Ramblings and Blog Police

 Below are some ramblings about life in Bulgaria, blogs, and travel - in no particular order. 

I don't think there is such a thing as "Blog Police" but in a small way I think there should be - specifically to make sure that people who have blogs keep up with writing them.  I can't believe that Jeff and I have written a whopping total of 7 blogs this year (and it's almost June!).  And we didn't write any during February and March.  I guess things have been a bit busy. 

I've just gone through all of our writings since moving to Sofia, and I saw that we promised a lot of posts on our travels abroad.  And somehow, we haven't fulfilled those promises.  I just wrote down as many of our travels and/or memorable events I think we should write a blog post about and came up with 35(!) at minimum.  This is where I figure the Blog Police could have helped us out by ticketing us every time we waited 3 months or more to write about an event.  Maybe the ticket would actually be an automatic post that says snide things about our character or posts embarrassing pictures of us or even tells outright lies that we would need to clear up ASAP, or better yet, maybe we would be fined and that money would be used to offset our (ginormous) carbon footprint or it would be donated to a worthwhile charity (like those poor Blog Police who have to keep track of the millions of blogs out there). 

One of the things I think we have done pretty well on our blog is to write posts about every day life - not just our whirlwind travels.  So, my list of 35+ includes a few of the things we've done in and around Sofia.  I would truly love to be able to post regular blogs (maybe weekly) that include not only our travels, but also our thoughts about world news, little pieces of our every-day lives, something we thought was funny, profound insights, inane stories, or anything we think you, dear reader, will enjoy reading.  I thought with changing jobs this school year, that I would have more time to devote to keeping our blog updated.  Not so, apparently. 

Well, we have 2 more months in Bulgaria/Europe, then we will be back in the good ole US of A.  For those of you who haven't heard yet, we are moving to Massachusetts at the end of August.  Jeff will be teaching science and starting a sustainability program at a prestigious boarding school and I (hopefully) will be finding my way back into the GIS world.  The past several months were a whirlwind of Jeff having Skype interviews AND being flown back to the States for on-campus interviews - twice.  Definitely some highs and lows in those experiences but ultimately, Jeff was offered 3 different jobs!  It was so nice to be sought after in this stunted economy. 

We will be done with our work here at the end of June, then we plan to travel around Europe during July.  Our flight back to the States puts us back in Colorado on July 31.  Then we'll be travelling around the States during August and back to work by the end of August.  Our biggest trip this summer is a week-long hike through the Swiss Alps (staying in huts along the way).  This has been a dream of our since we honeymooned in Switzerland and Italy in 2008.  We also plan to visit Slovenia, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Budapest (all on our bucket list!).  In the US, we will be in Colorado for a few days to see my family, hopefully Yellowstone and Bozeman for a few days, San Francisco for a wedding, Minneapolis to see my sister and her family, and a variety of places in Michigan to see Jeff's family.  Whirlwind.


I'm rambling.  I guess my point of this post was to say that I'm sorry we haven't been posting regularly and I hope to change that.  Today Jeff is on a Hiking Club excursion with some students (I refused to get up at 6AM on a Saturday, so I didn't go), and I promised him that I would try to get a couple of blog posts written while he's out enjoying what Bulgaria has to offer.  I'm trying to decide if I should write about the oldest topic and move forward or if I should write about last weekend and go backward.  Or maybe I'll mix it up and do this in no particular order! 

And if Jeff and I are good about writing, hopefully there will be blog posts about all of these things!  And if we are not good about writing, maybe the Blog Police will help us donate to offset our ridiculously huge carbon footprint...


It's a beautiful day in Sofia - around 70 degrees and sunny.  Nice after having a couple of weeks of cold rain.  The chestnut trees and lilac bushes are in full bloom - the scents around me are heady!  Our campus is an island of vivid bright green surrounded by city.  We are blessed to be living in such a lovely place!


Наздраве!

Holiday Travel is Awesome, Part 2 (of 3): Verona

(This is part 2 of a three part story. See part 1 here and part 3 here.)

The trip to Innsbruck was supposed to be 6 hours from Milan, with 2 connections, getting us there at 10pm. Our first train out of Milan was cancelled. Then the next train out of Milan was cancelled. After waiting in the long ticket line (Thanks Milano Centrale Santa!), we got a ticket on a third train, and that managed to depart only 70 minutes late. Welcome to Verona, Italy! Fictional home to Romeo and Juliet!

By now we’d of course missed our connection. Must stand in another long ticket line in Verona. Get directed to different long line, this time for “train information.” Informed that the only way we’d get to Innsbruck in the next 24 hours was if we stood in long line #1 again, exchanged our onward Italian ticket for one on a German train set to leave at 1:00 am. Yes, leave Verona at 1:00 am, three hours after we thought we would be in Innsbruck. Keep in mind that we were paying for a hotel in Innsbruck (whose reception closed before midnight), and we might still be paying for a hotel in Venice. Given the late hour, we chose to upgrade to the fold-down seat option (“couchette”) on the train, giving us a make-shift bed for a few hours that night until we could stumble into our Innsbruck hotel room.

