EINTAGSFOTO

Ok - from Ruse, an important Bulgarian town, to Bucharest, the capital of Romania it's about 90km - you would think that there are at least hourly possibilities to go there, by train or by bus, whatever, wouldn't you? Well, no. Of course not. There are two busses and two trains, all leaving in the afternoon, between two and four. Unbelievable! Moreover, everybody warned us that they are often delayed and that the ride takes much longer than expected because of border formalities. Therefore we booked the flight tickets from Bucharest to Vienna for Friday early morning to be sure that we will be at the airport on time. So we had some time left to explore more parts of Ruse - and the weather was perfect to do so, hot and sunny. We even got another chance to eat our last Shopska Salad, again. After saying goodbay to Steven, our perfect host from The English Guesthouse - he even took a picture of us - we left Bulgaria by train, crossing the Danube and arriving accurately timed in Bucharest, having no problems at all. Luckily we arrived at the northern railway station, so that we can use the same hostel as the last time when I was here, in 2007: Vila 11, a nice place, run by a canadian family. Perfect! For the rest of the evening we wandered through the city center and ended up in a cosy restaurant in the old town. I've never seen so many restaurants, bars, clubs with so many outdoor areas and so many people going out in the middle of the week. And although there were everywhere run down houses and construction sites nobody seemed to be bothered, the atmosphere was simply great!