Cyrillic Again

After a couple days in Bucharest had convinced me that there wasn't too much to do there, I was feeling really ready to move on. So at 11 pm on Friday I boarded a train heading to Sofia, Bulgaria. There were no sleeping cars available (they had been reserved for passengers traveling the length of the route from Moscow to Sofia, and as that can't have been a pleasant ride (it took me 2 months to do that!) I wasn't that grumpy. But it was an uncomfortable Russian train, so I was grateful to meet Chris, a guy from Seattle who was also traveling from Bucharest to Sofia, and staying in the same hostel in Sofia as I was, and had had the good sense to shell out the extra money for a first class ticket, and also bring beer, the benefits of both of which he was willing to share. I guess no one cared, really, if I sat up in the first class (there was no one else sitting there anyway) so it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable ride after all, despite the fact that Russian first class was not quite up to my standards.

When we got to the Bulgarian border, a grumpy guard held out his hand and said "pass". Perhaps because I have mostly stayed in the Schengen region and so haven't been asked for my passport very much, or because it was 1 in the morning, I assumed he only needed my ticket. This made him even grumpier and while we dug around for our passports, Chris asked him how his night was going and he growled "fine and I don't have time". So not really the kind of guy I wanted to hand over my passport to and then watch him walk off the train. About twenty minutes and a few stolen passport stories (which did nothing to calm my nerves) he brought them back, freshly stamped. An hour or so later at the first stop in Bulgaria, some much cheerier guards got on, stamped them again, then radioed in every detail listed in them. This took a while, as the guy transliterated and spelled out in Cyrilic our names and addresses. Then a little while later, another guard got on and wrote down all those details. So it doesn't really seem like Bulgarian bureaucracy is especially efficient.

I woke up to beautiful sunrise over beautiful mountains, and the rest of the ride into the city was breathtaking.

Arriving in Sofia around 10, we headed to the hostel. It was a bit of a walk down there from the train station so we got a good look at the city. I thought it was pretty nice - certainly nicer than Bucharest - and it was a bit like Moscow, but maybe that was just the Cyrillic in all the shops and road signs. Like Moscow, the buildings weren't beautiful, but they weren't crumbling like in Bucharest, and I just got a good feeling from the city in general. When we got to the hostel,  we were told it was too early to check in, but we were offered coffee as condolence, so after downing that, I headed into town to join a walking tour. The guide was fun, but the group was enormous, so it wasn't my favorite of the tours I've done. I was also having trouble staying awake. By the time the tour was done it was late enough to check in, so I did, and took a shower, which was desperately needed after the train ride and Sofia's 81 degree autumn weather. The rest of the day I spent doing my own walking tour, and going into some of the cathedrals I had only seen the outsides of. The Aya Sofia (the city's namesake) especially was beautiful. On my way back to the hostel, I walked by some kind of performance of traditional Bulgarian dancing, so I watched that for a while, which was really fun and exciting.

Then for dinner, a couple other guests and I went to a restaurant pretty close to the hostel, where I had their soup, which came in bread and was so delicious and cheap (with beer it came to about 3 dollars) that I went back again two days later.

After dinner I was literally falling asleep at the table, so we went back to the hostel where I had the best nights' sleep I have had in two months.

The next day once I had dragged myself out of bed, I set out for Boyana, a suburb close to Sofia where there is a famous church and some hills for hiking. I managed to navigate a tram and a public bus, and got to Boyana a little before 1. I was following signs to the church but somehow missed it and before I knew it I wa headed up a mountain, so I figured I'd hike a bit and see the church on my way back. It was such a beautiful day: weather around 80 degrees and sunny, but nice and breezy as I went up, and the leaves were all changing and falling so walking through the woods was perfect.

I was following a trail for a while, but then I noticed that the markers had stopped, and then the path disappeared. Not wanting to get totally lost in the woods in Bulgaria with no phone and no one around, I turned back, and returned to a clearing that I had passed. Once there, I noticed a different path leading away than the one I had taken, so I followed it and there rediscovered the trail. I followed it back out to the road, past some cool views over the city, and thn made my way back down to the town. Still looking for the church, I walked around a bit, and eventually saw a tour bus so followed the group to the church. It's famous for its frescoes, which are incredibly well preserved and really interesting: the backgrounds are dark, dark blue, which is much different from the white and gold themes I usually see. Leaving the church, I went back to the bus stop and made it home with no trouble. I spent the evening at the hostel, where everyone brought some drinks and snacks to share, and we had a great evening just chilling at home.

