New Year's Marathon

Chestita Nova Goodina! Happy New Year!

The party marathon started on Thursday. I headed for Plovdiv to find a bus to Chepelare. While I was in Plovdiv I bumped into another volunteer and he covinved me to go to Smolyan with him. When we got to Smolyan we met some other volunteers who were sitting with and old Scotish Royal Marine who lived in town. We chatted and he paid for all our drinks. Later that night we went out to a bar where I had my first Captain and Coke in a long time. I don't think it was real Captain Morgan though. It didn't have the pirate on the bottle and it tasted horrible. I only took a few swigs. What a tease. I drank a few other drinks and got a little faded. That night we stayed at a volunteers apartment. We woke up early and made it to Chepalare in the morning and met with some more volunteers.

In Chepelare we stayed at a hotel owned by a Brit. They housed us, fed us, and threw us a New Year's party for $40 bucks. Not bad, huh? When midnight struck the owner of the hotel sprayed everyone with red champaigne. Everybody's cloths got stained red. I don't think he knew it was red champaigne. I've never heard it before. Outside everyone in the city let off all their fireworks, so no matter where you looked, there was sparks in the sky followed by loud bangs. We did the horo out in the snow until someone slipped. After that we went to the disco in town and then went back to the hotel to crash for a few hours.

Saturday night some of us went to Plovdiv. Thats the closest big city to my town, Bratsigovo. I found a lot of cool places there. We went to a bar that played only songs like "What a Wonderful World", "Boardwalk", and "Stand by me". Classic R&B I guess. When certain songs played we all sang. I think the crowd liked it. I know the bartender did. Another place we went to had a band that sang rock music. The lyrics were in english but we didn't recognize the songs. It was a cool place down in a basement. Very scary and dungeon like. My brother would like it. That night was probably the funnest of all of them because I was with only a small group of volunteers.

I drank the most that night of any of the nights and on the least amount of sleep. We went to a few other places and late in the night, probably after five in the morning, after getting lost and not being able to find the hostel (eventhough it was right in front of me) I went to bed. Yeah, I had a little too much to drink that night. I woke up about ten in the morning and took a taxi back home. I spent Sunday recovering and promising never to drink that much again.