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First trip to Istanbul

Donnerstag, Oktober 23rd, 2008

Already Thursday … and still no report about last weekend. Shame on me. But now it’s time, because the next weekend is arriving, with new exciting experiences (at least I hope so – it will start with an evening/night hiking tour on Friday and will lead to the CouchSurfing-meeting in Borovets).
So last weekend we went to Istanbul, supposed to be the largest city in Europe with over 14 million inhabitants. I heard a lot of good things about this city beforehand, and I have to say, I was not disappointed. Istanbul is not far away from Bulgaria, it’s 8-10 hours by bus. Sure, I would have preferred a train – but the bus was way faster and cheaper and there are several buses a day and not only one. And supposedly it was more comfortable. I was really impressed … Bord service, more the enough room for my feet, comfortable seats. I would never have thought that I would enjoy an 8 hour travel by bus. And it was really cheap – only 40Лв (about 20€) per direction.
What really was annoying, was the border control which took one hour. We had to show our passports five times (on the way back only four times) and I even had to buy a visa for 15€ (which I knew beforehand, I always check the homepage of the Austrian ministry for foreign affairs before travelling to another country). My visa is valid for three months, so I have to go there again soon – maybe already next week.
At our arrival at 6am we were greeted by the morning-prayer of the next mosque. After getting a map and a ticket for public transport we tried to reach the sea before sunrise – what we unfortunately didn’t manage. But we had breakfast at the sea. Very nice.


Too late for sunrise, but impressive anyway.
Small ships, old rusty ships and in the background the city in morning fog.
Some ships at the marmara-sea are waiting for their day work.

Some days before we went to Istanbul we had dinner at my CouchSurfer’s place again and we met a Turkish guy there who gave us a lot of tips what we have to visit in Istanbul. So we went on a sightseeing-trip – The Blue Mosque or Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built 1609-1616 was our first spot, directly followed by the Hagia Sophia which was built over a millenium earlier in 532-537 as church and has been converted to a Mosque after the takeover of the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Both are very impressive buildings.


The Blue Mosque, seen from the Hagia Sophia
The Hagia Sophia, seen from the Blue Mosque

Inside the Blue Mosque
The Hagia Sophia from the Gallery

So, I will not continue with too much details, this would take too long, and I just want to write an article for my blog and not a book. Next I want to show you some pictures of the Bosporus, the sea connection of Black Sea and Mediterranean and the view of the surrounding quarters. They really offer some impressive views of hilly Istanbul. It doesn’t matter to which direction you look, you can only see populated area. It’s crazy.


Dolmabahçe Palace

The Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, seen from the asian side

What else is worth telling about? We have been to The Grand Bazaar which has been built in 1455-1461. It’s really huge, but very touristic at most places. But there are some hidden quarters, which are worth seeing. Anyway, it’s very impressive.

On Saturday I left Europe for the first time in my life :) We went to the Asian side. I think it’s different from the other side were we came from … but it’s more like another quarter of the town as being ‚Asian‘. What we noticed in whole Istanbul, but especially on the Asian side: People are very friendly, often too friendly. For example, you watch a mosque from the outside … immediately somebody is here and invites you to see the mosque. We were even allowed to stay for the evening prayer. Fore sure, if you pass a shop or a restaurant they want to convince to come in and see – for me it’s annoying, but it’s just the culture there. I also didn’t really fell comfortable in the restaurants, it’s different to what I’m used to.


Fish seller at a market
Somewhere in a residential area
Populated area, wherever you look

Inside a small mosque
A cemetry
The Maiden’s Tower

The Turkish guy also recommended us to see the Istiklal-Street near Taksim Square. As this was not far away from the place where we lived in Istanbul (a friend and CouchSurfer from Vienna, who is doing Erasmus in Istanbul currently), we went there on Saturday evening. Crazy … the street and the side-streets were so crowded, it looked as if half Istanbul was there. We just went through the road, you could hear different music from the bars, people talking and having fun. Very, very nice. It was hard to resist to go to one or more of these places, but we decided to be tired and therefore went home. During day time it’s a shopping street, like Mariahilfer Straße in Vienna – but it’s restricted to pedestrians, and there’s an oldtimer tramway running through. And I found a Space Invader!


