Nearly a week has passed without a message from me – Sorry. But this week has been pretty busy. As you already know, I’m doing this Erasmus Intensive Language Course in Burgas, Bulgaria. „Intensive“ is the right word for it – Every day from 8am to 1pm we are sitting in a class room at Burgas Free University and having class – like in school. And our teacher Salutska is giving us a hard time, as she speaks hardly English (and I think she doesn’t want to). We also have to repeat things in the afternoon, we won’t manage without.
You want to know who is „We“? At the moment we are a group of eight people, half male-female. Two students from Poland, two from Italy, one from Finland, Czech Republic and France. On Monday another three students from Spain shall arrive – I think they will have a really hard time in the language course, and we will have time to repeat.
A thing that’s really confusing is the alphabet – there are not only other characters, there are even two different alphabets: a printed and a written one, and both are used in printed form. Sounds confusing? It’s confusing. For example: The sound ‚d‘ has the printed characters ‚Д‘ and ‚д‘ and the written characters ‚D‘ and ‚g‘. ‚i‘ has ‚И‘ and ‚и‘, written ‚U‘ and ‚u‘. ‚t‘ has ‚Т‘ ‚т‘ or ‚M‘ ‚m‘. And so on.
Some words about the place where I’m staying: I’m still at Хотел Космос (Hotel Cosmos) in Бургас (Burgas). We were searching for a flat all week, but it’s really hard to get a flat for a month. Yesterday we visited a flat, where we would have lived with the owner (a 60-year old man). Actually the flat was quite pretty with a beatiful view on the black sea, but it was to small for us and some of us were anxious to live with such an old man in a flat. So apparently we will stay in the hotel all September. Fortunately it’s quite cheap.
The town itself is not very beatiful and there are just a few sightseeing spots. In the center you have a shopping area, which consists of two perpendicular pedestrian roads. There are just a few shopping malls, usually you just have small shops with very specialized variety of goods (like Clothes which is very common, Mobile phones or wall painting colors). You have those shops all over the town, so even the suburbs are quite lively. If I have more time I will write a longer report about Burgas with a lot of pictures. At the moment the beach is calling, so I try to be short.
Today I already hiked to one of the three lakes that surround Burgas. As a couchsurfer in Burgas (who is actually American, but lives here for two years now and is supporting doctors at a medical service for Gypies around Burgas) already told me, the Burgas Laks (which is to the west) is not worth seeing. It takes quite some time to go there by foot and you even have to cross a highway and than the view is not beautiful at all. The lake is an ugly, stinky, dirty spot. There were some fisherman, but I can’t imagine that there are still creatures in there. I don’t think that I would like to eat one of those.
On the way back I crossed an older suburban area near the lake and I actually found a „Вело Сервиз“ (say: Velo Service) and I bought a refurbished bicycle there. It looks like a bike from the 1970’s, but there’s an additional break (so it has front, back and back pedal break) and five gears. And it’s blue.
I have to take good care when cycling, the car drivers don’t take care (about anybody). It’s really hard to cross a street because zebra crossings are being ignored. Pavements next to the roads are not for walking but for parking, so using them is like an obstacle course.
So much for today, thanks for your attention :) I’m always pleased to read your comments, so keep on posting. See you next time!
Here you have some pictures:
 View of a street in Burgas – little shops, parking pavements |
 The Burgas Lake – a dirty spot |
 My new bicycle |