Arrival in Sofia
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
56
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Sofia,
Bulgaria
Monday, October 16, 2006
We arrived in Macedonia around noon. Leaving Kosovo was easy; we took a bus from Pristinė's second "bus station." It is a spot on the highway where half of the road is closed, and buses stop. People go there because it is a lot closer than the main bus station and served by a lot of the Pristinė city buses. But as far as it goes as a bus station, it is a curb. From there we caught a bus to Skopje for five Euros, instead of taking a taxi. A kind driver offered to take us there for 40. On the way out, the officials at the border gave us UN stamps, now the coolest ones in our passports.
Skopje was sunny. We walked to the hotel S- that seemed like a good choice according to the LP, but it was full. We conferenced and decided to press on to Bulgaria, and come back to Skopje. The woman at the desk and I had a long conversation in mutually incomprehensible languages and at the end of it, we had an agreement upon a reservation for the 19th of October. Bro and I went to the bus station.
Old LP marked a spot on the map as a bus station and I got some information outside. A woman told me (in fractured English) that a bus would come "here" for Sofia at 3.00 pm. Good; it was 2 pm. We had an hour to find a place to stay in Sofia. I had no guidebook for Bulgaria.
I went online to a hostel booking website and began making a reservation at the hostel "Mostel" in Sofia. I give you its name (is this the first one I've mentioned?) because it really is excellent, see my next entry; if you go to Sofia, go there. But to book it I needed my credit card number, and while doing that I decided to check my bank statement. It looked sort of low.
My bank card hadn't been stolen or anything, and my Visa had no unexpected charges. But there was a transaction there that had not occurred and I freaked out. I found out a few days later exactly what happened: a bankomat/cashpoint/ATM in Belgrade that told me "transaction not completed" actually debited my account without giving me any money. "Transaction not completed," I should point out, happens many times while one is travelling. I had the message perhaps 30 times in Cairo during the time I was in Egypt. But no matter. This time, I was missing $200. I've started an "investigation" with my bank, and I'll only know if I get my money back in three weeks. It is very frustrating, let me tell you.
I did make my booking and we made it back to LP's bus station at twenty minutes to three. I bought two return tickets but it isn't really a bus station. A person can only buy tickets there and the real station is a kilometer away, underneath the train station. We took a cab at ten minutes to, and wasted away most of the minutes to three in traffic. We bolted into the bus station only to be stopped at the entrance to the platforms.
They were gated and we needed to buy tickets to get through to the buses (this is only the second time I've ever seen this). It took us about five minutes to do that, and by the time we could get to the bus, it had pulled out into the street. We ran towards it, since it was stopped at a red light. The driver wouldn't let us in, and when the light went green he drove away, leaving us behind.
The bus station staff were nice enough to set us up for the next bus to Sofia an hour later. I ought to have been more grateful but I was still steaming about fraudulent Serbian ATMs and the driver who drove off.
The next bus was a fifteen seater and the driver had a led foot. We were pulled over by laser radar twenty kilometers before reaching the Bulgarian border, but the fuzz didn't give our driver a ticket. We were a small bus so the border crossing took no more than twenty minutes, and the drive to Sofia was just more than four hours (but when we took the bus back, it was six, as we were in a bigger bus).
Perhaps we were lucky to catch the second bus, if it was faster. But in another way it was rough; there are a lot of switchbacks along the road, and it is not in good enough condition to go 70 kph all the time. Some people felt road sick.
Sofia was dark by the time we arrived. It took us enough time to find the hostel "Mostel:" all the ticket booths were closed and we were fined for riding the tram without a ticket (about five bucks each). The woman who gave us a fine was really rude about it, and told me that my stop had come one stop before it did. The result was that we were left to wander around lucklessly.
We argued as to whether or not I should have paid the fine and, since it was raining too, we were pretty miserable. We cursed at one another until we had had enough of that. On Bro's suggestion we went to a McDonald's to see if we could find anyone who spoke English to give us some directions to the street the hostel was on.
Inside we found an old lady. She spoke some English but very fluent French and was overjoyed when she found out that I did too. I wanted some directions but she wanted to reminisce about Paris and then Vienna and I did some of that until she felt like giving us some directions. When she did, we found our way to the street. Then some locals saw our packs and asked "Hostel Mostel?" and, since we nodded, pointed down the street. We made it up the stairs at ten minutes to eleven.
Postscript:
Maria at the desk checked us in. We played a card game with some English chaps until midnight and really enjoyed ourselves. In hindsight, the day didn't completely suck. But some things that pop up when you travel completely blacken the day, despite the rest... Enjoy the schadenfreude. ~ fatduck