On Taksim Square
Space Invader in Istiklal Street

Still, so much to tell about this trip – But I think it’s enough for you to get an impression and for me to remember later. Now I know, why I avoided to write it earlier … it took me two hours. Hope you enjoyed reading it, I also enjoyed going there.
What else happened? I have to leave my flat in mid of November, because the project where the girl who I’m living with currently we will be changed, so she doesn’t have to stay in Bulgaria (which she really regrets, because she tried to find her roots here). But I think I already have a room for afterwards, although it might be crowded till beginning of December. We will see.
On Wednesday I was presenting Austrians national parks and the UNESCO world heritage sites in the class Landscape Architecture. I would have like to put the presentation on my blog, but unfortunately I had to use copyrighted material, so I don’t feel save with this.
So, stay tuned for the next update.

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Trip to Елена (Elena)

Sonntag, Oktober 12th, 2008

This weekend (Friday and Saturday) I was invited to join an excursion to some villages in the surroundings of Елена (Elena), a small town with some 6000 inhabitants in the centre of the country. The next larger town is Велико Търново (Veliko Tarnovo), the former capital of Bulgaria before the occupation of the Ottoman Empire in 1393. In Елена the 3rd-year students of architecture exercise planning. So I was again confronted with some new students, but we got on quite nicely. Some always kept translating me the most important things, because the professor who guided the trip only speaks Bulgarian and French.
There was not a lot of time for sight seeing in Елена, as we spent most of the time travelling or in the villages. On Saturday morning I got up early and had time to have a walk around town. Although it was foggy, I could make some nice pictures. Most of the town looks pretty normal to me, but near the city centre, which is crossed by a small river, are some roads which let you forget that the last fifty years or so have happened.


The river and some houses
A road near the centre
Here you can see the typical architecture

Another view of river and houses
Typical architecture

The villages showed a poor image. Many houses are deserted, you seldom see people, especially young people. The age group 15-35 years was missing completely. What really stroke me was the absence of cars. I often have the problem that cars spoil possibly good images, especially these modern large SUVs.

These villages are really beautiful places, so tourism could get interest in these places soon. Some houses have already been sold to international investors and a few new buildings have already been constructed, which doesn’t fit the regional style. It’s a job for the governments to find a way to develop regions like this without destroying the landscape. Too many disasters happened around the world because of uncontrolled development of tourism. I don’t think that the Bulgarian government is capable of handling this job, I heard too much about corruption. There must be a reason, why ‚city planner‘ is the 5th best paid job. By the way, I’m just reading a scientific book about tourism, but that’s content for another article.

Миковци (Mikovtsi) – the first village we visited – is surrounded by some little wooded mountains. The evening-sun provided some great pictures. Here we could also see an example for new development – an apartment-house which looks somehow traditional, but it’s not typical for this region.


An old woman with her goat
View on the mountains nearby
New building

In Марян (Marjan) it was already getting dark, so the pictures aren’t very good. Марян is famous for having a monastery where a legend tells said that the remains of Tsar Boris I, the first Christian tsar of Bulgaria, have been found.


The local pub and our bus
One of the students chatting with a farmer
Марянски Манастир (Marjancki Manastir)

Of Чакали (Tshakali) I can’t tell you much, because the group separated and I followed to the next village. The name origins of the jackals which lived there in former times.

Каменари (Kamenari) is named after the stone plates around the city. They make construction very difficult. Here I had the impression, I’m no longer in Europe, so different was the atmosphere. Here too the children we saw have no future, the school has closed down some time ago. The only amenities are a shop and a health care centre.

Майско (Majsko) was our last stop. The only developing village we saw, which is due to the fact, that the population consists mainly of Gypsies and Islamic people. Which raises even more problems, because they don’t want to be assimilated by Bulgarian culture. Although one of the main roads between northern and southern Bulgaria is passing through this village, there was not a lot of traffic.


The main road
Primitive Houses

All in all this was a very interesting trip with a lot of alien experiences and beautiful views, but also a lot to think and worry about.

One more thing happened. I met one of the students on the trip who is responsible for the Erasmus-students. I thought there are no such students at this university, because I asked at the international students office that I like to meet the other foreign students. The woman there promised to organize a party when everybody is here. Now I learned, that they already had several parties and meetings. I had also asked what organisational stuff I have to do – The answer was No. Which was not correct, I should get an ID and cheaper tickets for public transport. I’m a bit angry about this office.

Hope you enjoy my pictures!

