Day 4 - Black Sea Coast

Day 4 - to the Black Sea

So, with no Bucharest to worry about, it was a no-brainer to, instead, head for the Black Sea coast.

After a good night's sleep, a refreshing shower and a lovely brekkie, Phil kindly agreed to come with me to the coast. It certainly would help me navigate and keep me company, so at about 9:30 we set off towards Bourgas.

Toni's mum Vesi has a beautiful, 100-year old Singer sewing machine

Vesi and Toni

I was really pleased that I managed to plug in my mobile phone into the car's USB socket as a media device and after a bit of fiddling (the first hour was spent listening to Avril Lavine on an endless loop) we managed to work out how to shuffle the songs and listen to a variety of music from my favorites.

Two and a half hours later we arrived at the very cute historical town of Nessebar situated as a tiny off shore island connected to the mainland by a narrow bridge. We had a nice stroll around and had a delightful sea bream meal before heading off round the bay to St Vlas.

Looking out at Sunny Beach and St Vlas from Nessebar

St Vlas - next destination

Once we had parked the car next to Toni's friends' hotel called Brilliantin and settled in a bit it was time to explore the town with expert guide Phil who had bought an apartment here ten years go.

The view from our room

Looking out across the bay back at Nessebar

We strolled down the windy streets to the marina and then along the beach until we found a nice bar overlooking the sea where we had a couple of beers and I interviewed Phil on football for my blog (more about this later).

After that we strolled up to a restuarant for another nice meal (I had chicken schnitzels, Phil curry). We saw some girls in Bulgarian national costume but unfortunately missed them dancing in Nessebar earlier.

So back to the room for an early night.

Aljice 

St Vlas, Bulgaria

Day 3 - Sofia to Plovdiv

Sofia to Plovdiv 

Woke up with a two-star hangover quite early and bravely went down for breakfast. Jeffov and Toniov joined soon. Tony kindly agreed to do the first of my blog interviews about the Euros. (More on than later.)

After brekkie we headed off for a bit of sight seeing. We headed to the Alexander Nevski Cathedral at a very steady pace, stopping to watch a big American film set being set up. They had a large security force set up to prevent people from taking photos. It was incredible. Here's a public place on one of the major avenues of a big city of over a million people and they were trying to stop people taking innocent pictures of something of which they probably had no idea what was was happening.

We popped into a Russian Orthodox shrine before having something to drink before heading up to the very impressive "Nevski" cathedral. 

After that, it was a taxi ride back to the hotel and an interesting chat with the driver who told us he played for the Bulgarian Ice hockey team. Suddenly, it was time to check out and say goodbye to my friends.

It was a ten minute walk to the hotel Balkan, via the Roman site in the city centre, where I had arranged to pick up the car. 

The Sixt Car Hire guy was waiting for me. We got down to business and it soon transpired that I had been a bit naive about my planned trip to Bucharest. I needed a permit apparently, and needed to pay a fee on top. So I quickly decided to knock the idea on the head. I contacted my AirBnB host to cancel, shamefully, just before the 24 hr deadline. 

At the end of the day I got into the car and managed to drive it away but then it dawned on me that I should have hired a GPS system as it took about an hour to find my way out of Sofia's maze of un-signposted busy narrow streets.

Anyway, eventually, I found myself driving down the main motorway to Plovdiv though beautiful hilly scenery.

I had to stop a couple of times to get WiFi access so I could get in touch with my next host, Phil Kirk, to tell him I'm going to be even later than I thought. After a failed attempt to find his flat in Plovdiv I had to resync with Google maps to home in, during a massive storm that was brewing up.

So, finally, I arrive at Phils' and, of course, it was a lovely, hospitable experience. Phil's wife, Toni is so welcoming and intelligent and so is her mum, Vesi. After a bit of de-briefing about what had happened to us since out last meeting at least 15 years ago at the Blues concert in Kirkby, we went off to explore Plovdiv.

And what a lovely place it is. We arrived, under umbrellas, to witness an arts and music festival which included dance and music and a hundred stalls selling cultural artefacts in KAPANA, the area of Plovdiv where it was held.

The first stop was the amazing Roman sports arena literally on top of the town center, beautifully and tastefully excavated ironically placed right next to, and below, a beautiful mosque.

Phil and me waiting for a jazz band to play

  g

We went to one of Phil's friends' sandwich diner (think of a more up market and tasty version of Subway) as it started to get dark.

One of the books on offer to read in the diner was this one...

... which I think means something like "Adventures of an English man in Bulgaria and other stories". The author... Phil Kirk! I think it's impressive when anyone writes a book but to do so (and a second) in a language you have only started experiencing eight years ago and have no parental affinity to is amazing.

After a nice ice cream/sorbet combo, it was back to theirs for a good night's sleep.

Aljice

St Vlas Sunday, 5th June

Day 2 - Sofia with Jeffov

Sofia with Jeffov

Two years ago, when I started my Brasilian adventure, the first person I bumped into in Rio de Janeiro was an old mate from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Simon Evans, who had lived there for 25 years or so. This time, even more bizarrely, the first person I met - here in Sofia, Bulgaria, of all places was my dear (almost) brother Jeffrey Newcombe.

I'm still not quite sure why he chose Sofia as the place to meet up but whatever reason was compounded when his good friend Tony Tilston told him his son, James, had recently started working here and was planning to come and visit him.

Thus, the scene was set for a most peculiar reunion on the grand Vitosha Boulevard, leading majestically to the mountains overlooking the city to the south, with dear old Jeffrey. 