We had 5 hours to kill on a frigid Sunday night in Verona. We didn’t think anything would be open in the city, so went down to the train station McDonald’s. I know, I know, but at least McDonald’s had heat. And maybe wi-fi. Our Bulgarian cell phones wouldn’t work (thanks Vivatel, for not even giving us the option of paying through the nose for roaming charges). None of the shops that might sell a SIM card for the Italian cell phone networks were open. Neither could we buy a calling card for the pay phones. Internet cafes in town were closed on Sunday night. If we could just get on the internet, we could figure out how to contact Meghan & Justin to tell them we would not be meeting them in Innsbruck that evening, and maybe be able to call/write our hotel in Innsbruck to beg for a late check-in and or room cancellation.

Below: Can you tell how happy Shannon and I are to be at the Verona train station McDonald's? Mmm, mmm, can't wait to get me one of those "il Mac"s.

McDonald’s has wifi. It is free. But you need a password. And you can only get a password by getting a text message sent to your Italian mobile phone. If we had an Italian mobile phone, we would have used it to call our hotel! I would have happily paid to use their internet, but there was no way to use their free service. Grr. Happily an English-Italian traveler eventually helped us with the pay phone (calling internationally from a pay phone using coins is harder than you might think), and we were able to call the hotel in Innsbruck to warn them of our late arrival.

Below: Shannon and I had an impromptu photo contest to see who could best capture the mood of the moment from our seats in McDonald's. Some of our favorites are below. In the middle picture, note how excited the girl on the right is to also be stuck at McDonald's, and that the girl on the left appears to be camping for the night. The bottom picture is the douchey guys sitting next to us, who of course left their trash on the table.

At 10:30 pm they kicked us out and closed McDonald’s. Out into the cold station. The only semi-warm place was the waiting room, which reminded me of a 1970s DMV waiting room, except the only people waiting to get their licenses renewed were winos who had recently soiled themselves.

Oh, the stench! Sweat, stale smoke, urine, shit. Too many people packed in, watching the sad old monitor blink more train delays. Every so often you’d get overwhelmed by the humanity, flee the room for some fresh air and space, only to humiliatingly shuffle back to suck up some fetid warmth.

As it got later and later in the evening, the ratio of stranded passengers to actual winos decreased, while the stench increased. We couldn’t take it anymore, so we decided to go walk around Verona. We figured everything would be shuttered up, but at least the exercise might keep us warm.

Up next - Part 3: "Where the hell is the train?"

Holiday Travel is Awesome, Part 3 (of 3): "Where the hell is the train?"

(This is part 3 of this story. See part 1 here and part 2 here.)

Here begins the the only fun part of the evening. Walking around Verona (yes, the same Verona where Romeo and Juliet were so unhappily in love) was quite lovely.

(Below) Shannon trying to enjoy streetlife in Verona, around 11pm on an icy December Sunday night.

(Above) Christmas tree, shuttered Christmas Market, and the old City Gate in Verona, Italy

The streets were decorated for Christmas, there was a public outdoor ice skating rink next to the giant Christmas tree, and a flashy lingerie store located immediately in front of the giant Roman amphitheater.

(Below) Verona: The 3rd Largest extant Roman Amphitheater (holds 20,000 people, still used today), next to a swanky lingerie store.

We would like to go back there in the daytime and/or summer. Unfortunately a sign at the train station that we only sort of understood (our Italian isn’t very good) seemed to warn that they would close the train station at midnight. How could they close the train station at midnight when a train was coming at 1am? Whatever, stranger things have happened, so we hustled back to the station.

At around 12:30 am the Caribinieri (Italian cops…but there are several different layers of Italian cops, and I think these are the lowest on the totem pole…somewhat like traffic cops) closed down the waiting room, kicking everyone out into the train platforms. It was interesting seeing another woman waiting for our train spend 10-15 minutes arguing with the Caribinieri about how they couldn’t just close down the station and make us wait in the cold. (They apparently could, and did.) I don’t think US cops would let someone argue like that…they’d just arrest her for disturbing the peace or something.

Oh well, we could wait 30 more minutes. There was another German train on the platform parked and waiting, whose sign said it was going to Innsbruck and then Munich, just like ours was supposed to. I tried to ask the conductor if this was our train, but no. Weird. This phantom train wasn’t even on the train schedule. Our train was delayed. And delayed. The new time came and went, and they didn’t bother putting up new delays on the board anymore (that would have required there still being employees at the station). There were some families with small kids waiting who were dressed worse than us, unprepared for the subfreezing weather.

