Bulgaria. Sofia

Our plane took off from Riga airport at 11:40 on 10th of March. In Kiev we had 55 minutes to change flights and were a little bit misled by absent signs. But proper gate was found in the end and we continued our travel above the clouds.



Couchsurfing friend Cvetan waited us in the airport of Sofia and took us to his flat.



Cvetan's home is full of books in Bulgarian, English and Russian. He speeaks good Russian and we used this language for communication. On arrival day we stayed in Cvetan's flat, drunk tea and some rakiya and talked.
Next day Cvetan showed us Sofia.
"It is monument of Rusian Tsar-Liberator Alexander the Second" - All Bulgarians remember that in 19th centuary Russians brought freedom after Turkish occupation.
"And that is monument of liberators. But nobody knows what kind of freedom they brought to Bulgaria." It was monument of Soviet soldiers. "Bulgaria was not occupied by Germany. Rather we can say Bulgaria was occupied by communists after World War 2."







Afernoon we hiked Vitosha - mountain near and above Sofia. And in his 72 Cvetan led us all the way up and down.






Next day, 12th of march, we left Bulgaria for Macedonia. Live and road goes on :-))) !

At Sea Again

It passed a long time since the last updating of my blog. I am on the same ship Nordic Chantal, joined her at Sankt Peterburg (Russia), then we sailed to Southampton (U.K.) with cargo of fertilizers. After that loaded potatoes in Greenore (Ireland) to S.Peterburg. It looks that last year was very bad for Russian agriculture. But what year was good for it? In Soviet era we carried grain, now - potatoes. The biggest country in the world cannot provide its not so big population with elementary food.
In Sankt Peterburg we discharged potatoes and loaded fertilizers for Netherlands. Due to the west and south-west winds approaches to S.Peterburg were covered with ice and we could navigate in Eastern part of Gulf of Finland with ice-breaker assistance only.
So now we are in port of Terneuzen waiting for discharging which is delaying by rain.


Gulf of Finland in winter:






S.Peterburg:






Northwest coast of Scotland:

Back Home

It is more than one month since my last post. Unfortunately I did not have internet access all that time.
So we stayed at Ashdod roads two weeks and after that just about 12 hours in port. And they were night hours, nobody could go ashore and all our plans to visit Jerusalem, Nazareth and other holy and interesting places failed.
After discharging grain in Ashdod we proceeded to Black Sea for loading aluminium in Georgian port Poti. As you know there are plenty places with very rich history and nature in Georgia, but Poti is industrial city with mostly post-soviet looking landscape. There is one church of Byzantium style:



After sailing from Georgia we went for discharging to Norway. Winds were favourable in Black Sea, Mediterranean and Atlantic. Even Bay of Biscay, famous of storms, met us with good weather. English Channel was like a lake. All our luck finished at the entrance to the North Sea. Because of west and north-west winds force 7-8 and high seas we crossed it in four days instead of expected two.



But everything has its end and on arrival to Norwegian port Bergen I signed-off and now have two month vacation.