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Витоша

Dienstag, Oktober 7th, 2008

Sofia has a huge mountain close to the south, the Витоша (Vitosha) with it’s highest peak reaching over 2000m. You can conveniently reach the mountain with several tram and bus lines, which takes around half an hour from the city centre.
We decided to hike up the mountain last Saturday. Because of Friday’s Erasmus Welcome Party in Sofia we were only two, but we decided to do it anyway (and it might had slowed us down anyway). We could have used one of the lifts up the mountain, but we preferred to walk. So we took Tram 5 to Knyazhevo and started walking up. We didn’t really have a plan where to go, we just kept on going up. It’s a very beautiful place, the flora and fauna is changing all the time. Going up over 1000m takes quite some time, we already thought about going back, because time was running, and we had to go down too. But finally we reached the tree border at about 1800m (GPS is a great invention) and we could clearly see a peak, not far away. And the view from there was really exciting, Sofia was lying in front of us like a huge map. You barely can see it on the pictures, I hope you can imagine. Maybe you want to see it yourself?


The peak
Sofia
Waterfall

On the way down we took an other way, which was shorter and more interesting, but pretty hard, so we had quite a muscle fever on Sunday and Monday. It was about 1300m up and down. Sunday it got really cold and it was raining a lot, so the right weather for a lazy day. Vitosha now has white cap :)
Two other important things happened last Saturday. As we were in the Tramway and discussing about tickets (in German) a young german woman started talking to us. She is working for a german company in Sofia and after some talk she offered that we can live with her, she has two free bedrooms. Really good news, I will move there this weekend. Currently I’m still couchsurfing, I really enjoy the company of my hosts. The other news unfortunately is bad news … my bike got stolen. It was a risk I was willing to take, because taking it home every evening would have been too unpleasing. Next time I will try to find a better lock, mine was really weak. Currently I have no plans to buy a new bike. We’ll see. At least it was not very expensive, and it was not the best anyway.
Enjoy your time too!

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Heavenly apparition

Mittwoch, Oktober 1st, 2008

I just had a heavenly apparition. As I was waiting at the traffic lights to turn green, the lettering „58 Mariagrün“ was appearing in front of my eyes. First I couldn’t believe what my eyes tried to tell me so I looked closer and it was really a bus from Graz.
For those who don’t know, Mariagrün is the place in Graz where I grew up and where I still visit my mother regularily. And the bus 58 is the bus from the Train Station to home. To see it at such a remote place was really a surprise.

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First Days in Sofila

Mittwoch, Oktober 1st, 2008

So, you are all desperately waiting for an update? Here it is!
Our bus to Sofia was surprisingly comfortable, we were even shown movies (no sound, bulgarian subtitles). However, we spent most of the time reading and playing cards (guess what – 1000km for sure). We? I had company from Dominika from Poland, whom I might live with for the next year. For me it depends who’s joining us. We have an appointment this afternoon for discussing this over and searching a flat.
The first days I was couchsurfing at Bojo’s and Zlaty’s place, who unfortunately didn’t have much time for me. But we will meet again tomorrow for „Kak se kasva …“, a couchsurfing group for learning Bulgarian.
Yesterday I moved to other CouchSurfers, Rossi and friends. We had a nice evening with eating dinner, drinking Rakija and Beer, talking about festivals, critical mass and other alternative projects. I even discovered a „Space Invaders against Racism“-Sticker in their flat. And there is really a Critical Mass in Sofia. I’m looking forward to participating at the next time. By the way, it was no problem to take my bike in the bus to Sofia. So I’m keeping on cycling. And it’s better in Sofia as I imagined, at least near the City Centre. It’s better than in Burgas.
After some confusion on Monday morning I finally found my classes. As I imagined they are in Bulgarian and it’s nearly impossible for me to follow the lectures. But I think with some additional reading I will somehow manage to learn something and work on interesting things. The professors are understanding.
Peter (Петър) was asking me in one of the comments, if life in Sofia feels more serious than in Burgas. Yes, it’s right that Burgas was somehow vacation. But here in Sofia I have more free time, currently I have only classes from Monday to Wednesday. So a lot of time for travelling, although I don’t have fixed plans yet. Only for October 25th-27th, there’s the Balkan CouchSurfing Meeting in Borovets with excursions and party. I think it will be great … Who’s joining? Some people from Vienna already registered.
Unfortunately I can’t show you any pictures, I forgot my camera at a friends place. I could show you some pictures from Burgas, but I’m currently not in the mood to do so.
I’m quite glad not to be in Austria, as I’m really appalled about the elections. I don’t think that politics in Bulgaria is better … it feels good not to know much about it. I hope you have a good time anyway. Read you hopefully soon :-)

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Bye, bye Burgas!

