Renne was in Sofia for a week or so to finish doing research
for her thesis. Before she came over here she was in London, Paris, and
Rome for a couple of days, so she has been getting around. She is now finishing
up some research for her thesis on health reform in Bulgaria, and leaves
for
the states on Friday. Since she speaks Italian fluently, so she is able
to communicate with the Romanians better than I can.
She was able to come over and visit for a 3 day visit. It took her longer to get from Sofia to Mangalia on a train (~24 hours) than it did from Chicago to Paris via plane. She took a train from Sofia to Bucaresti on Thursday that was supposed to continue onto Mangalia, but didn't for some reason (typical). So she took a taxi (big mistake) that ended up costing us 80 bucks and a lot of arguing (the lying taxi driver) in Romanian.We had to haggle for bit (45 min), but after that had a chill weekend on the beach.
On Saturday we went to a local archeological museum and had a picnic at a near by beach Vama Veche beach (see beach pics). At the beach we temp. adobted a 2 yr old kid, Adrian, and a dog(see Adrian pics). That evening we decided to walk from the beach to the Bulgaria boarder just for kick. It was only a 2.5 km walk (see boarder pics). We went to the boarder station where I got the opportunity to hear her speak her mother tongue to other Bulgarians in her mother country. When then hitch a ride back to my place with a bottle of Bulgarian wine.
Sunday I escorted her back to Bucaresti (via a cheaper method) where we spent the day in the park before she had to leave. Then we did the whole cliche "romantic leaving on a train" episode. (see train pics)