Elite Spetema Hotel — Hotel in Bozhurishte

The cheapest hotel in Sofia, but I shared the room with actual cockroaches, which was an exciting learning opportunity for me.

I've got videos of the three cockroaches I found in my room. The first I found disappearing down the back of the desk, so had to pull it forwards to find him, which then sent me on a search for any of his friends.

As I'd never met a real cockroach before I was keen to learn about them, turns out these are "German Cockroaches", so the greeting should be "Guten Aben Blattella Germanica" with a tip of the cap, to give them full respect. They're about 1.5cm long, and pretty quick when they're uncovered, so practice your greeting in advance.

I learned that these cockroaches are not really harmful, normally a good indicator of dirt, but they can bite, and will chew hair. As I've got a lovely beard, this was of great concern to me.

I found one on the mattress of one of the beds, and another in the bathroom (this one escaped down the drain).

After checking the bed & bedding, I pulled the duvet out & slept inside the duvet case like I was camping in a bivouac, which reminded me of night in the forrest as a kid.

One thing I learned while studying the nature of Herr Blattella Germanica was that they hate light, so to keep any further cockroaches from crawling over me and chewing my sumptuous beard clean off, I had to sleep with the light on, which worked, but meant I didn't really get any sleep, which kinda defeated the object of of booking the hotel.

I know you're probably thinking "why didn't you complain or go to a different hotel?", well it was near midnight when I arrived, after driving 1,500km so it probably wouldn't have been safe for me to drive any further, and moving to another room would've required me to sweep all the bedding, nooks and crannies for a new set of cockroaches.

So if you like learning about wildlife, I definitely recommend this hotel. I've left the dead cockroach bodies in places a decent cleaner would find (so they're probably...

Scam alert! They lie about the location. It's located in Bojurishte. We booked on booking and paid online thinking the address is real. We arrived at the location and saw no Spetema in sight. It was in fact a 10 minute drive at 2.00 am from Sofia where they put the address on booking to Bojourishte, the ACTUAL location, outside Sofia. We told the front desk we want a refund since we felt scammed. She shifted the blame on the manager who couldn't be contacted. We drove all the way from southern Greece and were absolutely exhausted. We had further 5 hours to drive and wanted to but my wife insisted we rest. In the stinky room we found a stinky sock, dust, a disfunctional toilet, unwiped mirror, dead bugs smeared on the ceiling and stains on the bed sheets. And btw, I told the front desk employee about the sock and they did absolutely nothing. Even asked me if it was MY room.. After combing through reviews we saw that a few people had their car damaged/vandalised in their parking lot. Such a place wouldn't run in an European world without serious influence behind it. The window is not built to code - it's too low and people / children can lean and fall over. I felt in danger knowing only a mob member would keep this running so we left in a hurry, driving for a total...

They lie about the location. It's located in Bojurishte. We booked on booking and paid online thinking the address is real. We arrived at the location and saw no Spetema in sight. It was in fact a 10 minute drive at 2.00 am from Sofia where they put the address on booking to Bojourishte, the ACTUAL location, outside Sofia. We told the front desk we want a refund since we felt scammed. She shifted the blame on the manager who couldn't be contacted. We drove all the way from southern Greece and were absolutely exhausted. We had further 5 hours to drive and wanted to but my wife insisted we rest. In the stinky room we found a stinky sock, dust, a disfunctional toilet, unwiped mirror, dead bugs smeared on the ceiling and stains on the bed sheets. And btw, I told the front desk employee about the sock and they did absolutely nothing. Even asked me if it was MY room.. After combing through reviews we saw that a few people had their car damaged/vandalised in their parking lot. Such a place wouldn't run in an European world without serious influence behind it. The window is not built to code - it's too low and people / children can lean and fall over. I felt in danger knowing only a mob member would keep this running so we left in a hurry, driving for a total...