I’m way behind in my postings here…this is actually coming to you from Hungary!

After my short visit to Serbia I had to go to Bulgaria for some work related items which I won’t bore you with…it involved company registration and other legalities and I headed for Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city and one of Europe’s best spots to be in should you be doing a tech start-up. Seriously. Incredible internet connectivity (everywhere, mostly free), great international and interesting crowd, superb places to eat and hang out and generally just an amazing place.

If you ever get the opportunity to visit, you should, without hesitation. English is widely spoken and things were generally really good value for money. For instance the hotel (yes, there was no campsite or motorhome parking – major business opportunity here!) was €40 a night, and it was a decent, 4 star hotel. (With exceptional service!). They allowed me to park Raquaza in their (open) parking area but made sure it’s within their security camera views. I had to stay an extra evening but the hotel was sold out, and they had no problem with letting me sleep in the motorhome, in their car park, which was really nice of them.

They still use a local currency, the leva, but it’s pegged to the Euro at a fixed rate and most places accept Euro’s.

As mentioned I had to do a few company related things here, and one involved a contract where my name had to be put in the Cyrillic form. Here it is:

That reads Riaan Johan van Schoor. I really like the thing on the U of the Johan part!

Whilst in Plovdiv I made use of the Bizlabs co-working space, where you can rent a desk for the day, week or month at exceptionally good rates. Shout-out to them for being super hosts and offering a great working environment. I can recommend them highly!

Driving there and back was a breeze, good highway and no major delays at the borders, which I believe was lucky as clearly it can get very busy there.

Yep, an interesting crowd…this was at the very hip Fargo bar. Awesome place.

After this short visit I headed back to Belgrade for some work with the team there, and then I made my way to Hungary, where I’m now, and will stay for at least 2 months. I’ll post about that in the next update.

A link to a photo album with more photos of Plovdiv can be found here.