awesome place (internet is working... yay!)

i have just returned from one of the most stunning european cities i have ever been to and am seriously struggling to jump some super tall mental hurdles related to coming back to my less-than-spectacular new place of residence. a friend i met here stated their heart felt like it was sinking a little bit every time they had to return to their town. for the first time, my heart felt like that today.
ealier this week, i hiked up north to a lovely place. this stop was an added excursion to a ‘regional’ teaching meeting i had to attend in a another town in the vicinity. i had to be present at this meeting, or go back to the capital for my originally assigned regional meeting (neither of which is close to my town, with the capital being almost twice as expensive to get to). i am the only person from my training group in my region, so i spit out a bit of jibberish to get myself out of the meeting in the capital and, instead, to the meeting in this country's “little sausage”.

other volunteers were going to be there, so i persuaded a few of them to extend the trip, ahem… illegally… and we enjoyed two nights in this lovely place- an increasingly touristy ‘hot spot’ for prospective british home buyers and other wackos (people generally of the ‘pensioner generation’ traversing the cobblestone paths with their canes trying not to kill themselves) who end up there in clumpy tourist groups. funny story about british people to come, don’t miss it in future blog! while the trip was fantastic, today was less so. maybe it was the 5.5 hour travel time on one train and two different buses. i must say that if there is an obvious lack of endearing qualities about my town, i am slowly beginning to embrace the fact that it is seriously impossible to travel to and from. this is actually a plus for me- i mean, heck, i must be nuts if i am going to complain about the fact that i can’t travel to places like this lovely town without literally having to spend two nights there.

here’s why:

to go anywhere outside of the surrounding vicinity of my town takes at least two buses. buses back into my town are rare, the last one being at 5:30 on weekdays and 3:00 on weekends. so, if i miss the last bus, i am stuck wherever i am at that moment. (i won’t mention train schedules, because i suspect there are more frequent trains, but i have only just started venturing into the madness that is the train system, so for now, we’ll roll with the hideous bus schedule complaining bit). this means, that usually, unless i can catch trains to get me to bigger stations nearby in time to get me to the closest bus station to my town before 5:15 ish, i am screwed! ha. in actuality, i am looking at it as a wonderful excuse to be out of site (an official no-no) for longer… BONUS!

(persuasive, huh?)

so, last night, this came in real handy. for some reason, (ok, well there was a reason- I was perusing the old fortress where csars used to run the place) i ‘accidentally’ missed the 8:54 train out of the lovely town yesterday morning. this would have lead to a series of unfortunate consequences later in the day had i decided to forge ahead with my plans to leave, like me missing all of my connecting buses to my town and winding up stranded in another town, a far less enchanting place that only has life-sized chess games in the central park working in its favor. i’d hardly say this was a bummer for me though, because i immediately seized the opportunity to stay in this lovely town for another night!

i think that one of the highlights of my time here so far was walking around last night, absorbing the amazing historical and hilly cobblestone paths, the vendors selling non-junky, attractive traditional bulgarian crafts and sitting at a café overlooking the beautiful gorge below me… drinking a beer that cost me $1. yep, one buck. clearly, it was awful for me. i even had the whole hostel to myself. =)
(a view from the hostel's balcony)
included are a few pictures of this Disney-esque town that is a hop, skip and a train ride away from me, though you may blame those who I expect to visit for the limited selection of photos included here… it is just too beautiful a place to reveal all of its charms via blog. even if i included all of the 100 or so photos i took, they would in no way do this lovely town justice. it is simply stunning.

august has been quite the adventurous month for me, which is perfectly as i hoped it would be. so much of the motivation that brought me here (and all that keeps me here some days) stems from the wonderful opportunities to explore that are offered by endless amounts of free time and very few financial obligations i seem to exhibit during the summer.

at any rate, school starts on the 15th and i anticipate i will be forced to speak more in my site starting that day.