Φιλιππούπολη
Jun. 29th, 2019 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yannisSo, I'm in Plovdiv (Φιλιππούπολη), Bulgaria, waiting to see tomorrow's performance of Garbage at Hills of Rock festival.
In fact, I arrived here yesterday, but had no time to write anything.
by the way, it is my first visit to Bulgaria in my life and also my first travel outside of Schenghen zone after I emigrated from Russia almost a year ago lol.
So, I had to pass the border checks, first time since I became the citizen of Greece.
Well, it was not that scary, the Greek officer asked only one question, "Where are you going?", and the Bulgarian one asked no questions at all.
It seems, many Greeks are travelling even outside of Greece using their ταυτότητες only, but some are also using their passports, as me.
So, the flight from Athens to Sofia took an hour and tweny minutes.
As I landed and passed the passport control, I changed some Euro to Levs (the changing rate was 1,860 Levs for 1 Euro), and went to metro station situated just outside the airport.
I bought a ticket for 1,6 Levs from the ticket machine, made a change at Serdica station and arrived at the main railway station, where I immediately bought a ticket to Plovdiv (7,9 Levs).
As for the Sofia Metro, they are using both European and Russian rolling stock, Russian one is made at "Mytischi", and looks exactly as old trains in Moscow or St Petersburg underground.
Also it is worth noting, that as in Athens, where there are small archeological expositions at some central metro stations (where objects excavated during the building of the tunnels are exhibited), there was a similar small archeological exposition on Serdica station.
Well, from what I have seen by that moment, I could tell that Sofia looks like a provincial Russian city - junk, ugliness and visible poverty.
In a book store at the central railway station books about Putin (by Belkovsky), Primakov and Gorbachev were sold, as well as about Hitler and Berlusconi, lol.
By the way, "railway station" in Bulgarian is called "гара", like "gare" in French, I noticed it immediately and remembered Gare du Nord lol. And a "train" is "влак" in Bulgarian.
Well, knowledge of Russian helps much in Bulgaria, but not always.
The carriage I boarded was mediocre, not as good as German or Scandinavian ones.
And then the long journey began, with Bulgarians coming in and going out all the way.
Bulgarians look nothing like Russians, besides, about 10% of Bulgarian population are Turks. But I certainly can't tell them from Bulgarians. People look very different here, some pale-white, others dark-brown. Slavs? Gypsies? Turks? I had no idea who is who.
But the landscape behind the window looked pretty similar to Russia.
Everything looked absolutely awful and disgusting.
Decay, ruins, poverty, uncompleted buildings, abandonment, ugliness...
And cyrillic script everywhere.
Well, at least there were forests and near the end of the journey some magnificient mountains.
Looking at all this decay I couldn't help remembering Russian province.
And also all this Balcan shit with vampires, witches etc came to mind.
Yeah, ruins and decay, forests and mountains, poverty and Slavonic language spoken everywhere, what is missing here? Vampires, certainly.
But with all seriousness, Bulgaria looks awful.
Comparing involuntarily what I was seeing in Bulgaria to life in Greece, I have to say that Greece looks really progressive, rich and deeply westernised nation compared to Bulgaria. Lol.
Well, I guess, Bulgaria now looks like Greece fifty years ago.
No wonder Greek pensioners relocate to Bulgaria to save money.
I bought a can of beer, which here costs between 1-2 Levs, and it bore two inscriptions, in Bulgarian and in slavo-macedonian. Turns out, while in Bulgarian "beer" is "бира", in slavo-macedonian it is "пиво". Funny.
By the way, the train had some technical problems when it was less than an hour into the journey, so an hour was lost due to this shit. The Bulgarians were muttering something like "технологичная нация".
So yeah, an hour late I finally arrived in Plovdiv.
While in Athens the temperature yesterday was expected to reach 35C, here it was lower than 25C, and it was raining from time to time.
And I had to go to the festival, because although Garbage will perform tomorrow, it is a three day festival, and yesterday's headliner was Disturbed (I have already been at their concert in 2017 afair).
And, well, it was awful.
A huge volumes of water fell on the field (yeah, it's an open-air festival), so it looked more like a swamp. Some people were wearing rubber boots, while others were wearing flip-flops and some were even barefoot (or had they lost their shoes?), and almost everyone wore cape.
Those wearing ordinary shoes were doomed. Or more like their shoes were doomed.
Due to such conditions I didn't even thought about getting close to the stage.
I watched performances by Swedish Avatar and Portuguese Moonspell, and fortunately it was not raining. Unfortunately, there were plenty of mosquitoes, so I was nearly eaten by them.
As for Disturbed, a few moments before they were supposed to come to the stage, another horrible rain began, so a big part of their performance I had to spend under the tent. Fucking shit.
To somehow sum everything up, this was certainly not the best concert experience in my life, to say the least.
It is difficult to enjoy yourself while standing ankle deep in the swamp and being eaten by mosquitoes in the pouring rain.
