"Yes, I know the paragliding, I tried it in Romania," a young Bulgarian pump attendant stammers his poor English while refueling my car near Sofia and wags appreciatively. I'm sure he considers me to be a competitor. He writes by his licked finger on the grubby body of my car a very low amount 0.385 Euro per one litre of GPL. This is even cheaper than in our country. Never mind, full tank!

    The weather is bad and the road awful. After several paid and relatively fast parts of the motorway in Serbia the transit through Bulgaria seems to be very slow and rather dangerous, there are lots of large pits and deep potholes. However, a driver has to buy a road ticket in the border office and it costs about 1 Euro per every day he wants to stay in Bulgaria. But this will help possibly, who knows.



    After a night wind storm and a heavy rain the small town Sopot, which is located on the road between the capital Sofia and the well known seaside resort Burgas, wakes up into a sunny morning. A temperature is very low and a fresh snow can be seen on tops of the hills above a higher cableway station. It reminds me the competition in Bassano two years ago.

    Some of big promotive tents beside a down cableway station are torn by the strong wind and only one small tent cringes on the corner of the landing zone at a height of 530 meters above sea level. A black horse grazes beside and probably keeps an eye on an undisturbed sleep of the man inside. The wind batters branches of the trees around and it seems to me that nobody will realize any training flight today. Only Sunday will be the first competition day and organisers have an excellent weather forecast reserved for that day. I don't know exactly why but I believe them.