I arrived in Sofia after what ended up being a very good night of rest after getting rid of that “Australian” couple. The train was about 3 hours behind schedule, but I didn’t mind much, still got in before 11:00 AM. I walked to my hostel and got a recommendation for lunch. The place was amazing, probably some of the best food of the trip and it was dirt cheap.

I ordered a local wine with lunch, it showed up as photoed above, lemons, ice cubes, and sprigs of mint, I had four, they were so bomb. Then I went home and  relaxed in the rad private room Peter and I had booked and made plans for the next few days, it was a nice change from the past 2.5 months of sleeping In a room with 12 other people.

Peter and my buddy Horacio, from Argentina, were set to arrive in that day by plane from Belgrade around 4:00 PM. I get a text from Peter at about 3:00 PM saying that he was at a hotel in Belgrade. The airline had overbooked and had involuntarily bumped Peter off of the flight, he wasn’t too stoked, but they gave him a day in a nice hotel with a spa and 150 euro voucher on Serbian airlines, as if he’ll be back in Serbia anytime soon, and rebooked him on a flight that would put him into Sofia at about 3:30 AM that coming morning. Horacio, however, got on the flight without a hitch. So I met up with him and we got a group of people from all over the world together and went out for drinks that night. 

I must give credit that Horacio is the smoothest man I have ever met. Anyway bars were hit, shots of Rakija were taken, and more debauchery then I could ever put into words ensued. Then 4:00 AM rolled around…A very tired tall Peter checks into the hostel, luckily for him they had 24 hour reception at our hostel, The Hostel Mostel, unluckily for him and receptionist, the room he and I had booked was in another apartment building about 5 minutes from the hostel itself.

The receptionist walks Peter up to our room, puts the key in the door, and says, “oh nice, it’s unlocked.” she stepped inside and immediately screams, “Oh my God!!! You go first!”

I think Peter described the scene he walked into best, I recall him saying something similar to this, “It looked like war zone, like maybe somebody had ripped open your bag and exploded its contents everywhere…The lamp was turned on and sitting on the table between the two beds with a half empty bottle of wine, music was blaring at full volume from your phone, wine opener and cork in my bed, and there you were sleeping peacefully on your side with you’re naked ass hanging out of the sheets and unfortunately it wasn’t just your ass, you’d managed to fall asleep with other parts of your anatomy tucked between your legs, all of this was clearly visible to anyone unfortunate enough to glance through the doorway.” I had every intention of waiting up for Peter that night, but things really escalated quickly, I suppose it was my way to silently say: Welcome to Bulgaria Peter, welcome to Bulgaria…

I had apparently fallen asleep in this epic position and wasn’t only seen by Peter and that poor receptionist. Horacio recalls walking to the restroom in the middle of the night and seeing a dude in the hallway of the apartment building just outside of my door which was, for no apparent reason left ajar…The man said, “I just wanted to say hello.” As Horacio walked up to investigate. Horacio yelled at him, the bathroom was the other direction, and to get the hell out of there. He closed my door, but not before witnessing the scene for himself…Sadly enough nobody took a photo of this legendary sleeping position, perhaps the creepy man in the hallway, but to my direct knowledge, sadly, no such photo exists.

Woke up the next day at 7:45 AM with a jolt, rolled over and thought Horacio had snaked Peter’s bed, as Horacio essentially looks like a mini version of Peter. I yelled something, only to awaken a very sleepy tall Peter. I was super stoked that he had made it to the apartment and I drunkenly began recounting last nights events, I soon realized how tired he must have been and we returned to a dormant state until around noon. Then we got up, met with Horacio and Rosie (from Australia) and went to lunch.

Lunch was great, afterwards Peter and I went and checked out Alexandre’s Cathedral.

It was very impressive, the thing that struck me most was the fact that the lighting in the place was so dark, unlike most other Cathedrals I’ve been in this one felt more or less like a very ordered and ornate candle lit cave rather than it a Church. Very beautiful either way.

Then we went back to our hostel and went out with some of the same crew from the previous night. It was a good time. Me, Peter, Rosie and Marie (from Germany) made plans to meet at breakfast at 9:15 to rent a car and go hike the 7 Rila lakes of Bulgaria.

Peter and I aren’t morning people and didn’t show to breakfast until around 9:50…The girls had actually waited on us though, I thought for sure they would have bailed…So stoked they didn’t though! We booked our rental car through a real choice company…It was in no way legit, I paid cash to rent the hog, only witheld a $150 dollar deposit and gave me the keys. It was a ’97 Hyundai Elantra hatchback….Definition of a hoopty, we named her Betsy…She ran like a beaut.

Thankfully Marie had a Bluetooth speaker and I have loads of music. We passed around my phone creating a playlist on the way to the lakes…My phone was also running google maps to get us there…It took a while but eventually everyone noticed that my phone had been saying we were 54 minutes away for about an hour and a half. For some reason it was taking us in loops, but eventually we made our way to the mountains and it was well worth all of the trouble.

I of course brought some wine….


Peter and I swam…naked

And we all had a rad time!

Luckily we rented a true hoopty as I had decided to park as close as humanly possible to the lift. I backed that hog up a hill thinking that if I could back in surely I’d be able to pull out in the opposing direction. We got back after a solid day of hiking and realized getting the car out was gonna be treacherous. I slowly pulled down the hill and wedged the front bumper into the pavement leaving one wheel off the ground…I thought I was stuck…Threw her in reverse and she would not budge…At this point there was a crowd gathering round waiting to witness the impending doom, pointing and laughing, at this point Betsy wouldn’t move forward either…Peter thought we were going to have to get everyone from the surrounding villages and lift the car out of the ditch I had managed to stick er in…But my inner Ricky Bobby kicked in and luckily Betsy was a manual…I threw a Hell Mary….Put Betsy in reverse, revved er to 5000 and dumped the clutch…a smoky dusty burn out ensued, I couldn’t see a thing, but was moving. All throughout this blind reverse rally I was waiting to feel rear bumper to dig into the hill I was blindly rallying up, somehow it never did…The smoke and dust cleared and I stepped out of Betsy crying tears from a mixture utter fear and pure joy, got a round of applause and then I got back in and rallied Betsy through some grass, eventually making it back on the paved roads to Sofia.

We made it back in time to join the Pub crawl

This car made us laugh…

The next day I awoke sick as a dog…Sore throat and everything…I was sad because the day before Horacio took off to Greece and that day Peter was headed Barcelona…

Sad final lunch photo…

The friends and groups of friends I’ve made over hear eventually all break up and go separate ways, it’s always sad, unforeseen misfortunes significant or not pop up, but everything always works out, life goes on… And so like that, I was back to the solo travel. Felt strange, but it’s nice to be completely independent, oweing nothing to anyone besides myself. It is true that these travels have changed me irreversibly, for better and for worse, all things considered, I am stoked about it, I know I can adapt to any of the changes life throws my way.

As my thermodynamics professor, Francis Afghan, always reminded us, “The only constant in this Universe is change.” This holds down to an quantum level, the uncertainty principle comes to my mind, and as I am discovering does not seem to deviate at any level.

Embrace the changes, good and bad, because the only guarantees in life are change and death…. Oh and of course taxes hahaha

-Cbutter