Stara Planina - a trip to the past with a modern touch

everything started with a train ticket for 1,30 € to "Lakatnik" a small town in the "stara planina" mountains (also called the "balkan mountains" - yes, that's where the balkans got their name). rozi and i started at a decent 10 a.m., getting off a good 90 minutes later in a little town surrounded by a picturesque landscape.

up there is where we wanted to go. it should have been something like a one and a half hour hike along the rocks up to the cross and the soviet memorial (on the right).

the "eagle's nest" (little hut on the left) is only reachable by climbers....

however, we didn't make it to the top. the weather was beautiful, it was warm, the sun was shining, the path to go up wasn't too steep, but....rozi was afraid of hights. yes, she does often spends some time in the mountains, but this path was very narrow and too close to the abyss. after only 10 to 15 minutes we turned around and went back down. the guy working at this bus station (yes, this is a bus station and it is in function!) had already given us the information where the path to go up started. now, rozi asked again, if there was another way to reach the top or if he could recommend us a hostel, mountain hut or anything else where we could spend the night....

yet, there didn't seem to be anything close by, unless rozi would overcome her fear. thus, we decided to wait for gopa, rozi's boyfriend, who was going to come a few hours later and had some knowledge of the area. the plan was to hitchhike up to the next hostel and go hiking some place else the next day.

while we were waiting for gopa, we had a walk around lakatnik and hiked just a little bit up the mounains. in the end it wasn't so bad we didn't go up to the top - rozi just informed me that a day before yesterday somebody fell and died at that place (though i believe it was a climber, not a hiker).

this pinkish restaurant is at the foot of stara planina, the service is averagely bad, but the shopska salata very tasty ;)

here you can see something quite typical for the balkans. at least i have seen this already in different countries of former youguslavia and also in romania, if i remember correctly. anyway, in bulgaria you will find these posts everywhere, on doors, empty walls of half-destroyed buildings, lamp posts..., informing you about the latest deaths as well as more or less long passed deaths, from 1, 2, 3 and more years previously.
at the beginning i didn't like these notes too much, as i wasn't very comfortable with all the dead people in black and white glaring at me whereever i go. but after a while one simply gets used to them and i mostly ignore them...

well, to go on with my little story about my trip to the mountains: when gopa arrived, it was already starting to get dark and our plan to hitchhike to the next hostel failed since there weren't any cars going into that direction. 18 km of walking was a bit too much considering the already advanced hour. so, instead, we hitchhiked to the next bigger town: svoge - the town of the chocolate (what hershey is to america, svoge is to bulgaria, only not quite as touristy :-P)

in svoge, we asked around to find a place to sleep, though everyone we talked to was really extremely friendly, the first information we received was surprisingly to us negative: there aren't any hotels in svoge. how strange for the home of the bulgarian chocolate...finally, we did find out that there was a little complex at the outskirts of the town consisting of a restaurant, a fitness center and a hotel/hostel. having expected to spend the night in some kind of mountain hut when i left sofia that morning, this night's accommodation proved to be extremely luxurious and a lot more comfortable than imagined. but since we didn't have another choice, we happily took a room being the only guests for that night. also part to the complex was an area with swimming pool and jacuzzi. of course, we couldn't have guessed that when packing our bags, so our only choice was to jump in and enjoy the wet pleasures bare-naked.
the next day, i woke up well rested and happily greeted by a sunny balcony (see above: gopa and rozi enjoying the gorgeous morning), ready to start another day in the nature. this time: bov or "garabov", though the last name just indicates the "gara", i.e. the train station of bov. but what a cute train station!!! ;) seriously, doesn't it look a bit like having gone back some 50 years in time. also the (closed) restaurant behind the train station retained a look as if from grandparents' times...(photo)

bov is the place where the bulgarian writer ivan vasov regularly went to work on his books. therefore, every street in the village is named after him, his books, his characters, etc. we took the "vasovian eco-path" leading up to the waterfall (second to last pic at the left), from where we had a beautiful view over the village and the mountains. so, after all, rozi and i did the hiking in the stara planina mountains, as we had planned, even though not in lakatnik but in bov. and after a long half-lazy, half-adventurous weekend, we returned to good ol' sofia in the early sunday evening.


und zum schluss möchte ich noch ganz lieb meinen wuschelfilzball grüßen