Weekending: Varna, Bulgaria

by Meg Nesterov on


Back in September, the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan offered locals and expats like me an excuse to go on holiday while our American friends were celebrating the end of summer and Labor Day. With more time to explore than a typical Weekending trip, I checked out Turkey’s most western neighbor, Bulgaria, and fell in love with modern and medieval captials Sofia and Veliko Tarnovo.

The place: Varna, Bulgaria

Varna is known as the summertime capital of Bulgaria, a Black Sea beach town that’s a destination unto itself with several notable museums, an active cultural scene, and the gateway to the coastal resort towns.

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  • Unlike many of the purpose-built, touristy resort towns that litter the coast, Varna manages to maintain a nice balance of beach town and actual city. Pedestrian streets Knyaz Boris and Slivnitsa are great for window shopping and people watching day and night, and Varna has a handful of quirky and interesting museums to visit. The Archaeology Museum is one of the country’s best, and my visit to the creepily-cool Medical History museum (with nice Bulgarian lady following me around turning lights on and off as in VT) was one of my favorite travel experiences. Strolling the Sea Garden is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, though the zoo is maybe the grimmest I’ve seen yet (I could have easily stuck my head into the lion’s cage with no interferrence) but with admission under $1, it’s hard to complain.
  • The variety of daytime diversions extends to nightlife too, with everything from sceney beach clubs to seedy casinos to dive bars. Indian Bar has an eclectic decor of Native American art and Italian soccer banners which manages to be more charming that offensive, while Saloon Bar is just the kind of place I’d love in my neighborhood: cheap drinks, good music, and a bartender that remembers you after one drink. Varna is also the birthplace to Happy Bar & Grill, a chain restaurant all over Bulgaria (and now in Spain too) that resembles a love child of Hooters and T.G.I. Friday’s, in the best sense. Happy has a vaguely nostalgic rock-and-roll Americana theme going on, a menu of Bulgarian food and pizza (they also have some sushi restaurants), and waitresses clad in miniskirts and nude pantyhose. There are several location including a tiki beach bar, and any of them are good spots to take advantage of free wi-fi, decent coffee, and as many ’80s music videos as you can handle. Varna is a bit pricier than other towns in Bulgaria but still a steal by Western standards.

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  • Lovely as Varna may be, the travel season is really limited to summer. While there is plenty to do in cool weather, there is greatly reduced transportation in and around town, many waterfront cafes will close in winter, and you’ll miss out on experiencing the summer scene. The Black Sea has been the hot weather refuge of many Europeans for decades and Varna retains some old-school (and Communist-era) flavor (see the above photo of the thermal pools frequented by the elder residences) while joining the modern world with boutique hotels and sushi restaurants popping up to serve a growing international clientele. If you visit Bulgaria in cold weather, your time would be better spent exploring the old towns and museums in central and western Bulgaria.
  • I’d be remiss in wrapping up a series on Bulgaria without pointing out the obvious obstacle: Cyrillic. Invented in Bulgaria and not Russia, the alphabet is less complicated than you think but takes some adjustment and practice to feel comfortable reading signs and maps. I was fortunate to travel with my Russian-speaking husband who could at least read the alphabet (though Russian and Bulgarian are as dissimilar as English and Spanish) but I got the hang of it quickly enough. Rather than trying to memorize the alphabet in advance, transcribe a few key and familiar words, such as your name, your hotel, and the towns you are visiting so you can begin to recognize the characters. Also, Bulgaria’s quirk is the reverse head nod: they nod horizontally for yes, vertically for no. This feels very foreign the first time you experience it but makes an odd sense after a few days.

Getting there

Most of the international flights to Varna are from Eastern Europe, though the great budget carrier Wizz Air flies from London and Sofia. Bus service is excellent throughout the country (about 7 hours from Sofia) or from Istanbul (10 hours) or Bucharest (7 hours), but train service is slower and less comfortable.

Make it a week

Rent a car or bus hop along the coast if the weather is good, taking note that if a town has a foreign name (like Golden Sands) it’s probably an overbuilt tourist town. You could also combine with other regions of Bulgaria. I fit in Sofia, Veliko Tarnavo, and Varna comfortably in an 8 day Saturday – Sunday trip, traveling between cities by bus and returning to Sofia for my international flight on Wizz Air.

