hard rock and pretty flowers

last saturday, apocalyptica gave a free concert to open the hard rock season in kavarna at the black sea coast. thus, Denz and i took the chance and set out to hitchhike to varna, where we met up with Tanya (my CS host from my easter trip, who hosted us again after the concert) and went on to kavarna.
lucky as we were, Denz and I got picked up in sofia by a guy delivering toys to various parts of bulgaria and who was heading towards varna. including a few stops in pleven, veliko turnovo and some other bulgarian small town, we arrived varna within about 8 hours and reached kavarna in tim for the concert.
the atmosphere was really nice - the concert was open air in the town centre and the audience consisted not only of big fans and darkly dressed heavy metal aficionados, but was quite mixed and in the background lots of children were playing as well. including the support act, the concert lasted for only three hours or so. still, i really enjoyed it and actually liked it much better than i had expected. after all, i am not a big hard rock and metal enthusiast myself, but mainly got interested in apocalyptica because of their choice of instruments. quite aesthetic, i think :)

after the concert, Tanya, Denz and i hitchhiked back to varna, where we spent the night. on sunday, Denz and i headed on back to sofia, but this time passing by kazanluk, in order to see the rose fields there....well, in the end we didn't see many roses, but i got to see a bunch of poppy fields for the first time in my life. so beautiful! at one point we were let out to hitch the next ride in our direction opposite a field. there we spent a few minutes just running around and taking pictures... :o)
this really was my personal highlight on sunday!!!
the whole way back was also quite exciting. this time, we needed a lot more rides to get to where we wanted. the balkan mountains we even crossed in a huge truck. small winding roads up and down the mountains in such a huge vehicle...quite exciting, though awfully slow.
still, mostly we only waited two or three minutes until we caught the next ride and only twice we stood more than ten minutes at the roadside before we found someone taking us along. bulgaria is definitely a good place to hitchhike.
crossing half of the country last weekend we either passed or stopped in all of the following places: pleven, targovishte, veliko trurnovo, varna, kavarna, shumen, gabrovo, shipka, kazanluk, sofia....just have a look at the map and you'll get an idea :D

so, this was likely to be my last trip of my erasmus adventure, as well. only 11 days left until my flight back home. home, which will be berlin again, finally, after 4 years living elsewhere...i am so much looking forward to taking up my studies at the HU and moving together with my big love. Eike and i will of course be more than happy to welcome anyone visiting berlin in our flat as soon as we will have found one.

Wuschelfilzball, ich liebe dich!!!