Fucking shit.
Well, at least ticket to this festival cost me 180 Levs, which is not that much for a three day festival.
In fact, I arrived here yesterday, but had no time to write anything.
by the way, it is my first visit to Bulgaria in my life and also my first travel outside of Schenghen zone after I emigrated from Russia almost a year ago lol.
So, I had to pass the border checks, first time since I became the citizen of Greece.
Well, it was not that scary, the Greek officer asked only one question, "Where are you going?", and the Bulgarian one asked no questions at all.
It seems, many Greeks are travelling even outside of Greece using their ταυτότητες only, but some are also using their passports, as me.
So, the flight from Athens to Sofia took an hour and tweny minutes.
As I landed and passed the passport control, I changed some Euro to Levs (the changing rate was 1,860 Levs for 1 Euro), and went to metro station situated just outside the airport.
I bought a ticket for 1,6 Levs from the ticket machine, made a change at Serdica station and arrived at the main railway station, where I immediately bought a ticket to Plovdiv (7,9 Levs).
As for the Sofia Metro, they are using both European and Russian rolling stock, Russian one is made at "Mytischi", and looks exactly as old trains in Moscow or St Petersburg underground.
Also it is worth noting, that as in Athens, where there are small archeological expositions at some central metro stations (where objects excavated during the building of the tunnels are exhibited), there was a similar small archeological exposition on Serdica station.
Well, from what I have seen by that moment, I could tell that Sofia looks like a provincial Russian city - junk, ugliness and visible poverty.
In a book store at the central railway station books about Putin (by Belkovsky), Primakov and Gorbachev were sold, as well as about Hitler and Berlusconi, lol.
By the way, "railway station" in Bulgarian is called "гара", like "gare" in French, I noticed it immediately and remembered Gare du Nord lol. And a "train" is "влак" in Bulgarian.
Well, knowledge of Russian helps much in Bulgaria, but not always.
The carriage I boarded was mediocre, not as good as German or Scandinavian ones.
And then the long journey began, with Bulgarians coming in and going out all the way.
Bulgarians look nothing like Russians, besides, about 10% of Bulgarian population are Turks. But I certainly can't tell them from Bulgarians. People look very different here, some pale-white, others dark-brown. Slavs? Gypsies? Turks? I had no idea who is who.
But the landscape behind the window looked pretty similar to Russia.
Everything looked absolutely awful and disgusting.
Decay, ruins, poverty, uncompleted buildings, abandonment, ugliness...
And cyrillic script everywhere.
Well, at least there were forests and near the end of the journey some magnificient mountains.
Looking at all this decay I couldn't help remembering Russian province.
And also all this Balcan shit with vampires, witches etc came to mind.
Yeah, ruins and decay, forests and mountains, poverty and Slavonic language spoken everywhere, what is missing here? Vampires, certainly.
But with all seriousness, Bulgaria looks awful.
Comparing involuntarily what I was seeing in Bulgaria to life in Greece, I have to say that Greece looks really progressive, rich and deeply westernised nation compared to Bulgaria. Lol.
Well, I guess, Bulgaria now looks like Greece fifty years ago.
No wonder Greek pensioners relocate to Bulgaria to save money.
I bought a can of beer, which here costs between 1-2 Levs, and it bore two inscriptions, in Bulgarian and in slavo-macedonian. Turns out, while in Bulgarian "beer" is "бира", in slavo-macedonian it is "пиво". Funny.
By the way, the train had some technical problems when it was less than an hour into the journey, so an hour was lost due to this shit. The Bulgarians were muttering something like "технологичная нация".
So yeah, an hour late I finally arrived in Plovdiv.
While in Athens the temperature yesterday was expected to reach 35C, here it was lower than 25C, and it was raining from time to time.
And I had to go to the festival, because although Garbage will perform tomorrow, it is a three day festival, and yesterday's headliner was Disturbed (I have already been at their concert in 2017 afair).
And, well, it was awful.
A huge volumes of water fell on the field (yeah, it's an open-air festival), so it looked more like a swamp. Some people were wearing rubber boots, while others were wearing flip-flops and some were even barefoot (or had they lost their shoes?), and almost everyone wore cape.
Those wearing ordinary shoes were doomed. Or more like their shoes were doomed.
Due to such conditions I didn't even thought about getting close to the stage.
I watched performances by Swedish Avatar and Portuguese Moonspell, and fortunately it was not raining. Unfortunately, there were plenty of mosquitoes, so I was nearly eaten by them.
As for Disturbed, a few moments before they were supposed to come to the stage, another horrible rain began, so a big part of their performance I had to spend under the tent. Fucking shit.
To somehow sum everything up, this was certainly not the best concert experience in my life, to say the least.
It is difficult to enjoy yourself while standing ankle deep in the swamp and being eaten by mosquitoes in the pouring rain.
Fucking shit.
Well, at least ticket to this festival cost me 180 Levs, which is not that much for a three day festival.
