I was given two great ideas tonight: Jamieson suggested I write a series of travel books, similar to Lonely Planet, but tailored for daredevil women - like me - facing quarter-life crises. Darren suggested I pitch a weekly travel column for the newspapers within my media group.

The guys somehow sensed I was experiencing something like postpartum depression for a country I had just lived with for a month.

It's not like I was indulging them with stories about my trip, or staring off into space with a look of loss on my face…Well, maybe I was.

It's just that Bulgaria, looking back on it now, has meant a great deal to me, in ways I never imagined it would.

At first, I didn't even want to tell people where I was going. The name Bulgaria just sounded so crippled. In fact, a friend jokingly (or not) asked me in a message while I was away if there were a lot of hunchbacks. It was sort of an image I had of the country prior to leaving. I believed it to be dusty, cracked and old.

Before I booked my flight to Bulgaria I called that same person - a bit of a prankster who said he'd heard good things about the place - and made him swear I wouldn't be tossing pebbles in the sea for 30 days.

All that my friends and family knew, for the most part, was that I would be staying in Eastern Europe somewhere in a city named Sofia.

It sounded so beautiful and exotic, just how I wanted them to see me in it…definitely not in khakis and sweaty t-shirts, better suited for the Bulgaria most people know.

But as soon my plane back to "civilisation" took flight, as I watched Bulgaria grow smaller below me, I experienced a heart ache I've never had before. I had hardly been gone, yet I longed to go back. Tears began to swell in my eyes, as I thought about the last month and how country I knew nothing about changed everything about who I was.

Sitting on this porch tonight miles and miles away in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, after a great time with some good friends, all I can think about is a beautiful country half the world away and how I would do anything to get back there.

I left my homeland at the end of July to find myself and I came back at the end of August with more than what I was looking for.

I found a woman who can be a child again, a person who can dream and someone who can accomplish whatever she sets her mind to.

Pre-Bulgaria Karen was a social butterfly who craved intimacy on all levels almost 24/7. Post-Bulgaria Karen has learned she is in good company alone, and actually finds solace in her solitude.

While it wasn't a major concern, the language barrier was my biggest fear about making my way into the unknown. Would I get lost on cross-country road trips? Absolutely. I could barely order food, let alone book a bus to the Black Sea.

I can recall one night, spending a good 30 minutes at a grocery store in Sofia, trying to buy bleach. My cleaning lady decided to wash everything I owned in one load - towels, sheets, dark clothes and my favourite, not to mention new, white cotton dress. Well, needless to say it was stained. And needless to say I failed to find bleach at the store. But it was all part of an experience I can only laugh at now.

Similarly, I miss the odd stares I'd get from people on the street who I assume either thought I dressed horribly - like seriously, who wears a summer dress with hiking boots, a black hat and a scarf in the middle of a heat wave? - or they thought I was American, not necessarily a good thing in most countries, I've realised. There was one day during my trip when I almost stopped a person to ask what they were looking at. Yes it did annoy me sometimes, as did the language barrier, but not as much as I was annoyed the other night by my friends and acquaintances, all of whom had something they either wanted to say to me, take from me, share with me or ask of me.

It drove me to tears. After being alone for a great length of time, I was so overwhelmed and claustrophobic with attention that I broke down and sobbed in the middle of a packed pub. While I would have loved it before, I despised it so much that night I told one friend his words were polluting my mind.

When I first got back to Canada I was filled with an unfamiliar sense of peace that I pray I'll never lose. I left home for the unknown a bit of a basket case. I felt as if the world was pushing me in all kinds of directions, none of which pointed anywhere I wanted go. I felt trapped and insecure, a little frail and in need of a big change.

I remember telling my shrink back in January, just days after my 29th birthday, that I needed to run away. Not quite getting me, or my point, he said you can go anywhere in the world, darling, but you can't run away from yourself. It won't solve your problems.

Now I know he's dead wrong. I ran away from a part of Karen I no longer wanted in my life to find the Karen was somehow lost in the whirlwind of life. For that, I will always hold a sacred place in my heart for Bulgaria, a country that helped me find my way back home.