Back on the Road

Well, with the “Summer of George” in Bulgaria over, I departed my beachside life, and got on the road again! My first post-Varna was one of the more unique places of the world. Located just over the Romanian border, this was my third and final visit to…

VAMA VECHE

Vama Veche would have to be one of the world’s best kept secrets, quite a phenomenon! The place is mainly frequented by Romanians, who are super friendly and mostly speak English. It truly is one of the last places in Europe where being an Aussie is a novelty!

Located on the Black Sea, there is nothing much to the place, except the three month 24/7 beach party held over summer! The bars blare out tunes around the clock, predominately heavy metal, live Romanian hip hop, electro and the usual classics (AC/DC included…Romanians love a bit of Back in Black!).

The sandy beach is the dance floor…right up to the tide, and there are no passengers, everyone is cutting shapes out there!

Grandparents walking around in heavy metal t-shirts, petit girls walking around huge freak wolf dogs, guys zapped forward in time from the Viking age, any character you can think of can be found at Vama Veche! A lot of the bars have beds outside them to crash on, only to be woken in the morning by the bar staff with a coffee…service! Or you can camp for free on the beach, either in a tent or fully clothed face down in the sand! It’s a place like no other…

At the end of a nights proceedings, when you do find your place to crash out (for me, the beach), you get approximately three hours sleep before you wake up with a mouth full of sand and the sun beating down on you ….oh and a plethora of people surrounding you, prepped for a days sunbaking. Did I mention they were naked…no…I should have! (Which is both good and bad…they are not ALL supermodels…or female)…

With all my luggage with me this time round, I left my clothes in a friend’s tent, and my valuables with some heavily tattooed and leather/denim clad biker blokes, behind the counter at a Bikie Bar that was pumping out the weightiest of Heavy Metal! My valuables consisted of my laptop, iPod, personal journals and passports…important stuff…but being a Bikie Bar, I slipped a bottle of Scotch in the bag as a decoy…if they were going to steal anything, it would be the Scotch!

After a weekend of adhering to the above conditions, we dragged our shattered and sunburnt corpses to the road, in the hope of hitching a ride. We successfully stopped a vehicle! A tip, if you hitch at a bus stop, a bus will pull up for you! After a one hour stop through a little town called Mangalia, where we dined at a restaurant with a stray dog seated at the table, we got a connecting bus to our next destination…

CONSTANTA

We got to Constanta still resembling zombies. The mini bus was filled with eager elderly Romanians, seemingly being shipped in for the free Sunday buffet lunch at the local casino. We were instantly lost on arrival, and stopped a bench to study a map. We were quickly on the move as a Gypsy woman chased us with an outstretched hand. We finally found a suitably dank internet café. It was like Gorillas in the mist down there, everyone was smoking whilst playing online poker, how found my allocated computer is a mystery!

After getting an address, we finally got to the one and only hostel in town, which of course was booked solid! Nightmare! They let us sleep on the concrete floor in the garden free of charge. Fine for one night, okay for two, but I tell you the whiplash after three…

There was not a lot to do in Constanta as a tourist. There are a lot of off-white coloured blocks of flats. There are shops around town. They sell ice-cream….oh, and they also have trees. We had met some awesome locals when in Vama Veche, who were kind enough to show us around to the nicer parts, via an air conditioned car, so all was not lost, free accommodation, our own tour guides, and like I said, they have trees.

CHISINAU

The trip to Chisinau was hellish! A mini-bus was our mode of transport, and the splitting headache I was nursing was a bad travel accessory. Ten hours in a packed mini-bus, no leg room, and on a bumpy dirt road the entire way.

We got into Chisinau at 3:30am…some three hours earlier than expected. Getting through the Moldovan border had been quicker than expected. Perhaps the ridiculously big hats the officers wear help with efficiency. Getting in early was both good and bad. It was good, as I was no longer getting thrown around the bus, but it was bad as it was dark, nothing was open, we had no local currency and no one spoke English!

I managed to somehow negotiate via sign-language a taxi fare in Euro currency, and we set off for the hostel. As it turned out, the driver could barely see! He could not read my notated address, or see the map! He held it close to his eyes, far away from them, put on his cars’ high beam light and took the map to them; he even borrowed my glasses….nothing!

