Bulgaria: Plovdiv

17 september 2013 - Plovdiv, Bulgarije

Plovdiv is said to be the oldest city in Europe. From the train station I walked to the hostel (bad streets and difficult with my suitcase) , I asked a couple the way and they walked with me all the way to the hostel , the guy helped me with my suitcase all the time. To thank them I gave two kisses (like in Spain), but I forgot , I was not in Spain anymore and for them it was awkward. I arrived at 4 and in the hostel (again Hostel Mostel) I saw one of the Koreans I was trying to avoid earlier , he was leaving in a few hours though. First I went back to the bus station to buy a ticket in advance, because the day after in the evening I would go to Edirne in Turkey, it was only about 15 euro to be in the bus for 4 hours and cross the border. To go to the train station I had to walk through a kind of boring neighbourhood, I thought is this all? At six I went to the free walking tour, again a girl gave the tour, she knew a lot about the city. In Plovdiv, especially the old city is really beautiful. There are parts of the Roman time that they still use nowadays for theaters and she told a story. There were two stages and in the past one was a fighting pit for animals, the animal that won they would send through a tunnel to the second fighting pit, where it would fight a human, very long ago of course, but amazing to be able to just walk there. Because it was discovered relatively late, underneath the old theatre is a road. I will post a picture of this the contrast is big. Plovdiv is also known because it has six big hills, and they are in the middle of the city. In the walking tour (and hostel) I met an old man, 73, he is still travelling with a backpack. I had seen him three times before throughout my journey. With him and an adult of America we went to eat something. We were really with 3 different generations, but once again while travelling it seems like even this age difference is not such a big difference. We had nice conversations and the older man gave me some tips on literature, I exchanged some psychological experiments and we had a nice time, eating italian food (not bulgarian haha).

The next morning I woke up early, the walking tour made me so enthusiastic, I thought I wouldn't have time to see everything. I started to walk into the old city, I wanted to walk around and go on top of the hills. When I asked a girl where to find a supermarket she walked with me and later introduced me to her friend, that day was her bday. We walked together for a while and at first they were going to join me to go on top of a hill but I sensed that they rather not so then we split up, I went to my hill and they went to do some bday things. The girl was 22 and she was really happy to talk English because she didn't have opportunities to practice before.
Plovdiv was just walking around, seeing beautiful things. The day I was there, there was a soccer match and people were singing in the street, forming big groups. Then I heard a kind of bomb explode, it made me scared because it exploded where I walked just a few minutes before. There was a lot of police in the street but they didn't do anything. I tried to find english-speaking people and in the end I did, they told me that they were fans of Lokomotiv Plovdiv, the soccer club. the police didn't do anything about the bomb, so I just moved out of that area. at six I had to be back at the hostel, I went to the bus station to leave Bulgaria and move on to the next adventure: Turkey and Istanbul.

Plovdiv was really amazing, in Bulgaria I really liked Veliko Tornovo and Plovdiv, I want to go back and see more small cities and also the cities at the seaside.

Before I went into the city, the older traveller, Paul, gave me a necklace from New-Zealand, from a shell I forgot the name of. He carried those with him to give to his fellow travellers. I was so touched and I liked it so much, it was a good start of my day.

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