I know, dear readers, that I could blog more often for your taste. For instance, my recent visit to Plovdiv in Bulgaria is certainly worth mentioning with more than a few bizarre pictures. So, while riding the train back from the Netherlands, I will try to catch up a little. Please forgive the potentially higher then usual number of typos, I write this on a PDA with a nice but far from perfect keyboard.

So, Plovdiv. After having spent some time there last summer when traveling from and to the Rainbow gathering, I always wanted to come back. Now the fortunes of business travel brought me there for a conference. The city is, as mentioned last year, very well suited for summer leisure. Lots of open air bars and restaurants are sprinkled throughout the old city part, ancient roman ruins are dug out all over the place and the young crowd in the streets is positively in party mood. I visited the nice spots I knew from last summer and discovered a few new ones. The feeling for location and street layout quickly kicked in (admittedly after I nearly led a party of fellow conference participants astray on a drinking tour of the old city, but in the end I found the place we were looking for). Nothing beats the feeling of orientation competence in a foreign city…

The overall feeling of the city has not changed much. Shoping is still ridiculously cheap, the people friendly, few speak english, gross income per head is still rather low and the police has a certain knack for arbitrary policing. The food requires carefull choosing, prime example was the stuff they served in the Trimontium Princess Hotel, where the conference took place. The hotel has, despite serious renovation, an subtle stalin-baroque style and the kitchen personal has apparently not been renewed since the early 70s…

The train is currently stuck in Hamm (Westfalen), waiting for a second train part that should be coupled to it. Weather here is grey here deep in the west, I hope this is not as it will be the rest of the summer…

Speaking of summer, end of July the What The Hack hacker-camp will take place, and since my current trip brought me near the location I took the opportunity to visit the grounds. It has so much space that I seriously consider bringing a bicycle, otherwise moving around the campsite can get a bit time-consuming. Other then this, the spot is nearly perfect. Large open lawns, parted by rows of (hopefully) shadow-giving trees. The only other drawback besides the sheer size of the place is, that it also has quite a number of mosquito-breeding shallow drainage flows. So be prepared to deal with insects.