We were so tired. We were so cold. I ran up and down the length of the train platform a few times in a pathetic attempt to get warm. The train didn’t come. The other train to Innsbruck was still waiting on the platform. Something strange was going on. I had a revelation: on our way to Istanbul on a previous trip, I knew our train split up at some point, with half the train going to Romania. Maybe this was the same thing, with this train waiting to join up with our nowhere-to-be-seen train. I tried asking the conductor in my foggily-remembered German (with the aid of plenty of hand gestures). “Werden dieses Zug und die anderen Zug zusammen sein?”

Ja?

I was right! “Können wir on dieses Zug warten? Es ist nicht so kalt.” Yes! We could at least wait on this other train, where it was much less cold!

I went out and tried to explain this (in German) to the others waiting for the train, especially the man with the 3 small underdressed children. Another man tried to talk to me in Italian, but I couldn’t explain, so he found a man who spoke both German and Italian to translate (welcome to the Tower of Babel). Everyone piled onto the second train to wait, cramming into the hallways and baggage areas. I can’t believe that the second train had been there for hours and no one else from the train had offered to us to wait onboard (it was only us left at the station) and that no one else waiting had tried to ask what I did.

Our train finally came, only 1.5 hours late (now 2:30 am). Finally, warmth and some sleep! Except not really. Our reserved couchette seats that we paid $50 extra for? “No, they are full,” reprimanded one stern German conductor. She didn’t bother explaining to us where we should go, just seemed annoyed that we had the temerity to want to use our own seats. There were some “regular” seats available in an unheated car, but those cabins (and their occupants) smelled too horrible. After standing around confused and tired for 30+ minutes, and seeing that no one from the train was going to offer us any direction, Shannon and I decided the least unpleasant option was to sit on our luggage in the overflow bicycle storage area. At least it was heated and didn’t smell bad. Welcome to life in steerage.

Shannon, in steerage at about 3 am.

Eventually the one friendly conductor (who I’d seen earlier arguing with the nasty female one about the need to find somewhere to put the family with 3 small children) found a few seats in a heated compartment (not our couchettes, mind you). I managed to get an hour or two of fitful sleep, though I don’t think Shannon did. I tried to set my alarm for what time I thought we would be at Innsbruck, but we had so many delays it was futile. Hopefully they would announce the stations. Nope. At one point I looked out and realized we had stopped at Innsbruck. Shit! Race to throw on shoes, grab luggage, and jump off the train before we ended up in Munich.

Helloooo, Innsbruck! The train station in Innsbruck had heated waiting rooms (even the bathrooms were heated!) and wi-fi available for free from a café. If we’d been stuck for hours at the Innsbruck station, life would have been much less unpleasant. We quickly walked to our hotel as the city woke up, getting there at 6:30 am, only 8.5 hours late. Looks like a nice town – we looked forward to exploring it eventually.

The lovely morning view of Innsbruck from in front of our hotel.

Three cheers for Innsbruck's Hotel Breinössl. Though their front desk had closed at 11:00pm, they left us a key (at this point they had re-opened for the morning, but we hadn’t expected that). The room was much nicer than we expected too. We showered, had our free hotel breakfast, and crashed.

By the time we got to Innsbruck, Meghan & Justin had already left for Vienna, so we didn’t get to meet up with them, but we would have been too exhausted to ski anyway. Sad. Maybe next year.

So, our misadventure by the numbers…

1 canceled flight

1 closed airport

1 delayed flight

2 canceled trains

3 delayed trains

2 hotels booked that we couldn’t use, in 2 different countries

2 couchette seats that we paid for but didn’t get (Deutsches Bahn, I’m coming after you!)

No Venice.

No visit with friends (which was most of the point of this trip!).

8+ hours spent waiting in subfreezing temperatures for trains that wouldn’t come.

Snow? Not that much snow, actually. Where is this big storm? We’ve only seen a few inches anywhere we’ve been.

On the plus side, Verona seemed nice. Oh and it sure is nice to finally be in Austria.

Happy Post-script: I’m writing this 24 hours later, and life is much improved. I much prefer being in Austria than traveling to Austria. After our morning nap, we had a nice stroll through some Christmas markets in the impossibly cute old town, drank hot mulled wine, and took in a Christmas concert at a local church. We had a really hard time staying warm all day…it was cold (about 20° F), but not that cold. I think all of our energy reserves were just shot. Today we slept in, and the sun is shining. Maybe we’ll do some skiing this week, but right now that sounds too cold. Happy update…we just found out the Venice Hotel did not charge us! Thanks, Ca’ San Giorgio! Please give them your business!

We expect to spend Christmas in Salzburg, trying to avoid any unnecessary train travel. We hope you’re all with the people that are important to you over the holidays! Frühe Weinachten!