Europe 2019 - Day 37 (Part 1)

12 June 2019, Wednesday

We arrived in Sofia at 6.30 a.m. Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria and is encircled by the Balkan Mountains in the north, is located at the base of Mount Vitosha, and there is the Lyulin Mountain in the south. That’s the first thing that grabs your attention - always mountains in the background. Quite beautiful. Sofia was founded some 7,000 years ago!

I must say that I was already tired in the morning. 10 hours in the train followed by 8 hours on the bus - and we had to stop at the border of Bulgaria for about an hour because of some hiccup with an Albanian national who was also a passenger on the bus. So, interrupted and uncomfortable sleep - not the best way to start one’s day in a new country. Plus, travelling almost 20 hours I only ate bananas, a boiled egg, biscuits and chips. Plus not enough water because I loathe to pee on a bus. Or a train. Or a plane for that matter. It’s a terribly tight space in a moving vehicle and I keep knocking myself everywhere; I will avoid it for as long as I can. I’m not fussy (God knows the places I’ve peed in - roll eyes) but if I can avoid it, I would.  But of course, that means not drinking enough water. So let’s see. Sleep deprived, hungry and dehydrated. Not a good combination at all. And NO COFFEE! I was a high-functioning zombie in Sofia.

Anyway, we left our luggage at the nearby train station, and then we had to figure out the public transport system in Bulgaria. Cyrillic writing, remember. This took us quite a while with quite a number of wrong turns.

But in between getting lost and looking for a damn money-changer, we stumbled upon the Sofia Central Hall, the Regional History Museum, the National Palace of Culture, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences building, the Military Club building, the Bulgaria Hall (a pretty yellow building), the house of Ivan Vazov (known here as the patriarch of Bulgarian literature - he was a poet and a writer) which is now a museum, and the National Art Gallery.

Then finally we found a money-changer and finally we could eat! We went to this local diner-like outfit serving all things grilled. I was famished. I had grilled chicken with grilled vegetables being onions, pepper, pumpkin, carrot and mushrooms. It was actually quite nice, and they had chilli flakes! There is a God of travel and he/she heard my prayer. But no coffee. Of course, one can’t have everything.

But at least with my belly full, I felt that I could take on Sofia! So first we went to the tourist information centre. This is my usual modus operandi and I think my friend has followed my methods, I’m not sure whether knowingly or unknowingly. But I find that it’s the best starting point. So we got a map with all the major attractions marked out and we went on our merry way.

Thanks to our horrible sense of directions and the equally horrible Google Maps (it doesn’t always work, trust me) we ended up going around and around and seeing the same things over and over again. So I will present what we saw and did not in the order of how it really happened, but in the order that makes the most sense. Well, at least the most sense to me.