We finally got to the address, and the taxi driver knocked on the door. A very angry Old Russian man opened the door and hurled a torrent of abuse at us, with the words (no hostel, no hostel) mingled into his dialect. FARK! We let the cabbie go. There was a slight fear he might drive us into a shop or a tree or something that would make a “Bang” type sound effect!

The streets were dark, and every dog in Moldova barked at us as we passed! We walked over to the other side of town, where the Lonely Planet said there was a 24hour internet café. BABOOM! The “24 Hour” internet café was there, but didn’t open until 8am! It was 5am! We tried the next one. We came, we saw, we were yet again conquered…by an abandoned/derelict building…BABOOM!

We trawled back the high street to McDonalds. Now I am not a McDonald’s enthusiast by any means, in fact I despise it. However, for that hour, I had joined a small group of McDonald’s fanatics in queuing up outside waiting for the doors to open! Just when you think life can’t get any lower! We resisted the mad scramble at being the first through the door! Once in, I was able to get online with my laptop and find another hostel.

Chisinau is served by a bunch of mini-buses for public transport. We got on a full one to get to the hostel. With my entire luggage, and no where to put it, I was the picture of awkwardness! As the bus hit a corner, I could do nothing as I toppled onto an elderly ladies lap, before swinging myself up. At the next corner, I slid down (seemingly in slow motion) on the wet floor under the same ladies seat. For ten minutes there, I was a slapstick comedy star! And for the cherry on the cake, I bumped my head on the door of the bus on my way out, for all to see! The bus only cost 9 cents though…they all got a good show for that!

We finally reached the mall next to our hostel, aptly named MALLDOVER….no doubt there would have been a lot of high-fives in the boardroom when they came up with this name for the mall! After nearly seven hours, we finally checked into a hostel and passed out! As for the Lonely Planet…it now sits in a bin…Lonely Liar!

Moldova was great after this, and a real pleasant place. It is not a tourist friendly place, there is no signage, or tourist information centre, but the people were nice enough. The ability to buy live kittens off old ladies on the street is novel, though I went for the ice-cream option. The locals do stare a lot…maybe it was because they were reading my mind when I was imagining what life would be like if I wore a leopard skin tie and a toga, I can’t be sure…

ODESSA

Thankfully the bus to Odessa was a regular coach….except a burnt orange one from the 1970’s. It swayed from side to side a good 2-3 metres, and I am pretty sure I got sea sick from it! It was a nice enough ride though, apart from the fucker in front of me who kept driving his seat into my knees. Getting through customs took a good hour and a half. Hard to say which guards wear bigger headwear, Moldovan or Ukrainian…I was expecting more from the Ukrainians in the hat department, disappointing.

On arrival into Odessa, I attempted haggling with three Taxi drivers, who then started aggressively haggling amongst themselves whilst we went and caught the tram! Getting off the tram was an absolute nightmare. It just so happened that the stop we wanted to disembark at, was conversely the stop that 200 Saturday night revellers wanted to get on!

We went for the front door, but only into a sea of oncoming people, and one Russian man hurling abuse at us with a single shaking fist! ‘Okay’, I said, ‘we are not meant to go that way’, so we turned around, only to see a bigger wall of people heading our way! We had to forcibly push our way through, generating much abuse, insults and name calling in Russian. We finally reached the door and jumped clear into the space outside. We looked back at the tram to a sea of angry faces and shaking heads looking our way, and as the door closed, the last man on shouted out in good humour “Welcome to Odessa”

Odessa was quite a cool town. I expected boarded up windows and gunshots whistling by the ears…but no, just the usual European town really…’sigh’. We saw the famous Potemkin steps, the port, and the beach, an Irish pub, some cars, a stray dog, power lines and chewing gum on the footpath…picturesque. The beach played home to many tight Speedos from the 80’s, and sly guys next to their sleeping girlfriends, pointing their camera's at the nearest girls...

