I usually travel alone. I'm used to it and I must admit it's very convenient. I can go wherever I want, whenever I want and take all the time I wish without having to ask for anybody else's opinion. So when a friend asked me to share the accommodation on the upcoming trip to Bulgaria, I slightly hesitated. Did I really want to give up my freedom? But then, I rarely see these friends and the thought of hanging out with them outweighted my selfish doubts.
The only low-cost airline to fly to Sofia is WizzAir, but they only have 2 flights a week from Nürnberg. Therefore on my way there I had to travel by train to Frankfurt and then fly to Sofia. The journey was pretty incident free until I arrived to the metro station at the Sofia airport in the early evening. The exchange places had already closed and after fidgeting with the metro ticket machine for some minutes, I realized it did not accept cards. How the heck do they expect visitors to buy a metro ticket if you're not carrying Bulgarian coins!? A man saw my plight and gave me 2 leva (~1€; the ticket costs 1.6 leva). I felt relieved and like a stupid tourist at the same time.
Having bought my ticket and boarded the train, I made it to the center of Sofia without further hurdles. My friends arrived at the apartment almost at midnight and, given the long day, we all went straight to bed. Next morning we were rewarded with this view from our window. We were literally in the city center!
The morning was chilly and foggy as it looks on the picture. It was so cold that the snow from previous days had frozen. Nevertheless, the exploring spirit was stronger, so we braced ourselves, bundled up and went out to explore Sofia... but first, breakfast! We wandered through the city center, guided by the ever present Google Maps, until we found a small shop selling banitsa. This deliciousness is made with filo pastry and can have savory fillings such as cheese, spinach or minced meat, or sweet ones such as nuts or pumpkin. We could not decide so we ended up buying 3 big pieces of cheese, spinach and pumpkin banitsa to share.
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| Spinach banitsa |
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| Pumpkin banitsa |
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| The shop |
After grabbing coffee to complement our breakfast, we walked to the Palace of Justice to take the
free Sofia tour. This place is famous on its own because legend says that one of the 2 lion statues flanking the staircase is not in an able-to-walk position. What do you think?
I love taking these free tours, not just because I'm a guide myself, but they do give a good introduction to the city. Like I was telling a bulgarian friend, I barely remembered anything from my previous visit 7 years ago. Thankfully, all those summer pictures are posted in a
Facebook album. Talk about filling in memory gaps.
Despite the cold day, there were a lot of people waiting to take the tour and eventually we were divided in 4 groups. For 2 hours we strolled through most of the city center, the guide being attentive enough to get us out of the cold as often as he could. Funniest thing of all, we found an Austrian Christmas market!
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| Exposed roman ruins in an underground passage |
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| St. George Rotunda church |
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| Former communist party headquarters |
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| Ivan Vazov Theater |
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| Russian church |
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| Alexander Nevski cathedral |
After the tour we only had an hour to pick up our bags and go to the meeting point, where a taxi would take us to Borovets, up in the mountains, for the Game of Words conference. I completely forgot about souvenir shopping and sending postcards (sorry enana!). Nonetheless, the laughs I had during the whole morning reminded me how awesome is to have travel companions. I smiled to myself. The weekend had just begun.
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| The exploring crowd |
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