Read about more Weekending trips here.

Photo of the day (10.21.10)

by Meg Nesterov on

Do spies wear sundresses? Flickr user jrodmanjr snapped this woman in Moscow‘s Red Square and imagines she may be a cold war spy, her black briefcase full of classified documents. More likely an art student with a portfolio, but any any rate, its fun to speculate on the secret lives of strangers. As a photo, it’s pretty interesting too: nicely framed, distinctly Russian, and the mysterious girl’s dress balances nicely with the colors of St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Photograph any intriguing people on your travels? Submit your photos to Gadling’s Flickr Pool & it could be our next Photo of the Day!

Go Reindeer sledding in Russia this winter

by Katie Hammel on

Forget dog-sledding. For the ultimate winter endurance test, try reindeer sledding in Eastern Russia with Russia Discovery’s 9-night excursion into the “Pole of Cold” in Yakutia.

The tour is not for the faint of heart or those who want to be pampered. In fact, Urban Daddy calls it “the most physically demanding holiday celebration outside the Polar Bear Club”. Listed as a requirement for the tour is physical fitness and “physical and psychological resistance to the cold.” How cold? Pretty darn cold. The average temperature in January is -40C.

if you think you can brave the freezing temps, you’ll start your tour with a day in Yakutsk where you can visit the Institute of Permafrost before setting out on a 19 hour drive to Yuchugey, a settlement of reindeer herders. By day three, you’ll be practicing your hand at reindeer sledding; on day four you’ll spend 5-6 hours crossing the frozen terrain by sled and then sleeping outdoors in a 4X4 tent. Another day of sledding (in total, the sledding covers 35 miles over two days) is followed by a 20 hour drive back to Yakutsk. On day eight you can visit a husky farm and compare dog-sledding to reindeer sledding before returning to Moscow.

The tour isn’t cheap at €3560 per person, but included in the cost are all meals and accommodations, rental of all the furry outer wear required to keep you from dying of hypothermia, and the chance to feel like Santa as you glide over a snowy landscape pulled by a team of real live reindeer.

Russians voted worst tourists in the world – French and Germans relieved

by Scott Carmichael on

Polls looking for the worst tourists in the world are always a sure way to get yourself in the news – especially if the results pick a country not too popular with the voting public. Back in July, the French won the dubious honor of being the worst in the world.

Brit travel web site “Real Holiday Reports” published the results of their survey, and revealed that Russian tourists are currently the least popular.

According to respondents, Russians are rude, dress poorly, burp and swear in public, flash their money around, grab as much food as they can at the buffet and push into queues.

To me, this sounds like most tourists I encounter, but apparently, the Russians take being rude to a whole new level.

In Europe, German tourists are known for their pool chair tactics – getting up a 6:30am to snag chairs for their family by placing towels on them. Russians simply take the chairs up their room the night before, and bring them down in the morning, guaranteeing a decent spot. Some may call this inexcusable rudeness, I call it innovative brilliance.

Of course, it is just a matter of time till the next survey comes along, and picks a different winner. Eventually someone will come to the conclusion that most tourists behave poorly on vacation.

Passengers revolt and refuse to fly without a new pilot

by Jamie Rhein on

Last month, two passengers heading through airport security thought a pilot was drunk and called the authorities. Last May, a pilot was found drunk and naked in the woods. In this latest what-is-wrong-with-the-pilot episode, more than 100 passengers on a Boeing 767 jet bound for New York from Moscow signed a paper saying they thought the pilot was three sheets to the wind.

This happened after the pilot sounded inebriated when he slurred the preflight announcements. According to this article in The Moscow Times, when he switched to English, the passengers had enough and refused to allow Aeroflot Flight 315 to take off.

It didn’t matter one bit that the flight attendants told the passengers to “stop making trouble,” and if the passengers didn’t like it, they could get off the plane. The passengers called for reinforcement from Aeroflot’s home office, but the talking heads wouldn’t pay any attention to the passengers either–at least not until a Russian TV personality and socialite, who happened to be on the plane, stepped in.

Finally, the pilot, along with the other three pilots on board, were switched out so new pilots could get the passengers air bound.

As absurd as this story sounds, consider this. An Aeroflot representative later said that it wasn’t that big a deal if a pilot is drunk because the plane flies itself with a press of a button. Kent?