My travel route from (Bulgaria) to Arnhem (The
Netherlands)
I've recently had to relocate to the Netherlands in order to start
up and hopefully complete my studies in
Arnhem Business School (HAN)
I decided to share my travel route just in case if somebody else is
about to partake into the same travel route,
in that case this information here could probably be helpful to
somebody out there.
My starting destination was the city of Dobrich (Bulgaria) and my
arrival destination Arnhem (The Netherlands).
I was not sure if I'll be able to properly sign up for the year
2009-2010 in Arnhem Business School which btw is an University of
Applied sciences.
There is a bit of difference here in the Netherlands with the
existant universities.
On one hand you have the normal University as in every other
European country where you study straight with the books at hand in
a pretty much theoretical fashion
and then you have the University of Applied Sciences which include
much less theory and is a way more practical oriented.
The University of Applied sciences differ in a way with normal
university at point where the studies are lasting 4 years one is a
building year (A sort of introductionary year to all studies to
come),
the other type of University just like the world famous University
of Rotterdam usually continues for 5 years.
In both of this university types you get a diploma for a Bachelor,
however if you are studying in a University of Applied
Sciences
the continuation of studies to a Master degree lasts a bit longer
like 2 years (if I'm correct).
Anyways back to my travel route in order to arrive to Arnhem the
Netherlands, I've followed the following route:
From Dobrich to Sofia I've used the regular bus line with called
ETAP it costs like 32 levs or (16 EUR).
From there on I've spend a night in a very close friend and in the
Friday I took up a bus
from
the Regular Abroad Union Ivkoni Bus lines
The bus departed in 14:00 from Sofia's Central bus station for
international bus lines.
I've previously reserved a ticket by phone calling to a union
ivkoni secretary and paid the ticket two hours before the departure
time arranged.
The bus travelled to Utrecht the Netherlands while stopping on
every interval of 4,5,6 hours for a around 20 minutes break.
The bus route first crossed the Bulgarian border and then through
Serbia in Serbia's boarder our International (so called RED)
passports were checked by the border authorities, then once again a
check was done when we left Serbia and furtherafter we were checked
on the Hungarian custom entrance by the border police.
There was a small inconvinience that occured when we were leaving
the Serbian border we were asked to go down from the bus and pick
up our laggage and open it for a check.
Thanksfully the check went quite fast and they didn't grabbed
through our baggage.
The check up did like 20 minutes delay. From there on we have
traveled through whole Hungary and then entered Austria.
We went further after to Germany as this two countries are already
in EU and bothwise
Schengen then we freely travelled through
the border lines of this countries.
We then crossed almost the whole Germanly land with the bus while
stopping on few locations where passangers has to go e.g. Nurnberg,
Munchen and a few others.
Next the bus went to Belgium and stopped in Bruxelles and
Antwerpen, a while after we were already in the Netherlands and we
went through Rotterdam as a first stop and probably a few others. I
was finally in Utrecht in around 2:30 a.m. in the morning.
The bus stop was right in front of Utrecht's central train station,
so I went to the Train Station and asked for a train for
Arnhem.
It was really incovenient that the only train for Arnhem was at
early morning 19:53
Therefore I had to stay and wait in the train station for about 5
hours!.
The train stations here in The Netherlands though really modern a
bit foolish, they're main entrance train station doors are opened
and therefore the wind is blowing in the whole time, so after 4:00
o'lock it started becoming really windy and cold.
Thanksfully I was able to have a quick one hour sleep on the train
station of about 4 till 5 o'clock to refresh my body power a
bit.
I was really schocked because some Dutch boys and girls and some
others from a mixed nationality had passed by the train station in
a really fashionable clothes after a party being quite over mooded
and "wild".
You can't definitely see such a behaviour from people in Bulgaria,
it was a bit too opened for me, but anyways cool to see.
In about 8:20 the train from Utrecht arrived to Arnhem passing by
through Nijmegen (the nearby city to Arnhem).
So let me summarize a bit about the whole travel from Sofia to
Arnhem, it took me like 2 days and a few hours time overall.
The cost for the ticket from Sofia Bulgaria to Utrecht the
Netherlands was 260 levs (130 EUR) and from therein the train
ticket was 10 EUR more.
So my overall trip from Dobrich to Arnhem had an overall costs of
156 EUR.
This amount of money was quite affordable compared to the one way
fly tickets which had a costs of 200 EUR at minimum.