Tony was waiting for us (slightly more than 400 yards away from the hotel) on a table by the pedestrianised walkway. He's a chap I'd never even met before but within 15 minutes it felt like I'd known him all my life as we got straight to the nitty-gritty and discussed many aspects of life, especially politics.

Suffice it to say, that many beers were consumed over the next few hours and we were joined by his son at the "best beer bar in Sofia" - Vitamin B - according to ratebeer.com and then onto a Bulgarian resturarant for a rather splendid traditional meal.

As I write this now at the breakfast table I am nursing a 2 star hangover and thinking "why did I drink so much?" but I have a hunch the feeling will pass soon.

Vitamin B is good for you

Aljice

Maria Luisa Hotel, Sofia.

Day 1 - Perth to Europe

Day 1 - Perth to Europe

The appetite has been whet and it's time to start the adventure. I am writing this at the Johann Strauss café at Vienna airport. 

Dear Leb saw me off at Perth airport yesterday and I boarded the flight to Bangkok for the first leg of the journey.

The flight, despite a very tasty lamb and potato meal, wasn't great really, I have to say. I had a window seat but was squashed in by a dear couple that were, shall we say, a little overweight. Consequently I managed to avoid going to the loo until they disappeared from the seats later in the flight. I think they had had enough of a bunch of drunken chaps (you'll never guess their nationality) who were being very loud and stood up in the aisle right by us. I had to turn my music volume really high to block them out. I did feel a bit of a prude and, of course, I like a beer myself, but this was just rude. I feel ashamed of being British when I encounter this kind of thing. The F-ing and blinding is just not acceptable. Not on a plane.

So it was a double relief when we landed at Bangkok's massive modern airport. Everything went very smoothly there. Through immigration, drop the bag off and headed of on the train to the city.

My first little adventure was to find a bar which I'd discovered from www.ratebeer.com. Apparently it's the highest rated bar in Bangkok, so my target was to find it and have a couple of bevies. 

It's always interesting to walk through the streets of busy cities and you get a good feel for them. It was very hot and sweaty and the bar was very difficult to find. Even people who worked on the same street had never heard of it. The Hair of the Dog did have a good selection of beers but I have to admit it wasn't much to shout about. The Canadian guy who ran it wasn't very talkative or friendly considering the effort I'd just made to find the place. Anyway, three very nice Stone IPAs later it was time to find a barber's shop to have a haircut.

The Hair of the Dog has a good selection of beers and a weird pair of dentist lamps

This is another of my odd little habits - having haircuts in different places. The most notable one I had was in Vilnius, I think when I was 49 years old - I'd let my hair grow quite long and even had a beard. My plan was to grow it really long for my 50th birthday and then have it cut really short on the day but I'd not realised how irritating the bear was so, with Laima with me, I decided to shave the beard and have a hair cut. I did grow it again to do the 50th birthday thing, but it wasn't as long as I'd wanted. I also had one in Salvador, in Brazil and another in Memphis Tennessee. 

The hairdresser in Bangkok was called "Ploy". I think she did a really good job for the equivalent of $15. Then it was back to the airport and, despite a massive queue to get through passport control, I got through to the gate nice and early. Time enough for a couple of beers with a nice guy from Melbourne who owns a restaurant chain.

The flight from Bangkok to Vienna was great. I sat next to a  real character, Michael from Denmark, who owns a holiday home in Phuket. He was a bit nervous that the plane only had two engines and, as he thought he'd booked with Lufthansa, expected a massive jet with a captain with "blond hair and blue eyes". A curious thing to say, indeed. To cut a long story short we had a pretty heated discussion about immigration and the problem of assimilating some muslim families into European society. In a nutshell, he wants immigration to stop and for most to be sent back home! I told him that as a son of refugees myself, I didn't think he was thinking it through. After a generation of two most of the immigrants will doubtless be fully integrated into the local society.

Eventually, we did get some sleep and woke up to resume our discussion on other matters such as the Singularity and longevity.

Now, I have another couple of hours to kill here at Vienna airport before getting on my plane to Sofia, Bulgaria where I will, bizarrely, meet up with two chaps in two days from my home town, Kirkby-in-Ashfield.

Apple strudel in Vienna

Aljice,

Vienna Airport

Group F - Portugal

Group F - Portugal

The final group is group F and it could be argued that it's the weakest group of the six in that Portugal, the highest ranking team in it, are only seventh favourites to win the tournament. Surely, the seeding system was correct, the six favourites would be distributed across all six groups.

Anyway, the other teams in the group are probably quite happy that they've been drawn with Portugal rather than any of the other top seeded teams. Austria had a strong qualification campaign and are 9th favourites to win the competition. Their first match will be against their historical allies, the Hungarians, another team that only qualified through the play offs. Hungary have a had a long spell in the wilderness and must be happy to be there, despite all the usual claims that they're not just there to make up the numbers.

Portugal themselves start against the most remarkable team in the competition really, Iceland, a country with a population of just over 300,000. Apparently, about 2% of their entire population went to Amsterdam to watch them beat Holland in one of the final qualifying matches, surely some kind of record. If Russia brought that same percentage to Marseille for the England match, there'd be 5 million of them!

Iceland amazingly almost won their group but qualified automatically ahead of the much fancied Holland and Turkey.

Assuming the group goes to plan, one has to reckon on Portugal and Austria going through to the knock out stages with perhaps Iceland nicking 3rd spot. But I doubt any of them will go much further.

I'm predicting Portugal to loose to Belgium in the round of 16 game and Austria to fall to Wales (or Russia). If Iceland do make it into 3rd they will probably face the prospect of Germany or Spain waiting for them. 

So bye bye group F, I'm afraid.

Aljice
Perth Airport, on my way to France!