After celebrating the fourth of July, I hopped on a train to the Black Sea and spent a week there. That's why my blogging has been infrequent at best. Sinemorets was lovely. The weather and the sun combined with friends and the food made it the perfect way to start my travel. Then I popped into Budapest for a few days to meet up with some friends and and now my friend R. and I are traveling through the Balkans. Or as Lonely Planet puts it the western Balkans. We hit  Beograd/Belgrade for a couple of days and then took the train to the Montenegrin coast--Kotor, Perast and Budva to name the highlights. Today we arrived in Albania. Yeah. I am in Albania right now. Two years ago I never guessed I'd say that.

All in all our travel has been going pretty smoothly but things got off to a bang in Sinemorets. There was some confusion over the bus schedule to Burgas--when the summer schedule started and the like. And as luck would have it I missed the last bus o Burgas. Normally I wouldn't worry but I had to be at the airport early the next morning and I couldn't take the morning bus because I wouldn't get to the airport in time to catch my flight.

My friend G. who I was staying with was upset and yelling and the bus driver but really, what's he going to do about it? So I said to G. do you think that there's anyone who's driving to Burgas tonight or tomorrow and I could catch a ride with them?

Well, this is perfect because she looks at me and says: yes. The fruit and vegetable man goes every night. So we march over to his stand they talk for a minute and agree that I can go with him at 10pm. Of course, he doesn't really speak English so I had my longest conversation ever in Bulgarian. I spoke for nearly an hour and a half. Yeah, that's a pretty big deal for me. And I think my Bulgarian tutor I. will be proud of me!

So to recap: I ended up getting a ride with a guy who sells fruits and veggies from the little town I was staying in on the Black Sea to Burgas where I was then flying to Budapest. The bus schedule wasn't posted correctly so I missed the bus that I was supposed to take and ended up at 10 pm riding an hour and a half to Burgras with a random local that my friend G. knew. <em>Luckily</em>. Not a bad start to this current adventure!!