on to Varna

There is one bus a day from constanta to varna, and it leaves in the late afternoon, gets in late at night, and costs a fortune. So we followed some instructions we found online for getting there by local buses. A minibus to Mangalia and another from there to Vama Veche on the border. A short walk across the border, and a longish wait for a ride to the nearest Bulgarian town. We were offered taxis in a variety of languages, but thought we'd try hitching instead. We walked a kilometre or three to the nearest spot in the shade, and were there an hour or so before a minibus stopped on apparently its regular route. Miraculously, one of the three people on it spoke rather good english (being back in slavic land was a shock, even if it is 'slavic light' grammatically speaking. I still don't do slavic. AND it's written in cyrillic, which doesn't help) and helped up work out that the bus was going exactly where we wanted for a very reasonable price and if was willing to accept romanian money, as we had yet to find a change booth or bank in bulgaria. From Kavarna, at the end of the bus run, we managed to find money, some amazing bakery products and learn the word for thankyou in bulgarian- blagodarya- and got on another bus all the way to Varna.
The whole adventure took slightly longer than the expensive bus, but for half the price, and twice the adventure. And i got to spend an hour on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, which always makes of happy!