So, after a horrible nights sleep (if it can even be called that), we caught the 6am train to Constanta to save some time and just get the hell out of Galati. So, of course we managed to sit in the wrong seats (and were still carrying around our watermelon from the Ukrainian couple) and after a couple of stops some people were trying to get us to move from what we thought was our seats. So, we are struggling to communicate when this 10 year old girl started speaking to us in perfect British English, even though just moments before she had been speaking Romanian. She told us we were in the wrong carriage. Hmm, it is pretty humbling to be told by a bilingual 10 year old girl that you haven't been able to correctly read a train ticket. Never did find out why she was hanging around in Romania. So, after dodging the hundreds of old people that are always hanging around bus and train stations in east Europe, trying to get you to stay in their apartment for like 10 euros, we managed to get to the edge of town. We got a couple of lifts very, very easily to just near the Romanian/Bulgarian border and walked over it. As we just stepped into Bulgaria we started to talking to a couple of young guys who had just left Romania for the first time. To have a beer 10 metres over the border. Anyways, we got another lift pretty much straight away with a carload of Romanians heading to the beach. Interesting people with some interesting views. For example, they complained at length about how everyone thinks that all Romanians are gypsies, that's so unfair, blah blah blah. Then after that, they proceeded to detail how incredibly untrustworthy the Bulgarians are and how you cant trust them for even a second. I mean really could they even hear themselves talking? These double standards are very commonplace in east Europe particularly.So, we got dropped in a fairly average hitchhiking spot outside of Varna and after a while we got a lift with a young guy. His English wasn't the best, but still pretty good, considering that in Bulgaria they use the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, which certianly makes learning any language that uses the Latin alphabet much harder. Felix and I asked him what he did for a living. He said "I don't know if I should say", but after some prompting, he said "I give pleasure to people". WTF? Had we gotten a ride with a young gigolo? However, just as I was formulating some questions on how to break into this industry, he elaborated and it was revealed that he was a drug dealer. Well, whatever he was giving us a lift. I have no idea what he was selling, but based on the massive beach culture in Varna, I would say it was of the harder variety. He dropped us off in town, and hoped out to see us off, or so I thought. He had a small bag cloth bag with him and asked us "Would you like something else?". We just laughed and said no. We didn't have any info on how to hitch out of Varna, so we just walked south until we came to a service station. We were hanging out there for about an hour, with no luck, trying to get a lift to Bergas, when two more hitchhikers arrived. I invited them over and they turned out to be french (and crazy, a pretty standard combination) cousins, hitching all over the place. They were also going to Bergas, which presented something of a problem, as now there was 4 of us all trying to get to the same place. Half heartedly I walked over to a guy and asked if he was headed to Bergas. He was. And he had space for all 4 of us! Yay! It seemed fated to be. He even pulled over into a gas station and bought us all redbulls. Nice guy. So, with our new friends we wandered around the city and bought some food (and beer and whiskey of course), and headed down to the beach to find a suitable partying/sleeping spot. No worries. So, we talked and drank and lay down on the sand when we were tired...
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| Hmmm, tough choice for which party... |
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