Samstag, September 27th, 2008

Celebration of our Diplomas

Finally our language course is over. At 1pm today (which is in 1 1/2 hours) our bus to Sofia is leaving. I managed to get a ‚B‘ grade (which is second-best). I’m quite satisfied with this result.
I already voted for the parliamentary elections in Austria on Sunday yesterday – no, I won’t tell you, who got my vote, but it took me some time to decide. I hope the outgoings will be not so bad. We will see.
I wanted to show you some pictures of Burgas, which has some really nice parts around the city centre. Several things kept me from doing so: Unfortunately I caught a little flu in the last days, I hope it will get better soon. I bought ‚The Da Vinci Code‘ of Dan Brown, which is a very catchy book. Finding a CouchSurfing host for Sofia (I only have one until Tuesday). Learning for the final test of the language course (which was on Thursday). And I got my bicycle repaired (the Gears were destroyed, I have a new axle now – and no longer a pedal brake :/ ).
So hope you have a nice weekend, read you next week.

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Last week in Burgas

Dienstag, September 23rd, 2008

Again a week has passed … time’s running. For sure it was a busy week again. I wanted to write on my blog earlier this time, but I didn’t manage.

Reasons for not writing? First I wanted to write on Sunday, at least we had a visit of two museums on Friday (Nature Historic and Archaeology museums), which were actually not very exciting. Maybe it was due to the fact that we had been invited to three wodkas per person from the owner of the restaurant where we had lunch … you can’t say no, can you?

And on Saturday we had a trip to Несебър (Nessebar), the second must-see beside Sozopol. Nessebar is even more important than Sozopol, at least it is UNESCO World Heritage. Sadly I was disappointed about our trip again. Our teacher (it was our second teacher, I thought it might be different) was not prepared at all again, we had to find the interesting spots ourselves. Which is actually not really easy if you have a group of thirteen (including teacher and our buddy Gena) and everybody wants to go in another direction. This time I was not in mood of investigating the city on my own, the parts that I’ve seen were not as nice as in Sozopol and it’s much more flooded by tourism (it’s close to the Sunny Beach, a huge hotel resort with over 800 hotels – only the thought of it makes me shiver). Most interesting were the ruins of old churches.


A former church, used as Art Gallery
Taking pictures was forbidden (for sure because of displayed art), so I can only show you this blurred picture of the inside. Beautiful.
Another of the old churches in Nessebar

A road with souvenir shops
Causeway seperating old and new town, ruins of the town gate.
View on Sunny Beach

What really kept me from writing to my blog on Sunday was the Saturday evening, which turned out to be longer than expected … so we spent the Sunday hanging out at a flat of two of our group with listening to music, watching movies, cooking and eating together. We decided that we are some kind of family now, at least we spent most of the month together as we know next to nobody in this town beside ourselves. Which might be pretty normal for a vacation, but here we are a handful of people of different cultures, meeting here not (only) for fun, but for learning and studying. For sure it’s not only sunshine and roses, we all have our different habits and there are good and bad days … Soon we will all get separated when our class is over. We are all looking forward for the second weekend in November, because Adrian from Poland already invited us for his Birthday to Veliko Tarnovo.

Monday afternoon was the next day where I planned to write to my blog, but we decided to do the trip that we were planning for Sunday … to Ropotamo, a nature reserve some 50km south of Burgas. We really enjoyed our trip to nature, even though we didn’t really saw the nature reserve, as we didn’t want to do one of these boat trips. We were just walking in some direction (I was quite glad, that I had my GPS with me) and finally and more or less accidentally reached Беглик таш (Beglik Tash), a rock formation similar to those found in „Waldviertel“ in northern Austria, which was used as sanctuary in former times. We should already have seen it as part of our trip to Sozopol, but it was canceled because „it’s not really interesting“. Unfortunately, we came back much to late for our bus, so we had to take a taxi and a bus back to Burgas (which were for a reasonable price) as only the girls managed to hitch a ride. We really enjoyed that day in nature, savouring fresh air and the silence.


