I got my bags packed on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Amateur Traveler episode 570. Today the amateur traveler talks about baths and

Benitza, the Ottoman Empire, communism, and Alexander Nefsky Cathedral as we go to Sophia in Bulgaria.

Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen. I'm not really

sitting here recording this. I'm on a boat by the time you hear this but

we'll talk more about my travels at the end of this show, but first let's talk about Bulgaria.

I'd like to welcome the show Stephanie Craig from HistoryFangrel.com who has come to talk to us about Bulgaria, specifically the region around Sophia.

Stephanie, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Chris.

I feel like I should say welcome back to the show because for Stephanie and I this is the second time we have tried the show because of some problems with the internet in Ukraine way back in May.

So we're giving this another go because it was going very well except for the internet

And that was a really great show so it's really

That was the best one you'll that will never hear why should someone go to Bulgarian? Specifically, why should we go to

Sophia? I feel like Sophia is magical. The first time that I went there, I didn't really know anything about it and I think that sometimes

it's those places you have no idea that you really don't know what to expect that just can kind of blow you away. I literally went there and

a November because it was the cheapest sky scanner flight out of Greece and I didn't put it together that it was the cheapest one because it was the next country over.

I really in my head didn't know the geography of the Balkans.

We should probably talk about the geography then.

Other people may not know that.

So you're talking about a

country right next to Greece. Right south of Romania north of Greece and Turkey and

...