Bulgaria – Romania – Hungary

So after splitting up with Peter and the rest of the crew I had been traveling with for the last little while I went to a little town of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It was a rad little city. However my hostel was the worst… The shower, toilet, and sink had zero separation and were all filthy…I stayed there two nights and really should have only stayed none, haha it was gnarly.

Had some really good food and wandered the streets until I got lost. The day I was leaving to my next city I accidentally bought 3 pounds of raspberries. I gave the dude roughly 3 US dollars thinking I would get a reasonable amount of berries in return, instead he essentially filled an entire grocery bag full haha, I did eat about a pound…I love raspberries hahah.

Then I went to another small town in Bulgaria called Veliko Tărnovo. I went there because I wanted to see this really cool old communist building.

It is illegal to get into and the day I arrived the government had just sealed all of the entrances people had been sneaking in through… So that was a bummer…. Here is the structure I wanted to see, bummer I only have screenshots

I did have a cut on my finger that had slowly been getting a gnarlier and gnarlier infection, I was cutting it open and painfully soaking it in alcohol daily, however, when I took the bandage off here in Veliko and it looked hideous. I freaked out and decided to go to the hospital… It was the scariest medical facility I have ever been to, dingy, dark, far from sanitary with about 40-50 people all looking like they had a foot in grave helplessly sitting around. It took me 25 minutes to talk to anyone, and of course they spoke ZERO English, not that I expected much, but Google did say they always had someone on staff that spoke English at the hospital, they were never found by me…I ended up just pointing at my finger, to which the receptionist just shrugged her shoulders. Google translate doesn’t help in Bulgaria.

If I was seriously hurt, I would be very very afraid of seeking any medical attention in that hospital. I know our health care system in America is about 10-100 more expensive than just about anywhere in the world, but this hospital made me appreciate it our health care system no matter the cost. I received no treatment and just went back to my hostel and took some antibiotics after consulting a few family friends that work in medicine.

So I dipped out of Bulgaria and went to Bucharest, Romania. It was pretty cool once again didn’t do all that much just had some good food and met a bunch people from all around the world.

After a few days in Bucharest I headed up to Brasov. This place was really sweet and the train ride in between was awesome. I didn’t think Romania would have such rad mountains. I took some sweet hikes and toured some rad Transelvanian castles. They have many little cities with signs that are mimicking our Hollywood sign, pretty funny. I want to come back here in the winter and shred at this resort just outside of Sinaia, they had some super sick terrain.

On one of my hikes I saw a couple hiking, the dude had some recognizable tattoos, later that night I sat down at dinner and they walked into the same restaurant. Then I am going to bed in my hostel and I look over and they were sleeping in the bunks next to me. I finally decided to introduce myself and told them I’d seen them three times now. I asked where they were from, the US, which state? Utah…Where in Utah? For the past 2 years we had been living about 6 blocks away from each other and now we were sleeping about 6 feet away from each other in Brasov, Romania. haha weird.

Woke up chilled the next day had some excellent food, the daily dose, and then I took a night train to Budapest, Hungary. The city and my hostel, Tiger Tim’s hostel, were super sweet! Loved walking around the city and checking it out.

Crossing the bridge from Pest to Buda

The city has a foundation of mostly limestone, which lends itself to having a lot of cave systems and sinkholes, due to millions and millions of years of water containing dissolved CO2 (Carbonic Acid) reacting with and subsequently dissolving massive amounts limestone (CaCO3) leaving behind a epic cave systems throughout the city. I thought that this “caving” experience would be similar to the caves I have visited in Slovenia and the US, where essentially you walk around on a nice path in massive caverns and have a guide practically holding your hand the entire way…This experience, in Budapest, was quite different. I would consider myself to be mildly claustrophobic, but figured I was on a touristic tour and I’m fit, and up for just about anything.

Pre tour photo with the crew.

This was the scariest thing I have done on my entire trip over here, scarier than the hospital, the infected finger, getting stranded multiple times in random countries with no lights, no maps, no forms of communication, this topped all of that. There was this one section our guide asked if we would like to go on, it was called the sandwich…here is a video of Tabita, a friend from Belgium, attempting to make her way into “the sandwich”

Here is a girl squirming her way into the sandwich…

All the while I was filming while laying on my back, it kind of looks like I was comfortably standing, but there was no way to stand in this area, I wasn’t that freaked out yet, I was still laughing and having a good time…I entered the sandwich thinking I could film it, instead I had to talk myself out of having a major panic attack, an honest first for me…I was horrified…I had to tell myself to breath, calm down, close my eyes and realize bigger people have been through this, there is a guide, I will make it out eventually.

This sandwich was horrifying…It was a couple hundred foot long horizontal slit between two rocks, the rocks were the bread and we were the meat of this sandwich. You had to slide face first on your stomach, pulling yourself along with your hands, it was such a tight squeeze that I could not have rolled onto my side at all, had to remain on your stomach at all times, thinking about it makes me feel uneasy. My description of the sandwich is very inadequate…But if you want to scare the shit out of yourself go to Budapest, go caving, and ask the guide to take you through the sandwich, as there are other ways of getting through the cave. The guide had to physically make sure our group would fit before permitting us to attempt the sandwich. I would have to be paid handsomely to do it again.

This passage was called the birth canal, go figure.

Had to have the helmet at the right height to fit through.

All things considered I was still stoked I did it.

As per usual I had to try the national liquor of the country I was in, in Hungary it is called Unicum, it is described as an herbal liquor, similar to Jäger. I thought, awesome, I’ll make Unicum-bombs and have one hell of a night…This shit was far from Jäger, it was hairy.

But a hell of a night was still to be had after choking the bottle down with the help of some buddies in the hostel. Tim, the owner of the hostel, rallied everyone to go out that night for a pub crawl after we all played drinking games together in the common room. Ended up meeting a guy, who had to be Horacio’s long lost brother, this guy, Alejandro much like Horacio, was one smooth son of a bitch. Maybe it’s their Spanish accidents or the fact the both spoke 4 languages, who knows, either way they are the best wing men I’ve ever met. We stayed out until dawn, turns out Alejandro is more than just a wild party animal and smooth talker, he is actually in Med School in Madrid, he just knows how to live life!!!

Alejandro, the dawning sun, and I.

The next morning I was feeling pretty soggy. So I went to the famous baths of Hungary to have a mellow day. I went alone, I was walking to put my stuff down somewhere outside when I heard people calling my name. Sad to say I didn’t know one of their names, but we’d been out together on the pub crawl the night before and I at least recognized them all and remembered where all of them were from, Australia, Sweden, and Canada. So I spent most of my time with them chilling at the baths and catching a few rays. Then that crew left, but I wanted to stay…I found my way into a sauna that was 95 degrees Celsius, this was displayed on all 3 thermometers, surely I was doing my math wrong in my head because I was calculating it at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit… My head calcs were nearly correct, it was 203 degrees in there!! I have never sweated so much in my entire life. Sweat was gushing out of every pore of my body. I could smell the Unicum and other toxins I’d ingested the previous night draining out of me, it was a lovely detox. Then I promptly jumped into a 20 degree (68 Fahrenheit) pool and repeated this process.

It is the biggest spa in the world and it served me well. I began reading Atlas Shrugged beside the pool, it took me like 20 minutes to get my kindle to click over to 2 percent…I didn’t realize that hog was like 1200 pages long!! After completing 3% of the book I caught a night train headed to The Czech Republic, where more madness quickly ensued.