Blagoevgrad - which proceeded to depart without bothering to let anyone get on first. ... At that point I gave up on the buses and attempted to see if trains were a better bet; despite lack of a common language I managed to obtain a ticket to the right place - after making absolutely certain that the woman behind the counter had understood that I meant Blagoevgrad not Beograd (Belgrade) - and even ascertain when it departed: in two hours. ... I inferred from the fact that my ticket was inspected and stamped without comment that I was probably on the right train, and gained further confidence from checking the names of the places we were passing through on a map of Bulgaria and confirming that they were indeed roughly between Sofia and Blagoevgrad. ...