Ruse, 3 October 2007

Market day in Polski Trembesh. We had a bit of a wander around then it was on to Ruse which we had to reach by one in the afternoon to give back our rental car.

With our luck a bridge had collapsed the week before so we had to take a big detour a few kilometers up the road. Luckily we had our Esperantist to warn us... otherwise we would have been pretty confused.

On the way to Ruse we decided to check out some more sights from my map. We made it to Cherven, billed as a medieval city.



We had lunch by the river in a nice cubby house built over the water. But on the road out we missed the turn-off so we didn't actually get to see what it's so famous for... I'm hoping that all the buildings were just ruins...

We made it to Ruse a little late - no car rental people but once we got near the hotel I asked a couple of women for directions - and got my reply in Esperanto! Well, by chance I happened to ask directions from the two Esperantists who had come to meet us.

They rang Sophia for us so we were able to determine that the car rental people were late. (The rental company doesn't actually have an office in Ruse but they sent a couple of blokes up from Sofia to pick up the car.)



Ruse turned out to be a pretty impressive city on the Danube with a nice fin-de-siècle central area. Lots of outside cafés.



There was also a teachers' strike on at the time. If you look carefully at the pic you might also see an Esperanto teacher shaking his fist...



I also liked this rather impressive signage in the shape of a muffler...



It was out the front of a muffler shop... very clever!





This signage however was a little more alarming. It was a gun shop but they also seem to stock balaclavas!

We went to the local market and then on to the bus-station to buy some tickets to Bucharest. Unfortunately all the tickets for the bus we wanted were sold out which only left a train at 3 in the morning - not something we were looking forward to. But as usual in these spots, there was some bloke hanging around who asked us where we were off too. We told him Bucharest and that just seemed to be his speciality! And even better than the bus, he would pick us up from our hotel.

Back in the centre we discovered that they had set up for some concert in the main square. Traditonal Bulgarian music with dancers among the audience. In the end about the only people not dancing was probably us. Very impressive scene.