In Re: We Didn't Ride These Things

Hello for a final time from the Balkans. It's getting too hot to move here, & so we're coming home.

In response to Mr Brains' inquiries to our use of bulgarous public transit, we traveled most everywhere by bus or foot. It's funny, yesterday, right when you were posting that question about the Ruse train, we were in Ruse attempting to get on a train to Romania, told "there is problem", & so had to go back overto the bus station. (Easier said than done, because the scam-artist taxi drivers are like a nagging combination of vulture & mosquito.) The bus was just a van with only us in it & a hungover chainsmoking driver who looked like Chigurgh from "No Country for Old Men" & kept chewing us out for strange reasons (putting the seat down, bread crumbs, &c.)

The electric buses in Bucharest, pictured in Brains' other posts, are easy to jump on & there seems to be no way to pay for your tickets (in comparison to Bulgaria, where little old ladies on the bus come & collect money.) We had a beer last night in a caffe over one of the temporarily dug-up streets in old town, where creaky boardwalks transport pedestrians over the nasty pits all thru this part of town, a popular neighborhood for stray dog fornication. It's lovely, actually, because there's no cars, just good-looking Bucureşteans promenading & carousing on the boardwalks; every city should be so fortunate to have it's old town all dug up.

Our last week was spent more-or-less around Varna, an old resort on the Black Sea, & various Eastern sites where Mr Quill's friends live. We met the famous Anton. I guess more impressions from our travels will trickle down, & some of the films will appear here. I recommend spending some time with Grainne's travelogue, "Beautiful to Forget, More Beautiful Still to Be Forgotten." (I like if you put those Scribd books into fullscreen & put on the book-flipping option.)