Bulgaria

We left Athens on Tuesday getting the overnight train to the top of Greece. The plan was 2 day trains through Bulgaria and Serbia then another night train to Croatia. BUT the Bulgarians held us at border for ages checking passports so we were over an hour late and missed second train. 8 hour for the next.
Bulgaria is obviously a very poor country, it is colourless and barren and everything is rundown- makes me appreciate Oz. They still use donkey and carts and the small villages look very self sufficent- so many goats and donkeys. We didnt want to be in Sofia (capital)as the country seemed very scary- cold and dark- even the police scare us! BUT 8 hours is a long time to wait so we risked our bags in lockers and got a tram around the city. Not much too see. One good thing is we bought lunch, went bowling and got loads of groceries for only 5€ very cheap.
Finally at 10pm we got the nighttrain to Beograd in Serbia. So we thought. We woke in the morning at Bulgas... this is on the other side of Bulgaria on the very eastern border of Europe! We got on wrong train in opposite direction! So after another wait we got a day train back to Sofia and night train to Beograd and finally day train to Zeograb in Croatia. It was pretty scary going pass borders at night, the police fully raided train- crawl through roof and everything.
We didnt know the language, and cannot understand their signs, there is no English people, and everyone was rude- so we were so glad to be out of the Bulg- 4 days later! Pretty funny but we admit.