We met some local guys at a kebab stand, and asked them if they knew anywhere cool to play pool. They took us to an old school pool hall, with all wooden furnishings. It was great. I played a few games, and went back home to bed as I was still sick. It would appear the locals were also gradually leaving, one by one, until it was just my boys there…..and the bill! Naturally, they legged it back to the hostel, and we are now banned from playing pool anywhere in Ukraine!

From Odessa, I caught a 27 hour ferry to Istanbul. I somehow ended up giving a Russian ginger haired kid English lessons, whilst he explained to me the best ways of drinking Vodka.

They seated me for meal times with a Russian family. Silence has never been so deafening! When I sat down, the kid looked to the mother, the mother looked to the father, the father looked at me, shrugged, looked to the mother, the mother looked to the kid, the kid looked at me, looked to his father…I was halfway through the main course by this stage!

Hope everyone is sound and enjoying winter! I am currently in Greece and off to Albania now...not sure what to expect there, who knows!

Mossy Out…

The Varna Story

Well, I never expected to spend longer than 3 days in Varna, Bulgaria. Three months later, I am leaving behind one of the best summers of my life, having met a lot of awesome people, and having gained an appreciating for a new level of laziness. So how the hell did this all come about…

ESCAPE FROM BUCHAREST

After fleeing from the black hole that is Bucharest, I had eight hours of train travel ahead of me. I first had to change trains in Ruse, just over the Bulgarian border. As soon as I stepped off the train, I was surrounded by Gypsies and sly Taxi Drivers (hard to say which is worse), hassling me for money! I got back on the train until the Police cleared me a path (although they too were trying to get money off of me).

After a 2 hour wait at the station watching every dodgy person like a hawk, I finally got my train. The train was going to BAPHA…which I guessed was Cyrillic for VARNA. If only I could guess Lotto numbers with equal success!

I shared my six seat cabin with a shifty looking Bulgarian man. His eyes would dart between my eyes, and my luggage. At one stage, he got up to speak to the conductor in the corridor (out of ear shot), whilst side glancing at me. A slight concern, to say the least…especially when he slipped the conductor some money! My grip on my belongings tightened! However he was off at the next station, and the cabin became my very own lair!

WELCOME TO VARNA

It was great to finally make it to the Black Sea coast…to any coast really! After a week of being surrounded by foreign language, it was extremely refreshing to enter a hostel bubbling with English banter! These collections of voices were soon chanting “Amos, Amos, Amos…” as the Dave the Hostel owner poured Vodka down my throat through an engine oil funnel. This is the traditional Flag Hostel welcome you see. I kept it tame for the rest of the night…apart from two hours later when we were all naked from playing strip poker and vodka drinking games (well my poker hand allowed me to keep a couple of garments on...everyone else was in the draft though!). There was a gathering movement amongst the group to storm into town whilst naked and sing Stairway to Heaven, but this was only thwarted by the collective coma everyone soon slipped into…

JOB OFFER

The next day, the whole hostel spent the day together sweating out vodka on the beach. It was my first time on the beach in two years, and it felt good. Whether this is because the air was fresh, the water warm and the sun shining…or because all the girls were topless, I am not sure, I just knew I had to stay. I asked for a job 32 seconds after coming to this realisation. The answer was, “yes, when can you start?”….

THE JOB

My daily routine in Varna, loosely involved the following: Wake up in a cold sweat, trying to shake the iron grip the Vodka has on me. “Work” for four hours (which generally involved sleeping on the couch). Hit the beach to refresh and energise myself, before another night of the local drink, FLIRT VODKA! Vicious cycle that…

Of course, when I am not sleeping on the couch whilst on shift, I do actually DO shit. I have a range of tasks, ranging from observing from the balcony Randy (the male stray cat of the yard) shag 5-6 felines per shift, sussing out which of the weeks guests is the appropriate official “Wanker of the Week” (hey, they get their own wallpaper on the hostel computer), and trying to master the A Major chord on the out of tune communal guitar.

