After we left Serbia, we had a little mini-vacation. In the past we have met up with our whole squad of people for a few days to rest and encourage one another, but in Eastern Europe we are all too spread out in different countries and it would cost too much and be too much a burden to bring everyone to one location. Therefore, as a team we were able to plan our own little mini-vacation.
Our team spent a lot of time researching places that we could reasonably get to and spend a few days exploring, but the options were limited. We are too tired of traveling overnight and for endless hours, so we decided to make the vacation simple and go to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. I’ve never heard of this place before, but it is the second biggest city in the country after Sofia, which is where we were supposed to be for the whole month. We left Serbia early one morning on a bus and we were planning on being in Plovdiv about 9pm that night. We rode the bus from Vrnjacka Banja to Nis, Serbia (3 hour bus ride) and then we were going to get on a train from Nis to Sofia, Bulgaria. Once we got to Nis and found the train station, we found out that the train that was going to go to Sofia at the time we expected was cancelled. If we didn’t make that train, then we wouldn’t make our next train from Sofia to Plovdiv.
After hearing that, we were discouraged because our 10-hour travel day suddenly turned into an overnight 20+ hour travel day. So, we asked the people at the train station where the next train went and when it left and before we knew it we were on our way to Skopje, Macedonia.
We stayed at a quaint little hostel in Skopje and spent a day exploring the city. It was fun and there were many sights to see, but everything in the entire city was under construction. Apparently they are going through a renovation time so that in 2014 the city can be presented as a grand tourist destination. (The improvements look great, and I’m excited to be able to come back and explore the city again after 2014).
After one day we were bored with the lack of things to do in Skopje and we made the decision to go to Sofia a few days earlier than planned and spend the remainder of our “vacation” there. We spent all the next day on a bus from Skopje to Sofia. We had 1.5 days to explore the city of Sofia. It is a really great city and there are a lot of great sights to see. We even went on a free walking tour of the city and learned a lot about it.
Overall the weekend was a great time of rest and relaxation for our team. We were able to eat good food and make good memories together.