Here we tried a short cut … most of the time we followed a track
Doing rest on Beglik Tash

Today I finally had the time to check my bike … doesn’t look good, but I have an address for a bicycle service nearby from the parking lot attendant where I will go tomorrow after class.

Next weekend I will travel to Sofia, then the real life will start :) Have a good time, and I’m looking forward to any comments!

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Beach, Sea Garden, University, Kebap and more …

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

You are for sure waiting for an update from me, aren’t you? Thanks for all the positive feedback, I’m trying to keep up the work. This week we had classes on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon instead early in the morning, so we could get some more sleep. Theoretically, because the evenings got only longer ;) At least I got enough sleep, so I managed to see some interesting places.

Monday and Tuesday I spent mainly with learning, but as I don’t like to learn at home I went to the beach and to parks. I already wrote about the beach, which presented itself pretty deserted as we finally have autumn. As you can see the waves were pretty strong, I even got wet shoes while taking pictures.

Next to the beach is the Sea Garden (I was already mentioning it), which is one of Burgas‘ most important trademarks. In this spacious park you find a theatre, lot’s of pubs, several night clubs (especially in Summer) and so on. And for sure lawn, trees, exotic flowers, ways, statues, benches, … For sure it could be in better shape, especially the ways are decayed. The parks foundations were laid by a Bulgarian park planner named „Georgi Duhtev“ in 1910 (For more information read this article on InYourPocket.com). The Sea Garden reminds me a bit on the Town Park (Stadtpark) in Graz, as also the sizes of the cities are similar. You also have the view on and the sound of the Black Sea. The downside of being so close to the sea is that’s it’s quite windy.


Monument for Alexander Pushkin
View on the Black Sea

I finally managed to take some pictures of our university, which is an new, architectural interesting building near the city centre. It’s a private university with expensive study fees (150€ per semester if I remember correctly), and I have the same feeling that I get when I come across the Business University in Vienna. I just don’t fit between all these fancy dressed people. I got the same feeling when we went to one of these nightclubs in the Sea Garden (The Elite Club – the name says everything). Everybody fancy dressed, everybody looking serious and looking you over and it was really expensive (for Bulgarian standards). We had our fun anyway, but I don’t want to go there again.


From the outside
Central hall
The teachers wing

Some of my colleagues during пучивка [potschivka] (break)
Reflection of the surrounding buildings at the balcony
I don’t know what this wing is for

The owner of Austrian Kebap

Today I finally managed to have ‚Austrian Kebap‘ for lunch. I had a little chat (half Bulgarian, half German) with the owner of the kebap-stand, who worked in our beloved 15th district (Рудолфзхеим-Фюнфхаус [Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus] oh yeah!) in Vienna. He worked pretty close to my home, at the mosque in Pelzgasse (On my way home from university I am always passing this place) for five years and three months. Monday to Friday he was cooking for the children and on Weekends selling Kebap. The kebap here was not especially good, so it’s not worth the long way, but I enjoyed it anyway. But I can’t get used to the habit of putting French Fries in Kebap (so it was no traditional Austrian Kebap).

On the way there I had a breakdown with my bicycle, the back wheel suddenly blocked when I was going like 30 km/h. Thank God (Goddess? Allah? Aargon? Ed? Myself? put suiting entity of worship here) I managed to stop the bike without having an accident. I wanted to repair the bike tomorrow, but one of the spanish people offered to do it – he claims to be mechanic. We will see :)


Bulgarian „Bravo“

Peter asked me in the comments at which level I aim to learn Bulgarian. I think the answer is: We will see. So my Bulgarian is really progressing, it’s already enough for little conservations. Like „Hi, I’m from Austria and I study Bulgarian at Burgas Free University. I would like to have a Hamburger with Chesse. Where is this pub? How much is the Kamenitza? Hello. Thank you. Bye-bye.“ and I sometimes can understand what the other person is replying. I bought a Bulgarian „Bravo“ during first week and at that time it took me an hour to read a sentence. Now I can read the text and get a general idea what the article is about. I still miss lot’s and lot’s of words and they get into my mind very slowly, but I can see a progress. I’m planning to do another language course in Sofia, but not as intensive as now. I’m curious myself at which level it is possible for me to get into a new language. And I have more fun doing it as I expected.

