36 hours!

So we arrived at the Nice airport at 5:00 pm on Saturday. We were prepared for a long day of travel, but we had no idea what was in store for us.

In Nice, we had some of the mustard we were bringing back from France taken because they said it was a liquid. This particularly upset the British man behind Nathan that the French would be taking Nathan's mustard, but, alas, they did. The good news is that they only took 1 jar of mustard and we had another, larger, jar further on in the bag.

So we land in Rome around 8:30 and the first challenge is to hide the larger mustard somewhere in the airport so Nathan wouldn't have to take it through security again. Rather, this was Nathan's first challenge and mine was to sit and wait for him and not think about him being arrested for hiding things in airports. Oh well.

Anyway, we hop on a train bound for downtown and start cruising through Rome. We get off at a very shady looking train shop and decide to get some food and then find out bearings. We headed to a brightly lit pizzeria and picked up some cheap Roman pizza:It was only 4 Euro for 2 huge pieces (each cut in 4 slices). Delicious. Then we walked around for a while and saw lots and lots of cool stuff that we could barely believe was real. Rome is beautiful and walking around at night is not half-bad. Everything is lit up and densely packed.
Here's a picture of us on a bridge over the Tiber River:
So that was all well and good and we were amazed at Rome's imperial majesty, but starting to feel cold and tired so we walked to the main bus terminal to catch the shuttle back to the airport. The Rome bus terminal is HUGE--easily the size of a city block. So we wander around it a while and we don't see any signs so we walk outside to see if there is an information booth. Well, wonder of wonders, the terminal closes for the night as soon as we leave the building. To top it off, information is also closed. We met some nice people who spoke English (but seriously--most of the people we saw in Rome were British or American) who told us that the next shuttle wasn't until 4:30 am. By this point, it is 2:00 am so we decided to go camp it out in the McDonald's. Now, I'm not usually a fan of McD's, but Saturday night they were my new best friend. We both knocked out 2 cappuccinos (1 Euro each and oh so tasty) and we watched The Office and played word games, because, yes, we are that cool.

By the way, do you see in the picture above how big that coffee is? It was probably 8 ounces or so which after a few months of tiny Bulgarian coffee was almost too much to handle. Good gracious it was good espresso, though I was very shaky for the next 12 hours.

Anyway, around 5 am the terminal reopens and we decide to catch the next train back to the airport at 5:52 am. Also, all that coffee made it urgent that we find a restroom that was at least marginally less disgusting than McDonald's. There was no bathroom to be found, however. Apparently before 7 am peeing anywhere but McDonald's is not allowed.

On our hunt for a bathroom we met a homeless in the terminal staring at sandwiches in the bakery case. Nathan asked if he wanted a sandwich and he said yes. We had made some brie sandwiches (half with chicken and mustard) before leaving and so Nathan gave him a sandwich. However, as soon as we turned around we head something hit the trashcan and we ran over and, sure enough, he had thrown away the sandwich. What made this so sad for me was that this was our last sans-chicken sandwich. Argh!

So we catch a train back to the airport, hungry and tired (because we still haven't been to sleep), make it through security, reclaim the mustard and fall asleep at 7:30 am in our terminal.

Our flight is at 10 and we land in Thessaloniki at 12:30 pm without a hitch. We catch a public bus to the bus station, buy tickets back to Bulgaria and wait a few hours for the Bulgarian train. Here's where the fun starts again. We purchased tickets to Blagoevgrad and are seated with three other AUBG students (Albanians) also going back to Blagoevgrad. Problem is that the train didn't stop in Blagoevgrad. Well, I suppose it paused long enough for us to see that it was Blagoevgrad, but as we were picking up our luggage and walking to the door the train started moving again. Luckily, the Albanian students spoke Bulgarian and so we could talk to the train employee, but unluckily he said it was our fault for not tucking and rolling even though 5 people cannot exit a train in less than 45 seconds!

By this point, we are so tired (3 hours of terminal sleep a piece) and frustrated and then the train conductor has the nerve to tell us that we have to pay 10 extra Euro a piece to stay on the train because our tickets were for Blagoevgrad. Wow--I don't know if I've ever seen Nathan so mad and we, of course, refuse to pay so he threatens to call the police on us. The Albanians at sort of amused at how Nathan and I expect customer service and tell us that the best thing we can do is flash our passports and scare with our nationality. We don't, obviously, and we just settled in for a long ride to Sofia and take comfort in the fact that they probably won't arrest us.

So we decide to call a taxi driver that one of the students knows to pick us up in Sofia for a negotiated price. That's all well and good and we arrive in Sofia around 12:45 am and wait until 2:20 am for the cabs to show up. We couldn't get a cab there because who knows how much they would charge us. I feel asleep waiting and was awaken by a Bulgarian police officer speaking only Bulgarian. However, the point, I think, was that I could not sleep where I was because you can only sleep upstairs. I was back in another power of the wills to stay awake. When the cabs finally showed up we slept the entire way back to Blagoevgrad, but we woken up every 20 minutes or so when we had to stop because part of the car kept breaking. It was so sketchy, but we were so tired we barely cared.

We finally arrived at Skapto at 4:30 am and went upstairs to email our professors to let them know why we wouldn't be in class. The internet was down, so we just gave up and set the alarm for noon.

At noon we had to run to the library to study really quickly for our 2:00 midterms. I hadn't read the book mine was on and when I got to the library they only had it in Bulgarian. So, I did the next best thing--I looked up the information on wikipedia.

The midterm went pretty well and now we're set for a night in to try and catch up on sleep.