Every now and again someone knocks on the door, so after a lot of cursing and swearing, and sometimes throwing some fine china at the wall, I get up and answer the door as well…

LIVING IN VARNA

Varna really is like no other place I have been. In an effort to blend in, I attempted learning the language. I mastered the Cyrillic alphabet. I was rapt, I was able to read all the words, problem was, those words were still unfamiliar….not one to try too hard, I gave up at the second barrier. I knew two words, Merci, and Ciao, and they aren't even Bulgarian.

Living in Varna was quite a satisfying experience however, and allowed me to achieve a goal of living in a foreign speaking environment. Varna really is the complete opposite of London. One is cheap, and one knee caps you. One is hot and sunny, and so is the other one, but only once or twice a decade. You can have a pleasant walk down the street in one, or tackle a rugby scrum to get to the local shop in the other. And most telling, one has a beach, with topless sun bathers, and according to official polls, the fourth most beautiful women in the world; the other has the Thames, with old drunkards flashing passing joggers.

I managed to join a gym with one of my room-mates in Varna. We never really fit in for a variety of reasons. One, we wore shoes. Two, we wore pants. Three, we wore T-Shirts. Four, we did not wear tight Speedo’s. Five, we did not stop everything and dance and sing to the latest Bulgarian pop tune when it come over the radio. Yes, we were the Gym outcasts! The ring leader, who can only be described as ‘Meatball in Speedos’, was glad to get rid of the clothed intruders, so he could continue to train the next generation of mafia coming through…

UNIQUE TO VARNA

As you may have gathered from my notes in the past, Varna is totally controlled by the Bulgarian mafia, who have their HQ in Varna. They control all the big money spinners, the nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, real estate, drugs, and of course, how can we forget, they also run all the ice cream vendors! This is particularly cut throat, where they demand all vendors sell their ice cream at $1.30 per 100 grams…or else…(I’m guessing their best move is to unplug the freezer)…

The mafia own the building the hostel is in. The hostel owner meets them in a café each month to give them rent, of which they provide a receipt for half that amount! They launder the rest! In essence, they ‘own’ the hostel, and so I can establish that I therefore was ‘working’ for the mafia. How glamourous! As a result, I used to wear a black T-Shirt to work, and bling it right up…and there would be no greeting at the door, just a sly nod…

While the mafia are not a problem, it’s the mafia wannabes that can be trouble. You can spot them with their cheap market rings, henchmen struts, Godfather ringtones, and crooked “fashionable” mullets. We have had run-ins with these phonies! One of my friends had a gun pulled on him over an argument about a stool (the kind you sit on that is), and I even had one come up to me and punch me repeatedly in the chest. It was a blessing in disguise however, as I had had chicken wings for dinner, and one was lodged in my left wind pipe, so he was able to dislodge it with his blows…I thanked him and left!

There are thousands of stray dogs and cats in Varna. The dogs are the next in line from the Mafia, in the Varna hierarchy. The dogs are all tagged and super friendly. Our special dog was #563...or Samson, as we called him. He would follow us everywhere at night. He would even wait outside the bars for us, hours on end. He was a good dog until the incident (sigh). He got some gum stick to his belly, and to his face. We all instantly knew this was the end of a beautiful friendship, and struck up a friendship with a new dog, a better dog, a cleaner dog….Blackie (although he had a slight limp, so we didn't keep him around for long…)

MAKING ENDS MEET

Bulgaria is the second cheapest country in Europe (cheers to that…chink!). So while I was only getting a free bed for my “job”, the cost of everything else was minimal. Beers are $1 a 500ml stubby (for something decent), or $3 for a big 3L bottle (of something rank and undrinkable). I usually went for the latter option. Of course when beer had lost its lustre, Vodka was always there. At $12 a litre for Flirt Vodka, this powerful stuff would always ensure a heavy night. The day after a night on the vodka would generally involve scrubbing footprints off the ceiling, putting the fourth leg back in the table, erasing video memory cards and repairing the light shade after its function as a Tarzan rope the previous night…

THE END

Unfortunately my time in Varna has come to an end and I am back on the road. I was, in effect, working for a dead ringer for Basil Fawlty (personality wise that is), and it all got too much, so all the staff have now left, replaced with cheap imitations from Spain! It is good to be on the move again, and if I had my time over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Not even my undies.