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(Date Posted:
02/05/2004 2:52 AM)
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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07/22/2003 1:32 AM
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(Date Posted:
02/05/2004 1:15 PM)
That's pretty much what I thought too. The only other option I was considering was Sky Europe (I think) to Budapest and taking a train from there, but my knowledge of trains in Eastern Europe isn't that good and I've no idea how long it would take or how much it would cost. Yes, please do send details of your itinerary and what you plan to be getting up to.
Blagodarya i dovizhdane!
Al
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(Date Posted:
02/05/2004 6:12 PM)
I'm not sure it would be all that cheap to take a train from Budapest to Sofia.
The most direct international trains run through Romania before swinging south towards the Romanian-Bulgarian border. I looked at something similar in February 2000 when I was trying to get from Budapest to Istanbul. A direct international train was very expensive and taking regional trains and changing at the borders to limit the cost drove the journey time up to about three days!
In the end I bought a $60 one way ticket from Budapest to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines - it was a lot cheaper than the train.
Another relatively cheap option to get to Sofia from London, might be to take a Eurolines coach... but I imagine that would be a fairly agonising experience.
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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attitudetravel
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(Date Posted:
02/10/2004 5:33 PM)
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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(Date Posted:
02/11/2004 12:36 AM)
Sounds good. I've just checked when the holidays end and it's the 18th, so that's OK. Do you mind if I ask any of my fellow students tomorrow if they're interested? I doubt many of them will be -there's only about ten of us (which is actually bloody good for Bulgarian) and at least half the class seem to be doing it just to fill up their module quota.
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attitudetravel
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(Date Posted:
02/11/2004 2:04 AM)
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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(Date Posted:
02/11/2004 8:24 AM)
Great; I'll ask them later today. To be honest, from the research I've been doing tonight (which has, as you'll see, kept me up until 6 am ) I'm not sure the Hamburg route is the best, principally because one has to transfer between airports (how long does it take to transfer between them)? Cologne (with German Wings) or Dusseldorf (with Air Berlin) seem marginally better bets -and they're as cheap, if not cheaper than Ryanair (you'll have noticed that Ryanair's special offer runs out, most inconvenienty, on March 31st -unless you fancy spending a couple of days in Northern Germany, which I'm not against).
Moderator: Alan L
Edit Reason: Second paragraph off-topic. Moved to a new thread.
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attitudetravel
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(Date Posted:
02/11/2004 2:34 PM)
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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9# |
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(Date Posted:
02/14/2004 10:25 PM)
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attitudetravel
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(Date Posted:
02/15/2004 2:48 AM)
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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(Date Posted:
02/15/2004 11:22 AM)
Ah-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha! You know, Alan, I think I must be going mad. I've just checked my last post, and it appears that I was actually suggesting -get this- taking a direct flight to my intended destination! Silly me... Seriously, on certain dates (though not ours) Corendon do indeed fly Eindhoven-Istanbul for the remarkable price of 19 Euros. Taxes, etc., make it an 88 Euro return trip (about 60 quid), which one can't really argue about. RyanAir London-Eindhoven is around 40 quid at its cheapest. So overall, it would be around 140 quid for UK-Turkey return at the start of April.
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Alsky
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(Date Posted:
02/16/2004 1:42 PM)
Hmm. It does look like it's too late to make any of the low-cost options worthwhile. So I've bought a return ticket with Bulgaria Air/Balkan Air Tours, departing 30 March & returning 16 April. (As far as I can gather, Balkan Air actually went bust in 2001, and was semi-reincarnated as Balkan Air Tours in 2002, which was renamed as Bulgarian Air in 2003).
Al
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attitudetravel
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(Date Posted:
02/16/2004 1:57 PM)
Good stuff. I'll see you in Sofia then.
Do you have any plans, by the way? Is it all academic research assignments or are you mostly free to do what you want? I'm planning on going to Veliko Tarnovo and one or two other places and I'm about four years overdue to go and visit two friends Rosa and Drago in Plovdiv.
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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(Date Posted:
02/17/2004 12:00 AM)
None of it's academic research assignments -just thought that seeing as though I'm studying the language I might as well go and visit the place (having failed miserably to do so the last time I tried Bulgarian). And I need a holiday, so it's a natural choice. I'm looking forward to it. Have you any ideas about accommodation?
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attitudetravel
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(Date Posted:
02/17/2004 2:47 PM)
Last time I was in Bulgaria, accommodation options were few and far between. I rented a room in Sofia, stayed in a private home in Melnik where the landlady was letting out a spare room for a bit of extra cash, blagged my way into staying two nights in the student obshzhitije in Blagoevgrad, spent one night in a towerblock flat in Plovdiv (converted into a pension of sorts) and the second night with Drago, one of a group of local students who I'd met in a bar.
I imagine that there are a few more hostels and pensions running now than there were four and a half years ago.
If not, you'll have a good chance to practice your Bulgarian (and teach me how to improve my Russian-derived pidgin variant).
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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com
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Alsky
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(Date Posted:
02/18/2004 8:30 PM)
Just to let you know that my tickets have arrived.
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