My third day in Sofia, I decided to go up to Rila Monastery. There is only one public bus there and back every day, which takes about 2 hours each way, with only two hours between to look around. Though it seemed a little silly to make such a long trip for just 2 hours, it is supposed to be a really cool place to see, and I figured the drive up into the mountains would be pretty anyway. I was right: we drove along winding roads climbing the hills, with gorgeous autumn scenery and eventually came to the monastery. It is enormous, and the church itself is surrounded by living quarters, which are now mostly used for guests to spend the night. Both buildings are beautiful, and set in a valley between cliffs and hills.

Inside the church were incredible chandeliers and beautiful silver, in addition to the frescoes and icons inside.

The view out the window of the church:

Two hours was enough time to see the church and walk around a little bit, but I did have to skip the museum (frankly I didn't really care about the museum anyway) before heading back down the mountain to the city. At one of the stops on the way down, we were serenaded by these guys:

The next morning I got up, checked out, and spent the morning wandering around Sofia one more time. I didn't really see anything new, I just wasn't quite done with the city yet.

For the afternoon, I took the train to Plovdiv, a city a few hours south of Sofia. The train from Sofia to Istanbul stops there, so I decided to spend the day there on my way. It was a really cool city, actually, although the walk to the center from the train station made it seem a little crummy and grim.

It's a really old town (I think I read that it's the oldest continuously populated city in Europe, but that seems crazy so don't quote me on that) and the center has some great Roman ruins, including an enormous amphitheater that I was able to clamber around in for an hour or so, some columns, and a lot of really beautiful churches. Had I known how much there was to see there, I might have left Sofia on an earlier train, or spent a night in Plovdiv before moving south, but there's a lot more to do in Bulgaria than I ever gave it credit for, so I'm thinking there will be another trip there in my future. While I was wandering down toward the river, I found a church and thought "hey, why not?" even though it wasn't officially on my list of things to do in Plovdiv, and went inside. I ended up running into two people I had met at the hostel in Sofia, who'd left the day before to move on to Plovdiv. It was nice to have someone to walk around with (especially since they knew the layout of the old town) and so we walked up to the river (read: muddy creek) and then back to the main square, down a road literally packed with shoppers and diners. We decided to get dinner from a restaurant they had been told about at their hostel, so we headed over there. It was good food (I had mushrooms baked with cheese) and a cool atmosphere, and better than grabbing something by myself would have been!

Around 7:30 I started back to the train station. It was a little too early as my train wasn't leaving until after 9, but I had left my backpack in a storage room there and wasn't sure how that would go. It was easy enough to pick them up (even though I had lost my ticket, but they had my passport number so I guess they believed it was me) and then I had to wander around the station for about an hour. When it got to be 10 minutes before the train was leaving, I decided to find the platform. I found what I thought was the right one, but as there were no signs or even numbers, I really couldn't be sure. I must have looked like a sad, lost tourist because a conductor said to me "Istanbul?" and I said "yes" and he asked for my ticket, and then gave me some (probably) good directions in Bulgarian, which I am pretty sure amounted to "you are in the right place, the train will come soon, tuliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiia" so I just stayed where I was. The train showed up and I got on. Another conductor took my ticket, promised to give in back in the morning, and sent me to my compartment. There was no one else in there, which was a little weird, but mostly wonderful. I was a little worried about the trip, though, because I had heard and read from multiple sources that the train wasn't running all the way to Istanbul and I'd have to change to a bus somewhere along the way, but no one at the ticket office or on the train had said anything like that, so I didn't know. Being alone made me a little concerned that I'd be left on the train and wake up back in Sofia, so I slept with the light on, just to draw some attention to my presence.

At the last station in Bulgaria, I was woken up to have my passport stamped. At the first station in Turkey, I had to get off the train and walk over to the customs office (not very far, but it was 3:00 in the morning) and then get back on the train. After that, we started moving again and a guard came and asked for my passport. He took it, and when he brought it back, I noticed it wasn't mine, so I had to chase him down the hall. That was ridiculous. My own passport in hand eventually, though, I went back to sleep until I was woken up at 6:30 to get on a bus. I was able to sleep the last hour or so, but it was not as comfortable as my private compartment on the train. I was, however, rewarded for my trouble with this Istanbul sunrise:

Worth it.