Hiking in the Mountains

I woke up feeling pretty uneasy after two consecutive nights out. I was fed some bread, cheese, and mystery meat and downed some water. There was some panic the night before when walking back to the hostel, because Stefan's car wasn't in it's parking spot! There was nothing to do about it during the night, so now Stefan and Mattias were figuring out if it was stolen or towed.

Luckily it was towed! The two of them were going to Istanbul, so they had to get their car right away to start the long drive. Adele, a French girl from the meeting last night, and I went to get coffee after they left. We decided it was a good day to go out of the city, so we did! She had been in Bulgaria for over a month now, and amazingly could speak a fair amount of Bulgarian already. She had a guidebook (borrowed from a hostel) for the area, so we found a cute sounding neighborhood with a church, waterfall, and view of the city from a mountain! We figured out how to get a minibus there and I also got a phone card.

The minibus ride up made both of us really nauseous... our stomachs were delicate from the night before, and the coffee we had was not the best quality so mine was really having fun. I sucked it up and hiked uphill anyway.



The church was built over a few time periods as you can see!


This made me think of home...


We started taking trails in the mountainside, but it was hard to tell which one led to the waterfall. The trees were all a strange shade of grey, and the ground was covered in orange leaves giving the whole place a very surreal look...




I was getting really lightheaded and dizzy, so we sat here and looked at the city (which you can't really see too well in this picture)



The dizziness was like the stuff I was experiencing in London... weird and dissociating. I was freaked I would faint again but I also thought the walking can only do me good (get blood flow going etc). It felt like my eyes were too wide though, and it was hard for me to concentrate on things. We kept walking and walking, then we ran into someone walking as well.

I can't remember his name, but Adele asked if we were on our way to the waterfall. Turns out we weren't. We turned around and started walking with him. She was talking in Bulgarian, and I was trying to focus on walking and not falling down. I succeeded!

We got back to where we started, and asked how long it would take to get to the waterfall. We had walked for a long time, so it would be dark by the time we'd be walking back. This wasn't safe at all, so we opted out and walked back into the neighborhood. There was a cafe place very close to where we caught the bus, so we stopped and ate first. It was nice being in the warmth :)

The minibus came and once again made me very sick. This time is was dangerous sick. I was using every single piece of willpower inside me not to throw up on that minibus. A couple people on the bus could tell I think, because they looked at me with scared wide eyes. I was getting very antsy, and was just about to get off the bus regardless of where we were when we arrived. Just in time.

I opened my jacket to let the cool air in, which helped a lot. Both of us were dead tired and I needed to lay down, so we went to the hostel for a nap. There was a third presentation going on by someone I didn't know, but it wasn't for a couple hours. I wasn't sure if it was going to be in English too, so I was not too enthused about going.

I lay down on one of the beds and ended up falling asleep! I woke up just in time to head out the door, but once I started moving my stomach also started moving. It was fine when I was laying down though. Tsvetan was going to be at the movie theatre, so I could grab the keys then and go lay down at the house, so that's exactly what I did.

I took the tram back, and learned how to walk from the tram to the house :) By the time I got there I was already feeling better.