Our second rail trip, Plovdiv to Burgas. some productive countryside, especially sunflowers, mixed with depressing old factories. One enormous old oil comlex with only a few colourful new pipes. And rain.

People. Out enjoying the sun at last.








Even the kinder kids.

And getting on with their jobs. OHS issues, especially here. The short ladder is held in place manually, but only on a bent old board.





This shows how big the yellow-legged gulls are, like chooks! They are everywhere, and noisy. But this old Crusader knows how to
 see them off.

The Black Sea. Both Burgas and Varna have enormous Sea Parks, large wooded public spaces before the beach. Our bus to Varna was only a minibus, and rather a rattletrap, passing condos waiting for resort visitors, some in the midlle of country, then over wooded hills.

George was our taxi driver for the morning, getting us where no bus could and much cheaper than a hire car. Nothing much doing in the birdwatching line, So George took us to an ancient Thracian tomb. All hidden under a grass mound or tumulus. Sort of doughnut or mushroom shape inside round a central chimney. Deified but dead chief was buried here and rituals sounded like a good orgy.

Curator insisted we take a CD of Bulgarian history for Australia.

With the language, we are indebted to the kindness of strangers every day.

Here are St Cyril and St Mathodii who invented their own cyrillic alphabet based on the Greek. The flowers are from the 24th, their national celebration of this work. A minibus is mhnhbyc, and all the rest is too hard to share.

Another thunderous wet afternoon.





Tomorrow to Constanta, Romania.