Bulgaria – Sentimental nomadic journey
I haven’t updated my travel journal for almost four months just because I was lazy.
I mean, I make enough money to finance my trip from my freelancing, and I know blogging won’t make much money. Certainly, there is no way that hourly earnings from blogging will be higher than my hourly earning from my freelancing.
Blogging is a bad investment of time for me unless I start something like “Wanna know my secret? Buy this book, and you be a nomad, too!” I don’t want to do that. Access to knowledge should be free!
So, I didn’t have the motivation to write a blog post until I realized that I could practice my English by writing blog posts; also, maybe it might be easy to make English blog profitable with affiliate ads and banner ads than in Japanese because of the larger potential audiences.
So anyway, here I am back to the blogosphere. I will keep writing about my traveling until I ran out of motivation.
Security check at Albania
It’s been a while since I left Bulgaria, so my memory is a blur.
All I remember is bad weather, losing an important client, and finding a new client two days after that.
I went to Bulgaria after Albania to meet my friend from France. Bulgaria is known for roses and yogurt in Japan. One of the most popular yogurt brands is named “ブルガリア,” which means Bulgaria.
I had a rare experience at the airport of Albania. I was asked to open my suitcase because I had too many electronics. 😀 I had a digital camera, an external HDD, a laptop, and a portable battery. They were all packed in the same place, so the airport security had problem scanning them with an x-ray. But they were polite and pleasant. It was just a rare experience for me to see a security room in an airport.
Living abroad
Living abroad after retirement is a popular life choice. Many Japanese people move to Indonesia and the Philippines because living there is cheaper for them and the weather there is always mild.
When you travel around the world, you find some cities so cozy that you want to live there, and in some countries “even a week is too long.” I felt that Krakow, Prague, and Gdansk are very nice cities in which to settle. Tirana might be a choice, too.
Unfortunately, I felt two weeks was too long for Sofia. My friend felt the same way.
You won’t know where you will want to settle unless you have been there. I personally don’t feel at home in cosmopolitan cities like Berlin. I feel at home in cities where trams run, the streets are walkable, and not too many tall buildings have been built in the city center. However, that’s just me. Maybe this is because I was raised in rural Japan. People from Tokyo probably feel the other way.
However, the weather, culture, and my emotional state also affect my feelings about cities. During my stay in Sofia, it was sunny for only two days. In Albania, I saw many people chilling at cafes, and I heard children musicians performing live on the street. I did not experience any of that in Sofia, but maybe it was only due to the bad weather.
Love makes your world colorful. Maybe it was my state of mind that made Sofia look so gray.