Archive for the ‘Erasmus’ Category

Велико Търново (Veliko Tarnovo) and the Dragon Dance

Samstag, November 15th, 2008

Last weekend we spent in Veliko Tarnovo, one of the former capitals of Bulgaria, before the occupation of Ottoman Empire (in 1393). It’s a very historical place. For sure of this old time not a lot has been remained, only the foundations of a fortress, called Царевец (Zarevets). During communist era the government tried to rebuild the castle, or at least part of it. Now you have the original ruins and ruins of construction.
Anyway, it’s a special place. On top of the hill where Zarevets resides you find the Patriarch’s church with very modern paintings (unfortunately taking pictures would have cost 5 Лв = 2,50 €). Every now and then there is an audio-visual show at this castle, it will be illuminated by different colors and you can hear music – the problem: you never know, when is the next time. So we didn’t see this.
It’s a huge area with lots of walls, ways and … an awesome view of the city. Veliko Tarnovo is lying in a meander of the river Yantra, which cut it’s bed deep into the earth. Most of the city consists of small houses which are build on the river slopes. So the city structure is something very special and from every viewpoint you are astonished again. In the old town centre you have a lot of houses with the typical architecture of Bulgarian Renaissance.
In total we haven’t seen a lot of Veliko Tarnovo, because we were a large group of eleven people (everybody from our Language Course in Burgas) and we met there to celebrate Adrian’s Birthday.

I can really recommend the hostel were we were staying, the Hostel Mostel. It’s in renovated old building, a very comfy place and they even left some holes in the painting of the walls, so you can see the structure of the wall. The staff was also very amiable and there were interesting, international guests (always a good sign for a place).

One of those guests was a Japanese guy, Oikado Ichiro, who is travelling (walking!) through Europe for quite some time now and he is an artist. He has a show, which he calls the ‚Dragon Dance‘. On the second day he already announced that he wants to do this dance for us and when we got home from Saturday evening Birthday party we found a note on the floor with his costume next to it, which announced his Dance for 11am or 12am. I was up a bit earlier, so I already could see him preparing. Finally when nearly everyone was awake he started his show (the rest awoke because of the noise). It was really impressive, what he showed us with just some simple costumes and some masks. The show lasted for about half an hour and afterwards we spent quite some time talking to him, he wrote us our names in Japanese and we exchanged e-mail-addresses.

So much for this trip, it was really a nice experience again.

This week the hard disk of my notebook died, so I had to buy a new one and reinstall everything. Fortunately I’m often doing backups, so I didn’t lose a lot of data, but some pictures of the last trips are damaged :( The good thing: I have now a hard disk with the double size from the old one (250 GB). I’m now using Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibix, I’m curious how it will work for me in the long run. For now I have to say, it feels really fast.

A lot of things …

Donnerstag, November 6th, 2008

I really have to excuse, now there was a really long time without an article on my Blog. It’s not that there’s nothing to talk about, for sure I’m not getting bored that easily.

As I already announced I’ve been to a CouchSurfing-Meeting in Borovets, a skiing-resort in the Rila-Mountains at the weekend of October 24th-26th.
The Meeting started on Saturday, but I wanted to go there on Friday and use the whole weekend, especially as I was told, that this place is very good for hiking. I finally found some fellows – two more Erasmus students from Germany and Latvia and a CouchSurfer from Bulgaria (who did Erasmus at Vienna University of Technology some years ago and was studying at the same university here in Sofia too). We started our trip with an evening hike. We met in Sofia shortly after 6pm and travelled to Боровец (Borovets) by bus and taxi and started hiking around 8:30pm. So it was already really dark and we had to use our head lamps. After about two hours we reached our place for the night … a mountain hut. We were welcomed with a burning oven and candle light. We had some dinner and spend the rest of the evening playing cards.
Most of the next day we spent hiking, we hiked to one of the next peaks, Шатар (Schatar), with about 2500m over sea level. Unfortunately the weather was not very nice, it was very foggy and it even had some rain.

In the days after I got a nasty diarrhea with stomach cramps and fever … not very funny, but after three or four days it finally got better. So I spent a lot of time at home, in my bed or in front of the TV.

On the weekend I joined my first Critical Mass in Sofia with a borrowed bicycle. You know, this is this an international movement of cyclists who meet and cycle through town to fight for more rights for cyclists and other alternative forms of transportation. Here in Sofia we are still a small group, we just were like a dozen people or so. Afterwards I was invited to the national radio for a concert – some psychedelic underground rock band was playing there, which was pretty got. I met the husband and a flat-mate of Rossi, the CouchSurfer where I spent my first two weeks. I had thought I might meet him there, because he is working at this radio.

On Sunday I went hiking again, this time on the Vitosha, the mountain close to Sofia, to it’s highest peak, the Черни Връх (Cherni Vrah). This time we took it easy and used a chair lift for a part of our tour. Unfortunately the weather was again not very good.

Most of the last days I spent with my computer, because I’m working on a new web application (I also should study, I will do it tomorrow, promise!). I told you about the OpenStreetMap (OSM) before, which is a free alternative to Google Maps (and similar applications) and consists mainly of user generated content. I’m not very satisfied with the default view, as the public transport routes are not being displayed (at least not if you enter them in the preferred way). I was thinking about generating an own map style for a long time, and now I decided to just do it. The project is progressing quite nicely, and I think the OSM community will be quite excited about it. But at the moment I can’t show you anything yet, I will write a special article on my blog when it’s ready to be announced.

I could actually need some help with this project. I’m not very good at drawing and I need little icons for train, tram, bus and some more things. So if you want to help the open source community, this is your chance. :)

So, thanks for patience. Have a nice weekend!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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!

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.

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 :-)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.


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 :)