State Railways Offer Month-Long Tour of Turkey
BalkanTravellers.com
The Express Train Tour Card, the Zaman newspaper reported, allows passengers to make a tour of 42 Turkish municipal cities aboard the Eskişehir Express Train. Its route passes though the cities of İzmir, Afyonkarahisar, Konya, Adana, Ankara, Kayseri, Sivas, Erzurum, Kars, Diyarbakır, Tatvan and Kurtalan.
The train journey’s programme, according to the publication, also includes visits to famous places in those cities.
The Express Train Tour Card (Ekspres Tren Tur Karti) costs 150 Turkish lira (around 70 euro) and can be purchased at most train stations. There is also the option of a Sleeping Car Train Tour Card (Yatakli Tren Tur Karti) costs 500 Turkish lira (around 230 euro) and is valid both for carriage on any train, and use of any sort of sleeping accommodation on trains.
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Bulgaria
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Stecci to be Nominated as Joint Cultural Heritage by 4 Balkan Countries
5 November 2009 | In a rare move of cooperation, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro recently agreed to nominate the medieval tombstones, known as stecci, scattered across the four countries as their shared cultural heritage to the UN World Heritage List. Full Story
Useful Reads
Montenegro
Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro (2007) | By Elizabeth Roberts
Although released just in 2007, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro comes from a much older school of scholarship. With this much needed work, former diplomat Elizabeth Roberts has produced the newest and best introduction to the full history of a storied and sometimes inscrutable land the identity of which was formed equally by its forbidding mountains and balmy Adriatic coast- still the features most representative of Montenegro today and most enticing to its increasing number of foreign visitors.
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Music
Serbia
EXIT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia: Overnight Exile in the Fortress
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Photogalleries
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A Perfect Shot
In Homo Urbanus Europeanus, exhibited May 9-24 in front of the National Theatre in Sofia, Jean-Marc Caracci presents his photographs of people in the urban environment of European capitals.
RED&WHITE SOFIA. On the 1st of March Bulgarians say goodbye to the winter. They buy each other red&white threads to carry around until they see a stork and spring can begin. Photography by Lode Desmet
BULGARIA D'OR: The Bulgarian countryside, patinated with the noble golden dust of the autumn. Photographs by Lode Desmet
360 degrees Bulgaria, an exhibition by photographer Alexandar Ivanov, is on display at the Sea Garden in Varna until August 28. It will be shown at Plovdiv’s Central Square from Sept 5.
The exhibition Photographs of a Trip Through Bulgaria by Hungarian photographer András Balla can be seen in Sofia's Hungarian Cultural Institute, at Aksakov 16 Street, until August 22
Instant Spring in Sofia | Photographs by Lode Desmet
Off-the-season Beauty of Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast | Photographs by Adelina Iliev
Bulgaria's Northern Black Sea Coast
Photographs by Albena Shkodrova
excellent smugs