Sofia

If you look at a map of Europe and plot a course from Bucharest to Istanbul you have to cross Bulgaria, but you would hardly expect to take in Sofia along the way. However, extensive interrogation of the Eurail timetables could not find a more direct route.

We left Bucharest in bright sunshine, sharing a compartment with a party of what appeared to be unsupervised schoolgirls. All but one of them wore glasses. They all spent most of the journey reading or writing. How terribly well behaved! With the addition of a young man, who turned out to be another New Zealander, the compartment was chocka. The seats were OK, but the luggage rack was perilously overloaded. Late in the journey I wandered along the carriage. None of the other compartments had more than 3 people in them. What a strange way to allocate the seats.

The train paused for a while at a major river. It was probably the Dunărea, i.e. the Danube, and the border with Bulgaria. It then proceeded terribly slowly over a very high bridge; a most uncomfortable sensation for an acrophobe like me.

When passports were demanded for inspection the girls produced credit-card-sized pieces of plastic, which were acceptable travel documents. Google has since confided that some national identity cards are valid for travel within Europe, but it was a surprise to us at the time.

The New Zealander had worked out a complicated cross-country itinerary and left the train at one of several stops in depressed looking Bulgarian towns. We and the girls stayed on the train all the way to Sofia, which was reached about 10:30pm. By following the youngsters (the station had NO signs for 'exit', 'taxi', etc. In fact, it had no signs!) we arrived at the metro. But we wanted a taxi. The lady in the ticket office couldn't, or wouldn't, direct us to a taxi rank so we wandered around in the dark until we found another human, who pointed up a flight of stairs.

There were several taxis waiting in the dark. We had thoughtfully prepared a card with the hotel's address in both Latin and Cyrillic characters. A driver looked at it thoughtfully.

“You have Bulgarian money?”.

“Yes.”

“OK.”

By following the journey on our 'magic map' we confirmed that the driver went by a direct route, but the hotel had no illuminated sign and he went past it. However, with the aid of our electronic map he soon deposited us on the pavement and claimed what was probably an exorbitant fee, but what were our options at 11pm in Bulgaria?

The hotel advertised 24-hour reception, which turned out to be in an all-night eatery 2 doors along. The room was small and the ensuite bathroom poky. But the bed was comfortable and we slept well.

By a happy chance the hotel was within walking distance of a tourist information office, which in turn was within walking distance of the main sight of Sofia, the Aleksander Nevski Cathedral. There were other sights in the vicinity, too, but Malaysian Airlines had cancelled our flight out of Istanbul, and the least worst alternative flight cut our holiday short by one day – and Sofia was the unlucky city that was deprived of our company 24 hours early.

The cathedral is indeed an impressive building built, according to the information board, “by the whole Bulgarian people in memory of the thousands of Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, Finnish and Romanian soldiers who, from 1877 to 1878, laid their lives for the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.” Finnish soldiers? Yes, Wikipedia confirms this.

Of particular interest is the collection of icons displayed in the crypt.

A 17th century work from Rila Monastery

This depicts “St. John the Forerunner.” Neither of us had ever heard of him, but dear Mr. Google led us to an article that explains this is another name for John the Baptist.  Either the artist's brush slipped, or St. John was a particularly grumpy individual.