So much for tonight. Tomorrow we will have class in the afternoon again, so I have to think what to do with the free time in the morning (repair the bicycle probably). For the next days I’m planning to narrate you about the magic of an internet technology called RSS which helps you keeping updated with all these blogs and news sites you usually visit. Hope to read from you in the comments :)

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Bye, bye Summer!

Sonntag, September 14th, 2008

So, the weekend is nearly over. What have I done since last post? On Friday there was the Bulgarian Picture Gallery on our schedule, which is located in a former synagogue. That must have been an impressive building before the three floors have been drawn in (reminds me on the Gozzoburg in Krems which I visited in April). The Jewish community still uses the building for singing due to the great acoustics. As I said it’s a Picture Gallery, the two lower floors display contemporary art, the top floor old religious icons.


Sozopol lies to the south-east of Burgas at the Black Sea coast

On Saturday we had to get up early again, as we met at 8:15 at the bus station for our trip to созопол (Sozopol). Our trip consisted of three parts: Expensive coffee, a tourist shop labelled „Art Gallery“ and a museum. I would have awaited a tour through the city and the visit of some historical buildings e.g. churches.
The Museum displayed several excavations, which ranged back up to the 7th century BC, when the first town (Apollonia Pontika) in that region had been founded by greek settlers. The city developed to an important trade centre in the following centuries, especially for wheat. One of the excavations on the display are the remains of a granary. The rest are remains of the fortification walls and an old well.
After that I explored the city myself and made lots of pictures and collected geo data for the OpenStreetMap. The city is famous for it’s buildings from the 19th century in the style of the „Bulgarian National Revival“. The newer buildings usually try to imitate the old style.
After that I joined a CouchSurfing-Meeting for lunch and the beach afterwards. I had lots of fun and some interesting talks there, hopefully I will meet some them in Sofia again.
Presumably that was the last chance to enjoy the Summer and the Beach, in the night to Sunday the temperature dropped by 10 or 15 degrees and it was really cold and rainy today. According to the weather forecast it will not become better this week :(
Sunday was a lazy day, I just went out for lunch and to buy my first Bulgarian book: „Хари Потър и философският камък“ (Who is the first to guess the English title of the book?) … I think I need to learn and practice a lot to read more than one sentence per hour. By the way: Thanks Pro for the dictionary, I don’t know what I would do without it.
Have a good week! What are you doing with the End of the Summer-Season?


The Bulgarian Picture Gallery
Icons on the top floor and you can see some of my colleagues
The church Santa Maria in Бургас (Burgas)

View into the granary in the Museum
The renovated fortification walls. There are also my colleagues :)
Sozopol from the beach. It already got cloudy.

Old houses in Sozopol
Some more houses in Sozopol
Small boats in the port

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Weekend again …

Freitag, September 12th, 2008

So, weekend already arrived. No school until Monday morning (at 8 again).
Yesterday we had the idea to have two days off, so that our Spanish people would have time to catch up and have private classes, and we can go to Istanbul or travel the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Unfortunately this was not allowed, although the teachers and our custodian would have been okay with that.
So we are sticking to the original plan: Today in the afternoon we will visit the Bulgarian Picture Gallery and tomorrow we all go with one of our teachers to Созопол (Sozopol), which is a little town nearby. We still don’t have plans for Sunday, let’s see when we will wake up (we have to get up at 7am each day, including tomorrow for the trip).
Apropos Istanbul. On Tuesday I had a short visit of to friends from Vienna, Monika and Cornelia who are also studying Spatial Planning with me. The were on the way to Istanbul and had a cheap flight to Burgas and then a bus to Istanbul (which is only about 5 hours away). Unfortunately (mainly due to communication problems) we only met for a short time, but it was nice talking anyway.
Waiting for Monika and Cornelia I spent lot’s of time at the Central Bus Station and could see some old Austrian Buses in original paint (you can see one on the pictures). I also found two other places that reminds me on my home: A „Charly Temmel“ which is an ice cream shop in Graz, that has branches in Los Angeles and Sunny Beach (The last is a huge hotel resort nearby). The other is somehow curious: „Austrian Kebap“. I have to get one of those, I’m really wondering what this is like.
So stay tuned about our experiences on the weekend, enjoy yours as well. By the way, this is my name in Cyrillic letters: стефан плепелиц.


One of the austrian buses in Burgas (going to Sunny Beach)
Charly Temmel (Graz – Los Angeles – Sunny Beach)
Original „Austrian Kebap“

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