Sofia
Trip Start
Jul 09, 2008
1
6
13
Trip End
Jul 27, 2008
Sofia,
Bulgaria
Saturday, July 19, 2008
We arrived in Sofia almost two hours late at just after 9 and Assia gave me a lift in the taxi she was taking home and dropped me in the centre of town which was very nice of her. I went to the hostel I had reserved only to be told to come back after 1130. Fair enough. I come back then only to be told the place is full. The woman didn't speak much English so she rang the manager who said that 3 Spanish girls had paid online so now my bed was no longer available as I hadn't paid yet only reserved. What is the betting it was the three Spanish girls from the train?! I was pretty peeved - I know they are running a business, and to them money comes before leaving people in the lurch, but I wasn't happy. He said he would ring one of the other hostels for me which was just around the corner. So at least I have a bed for the night. But lets just say I'm glad I'm only paying 7 quid a night for it. It's a hovel to be honest, probably the worst hostel I've stayed in. It was ok at first. The mattress has a massive dip in the middle but I can live with that. The shower holder is broken so you have to sit in the bath and hold the shower head over your head so you don't flood the whole room but I can live with that. The fact that the toilet is broken and you have to flush it with a bucket of water is starting to grate. But what I can't live with is cockroaches. Yes, we have company. I had some bread and cheese after I got back from sightseeing, then rang mum. When I got back my plate had a roach on it. And there was one running around this keyboard until I whacked it with a book. I suppose I had to come across a hostel with roaches at some point in my hostelling career but I was hoping I could get away with it for a bit longer. As long I don't find the bed has fleas or bed bugs....... I've jinxed it now havent I?
It has been boiling hot in Sofia, at least 30-32 degrees, although its dry heat here unlike the UK so although you are sweating like mad you don't really feel it too badly. On the Saturday I tried going round most of the churches but of course being a Saturday everyone was getting married so my efforts were mostly in vain! But I managed again on the Sunday. I also went to a synagogue and a mosque just to round off my religious pilgrimage of Sofia! The main cathedral Alexander Nevski is rather impressive, it's huge and had these massive gold cupolas. One highlight of visiting it is going through the little antiques market on the road up to it, which sadly has a number of old fellas selling old war medals (presumably their own) and other bizarre things like nazi ensignia cigarette cases and red star/sickle and hammer stuff as well. I've no idea if it was all the genuine article. Most of it seemed to be. There were some lovely cigarette cases there, and I was tempted to add to my collection, but I didn't. Especially not with a nazi ensignia one, genuine or not!
I did try to go to the ethnographic museum as these museums are in all the eastern european countries I've been to and are generally worth going to get a feel of the country and its people, its traditions etc. But it was closed for renovation - there's also one in Plovdiv so I'll go to that one instead. I didn't go to any other museums, I mostly just enjoyed wandering around the side streets taking in the atmosphere. Sofia is basically on a grid system with main boulevards and then lovely little cobbled dusty side streets with pavement cafes that you can while away the time at, and everyone seems to take an evening stroll down the main boulevard (Vistosha Boulevard) eating ice cream. It's at these times that Sofia is lovely. It's the other times like when you get sold exhausted/counterfeit batteries (twice), things are closed when they are meant to be open and vice versa and a number of other little annoyances that add up and start to get irritating. I think me and Sofia got off on the wrong foot and never quite recovered fully.
I did have a better day on Monday though when I conquered the public transport! In the morning I did get miles out of the way of where I wanted to be trying to find a bloody street kiosk to buy a day travel ticket (one of those little annoyances I mentioned, they were all closed and I had to walk for ages to find an open one) but on the plus side it meant I accidentally came across the women's market which was cool. Fruit, veg, street kids selling cigarettes, old ladies selling bunches of herbs... full of life and colour, although a place you have to keep your bag close to you. I managed to get the trolleybus out to the national history museum, which was a pretty good achievement seeing as all the route information is in Cyrillic! Luckily the museum was by the terminus of the trolleybus. Although you did have to brave your way across a motorway to get to it! The museum is housed in an old communist party retreat so plenty of carved oak panels and chandeliers. I then wanted to go up Mount Vitosha, Sofia's pet mountain which was just a little east of the museum but I only had directions to it from the city. But I looked at the map on the wall in the hostel and decided to be brave and try and get a bus that went down the motorway and intersected with the bus that would take me up to one of the mountain suburbs and the chair lift up, and hope I would get off at the right place and not get lost. And I did ok! There were a number of buses that went up the mountain but only one that terminated there, so even though the terminating bus was only once an hour I waited for it as I didn't want to be too cocky with the day's success so far and try one of the others and end up god knows where! I got it and after winding up the mountain road was the only one left on the bus. Great I thought this is where I get dragged into the forest by the bus driver isn't it? But my fevered imagination was working overdrive again. This is one of the problems of travelling on your own, especially as a woman, and especially a woman who now lives in London. You are rather suspcicious of everyone and on your guard all the time thinking that everyone is out to get you. It can be difficult to shed that at times, but I generally try to go by my gut feeling, and my gut told me to stop being silly on this occasion! He stopped by the path to the chairlift and pointed me in the right direction. I headed for it but of course, lo and behold it was closed on a Monday. Grrr, another of those 'irritating things'. I scrambled down the mountain path hoping to get the bus coming back the way after its terminating and coming back round. Which I did thank god. I wasn't at a bus stop but I waved it down and he stopped although he did give me a weird look! That evening I went out for a drink with some Scottish people from the hostel which was nice, although I did have a bit of a hangover headache in the morning! The next evening I had a bit of a chat with the owner of the hostel who spoke enough English to have a reasonable conversation with. We talked about what England was like, how much the average wage is, Princess Diana and William & Harry (!), and football in particular whether Berbatov was going to move to Man United. He asked to see some English money, so I found 20p for him to look at. But at the end of the conversation he pocketed it, the cheeky bugger, rather than giving it back! Good job I didn't show him a £20 note! He was a nice bloke, but I would have rather he stop smoking in the living room and drinking Campari and lemonade (!) and go and fix the toilet instead....
What else to tell you about Sofia? Oh another little quirk is the 'squat' shops. In the early 90's in the spirit of capitalism people started opening their own shops etc but as it was too expensive to buy/rent and convert ground floor space so they turned basements into little newsagents as these were cheaper spaces and made a little window at pavement level. So to buy anything you have to get on your hands and knees and speak to the shopkeeper with your face practically on the ground. So weird! I didn't try one myself! I also saw a couple of pet shops which were rather depressing. There were puppies and kittens in boxes built into the windows, sometimes nearly half a dozen in each and so most of them barely had room to move around. Other little quirks include the fact that everyone says the French word 'merci' for 'thank you' instead of 'blagodarya' which is the correct word. But I guess that's because the latter is a right mouthful (three syllables long so I gave up trying to say it on my first day and was glad to discover the merci thing!). They also say the Italian 'ciao' for goodbye, although I think Serbians and others do this as well.
I hung out a bit and then got the train to Plovdiv after working out the crazy layout of the station. The trains are indicated by what track they leave from, but the signs all point to platforms not tracks. I must have wandered around for about 20 minutes before I saw this tiny sign hanging from the roof which told you what track corresponds to what platform.... I'm glad I took the guide books advice to get there early to work it out! And so to Plovdiv....
