Author: Oliver Broadbent

Thursday 2nd November

Regular readers of this blog may be either frustrated that I have not posted any entries recently. Or thy may think I got lost in Sofia and have never come back. But no no, all is well, and I’ve just been a bit busy. You know how it is…

So back to Sofia…

When I got off the train I was not really prepared for the crowd of people around the door all offering me help. Most were wearing badges that bore their photo and the words “Official Information”. Very convincing. Thinking that I could do without their help I bounded off down the subway into the quite overbearing and immense communist era station complex. Its enormous hall is decorated along its length on one side by a twisted steel fresco depicting eagles and stars and all sorts of Soviet fun. Accidently going to the wrong ticket counter (I was immediately buying my ticket to leave – not because I had already written off Sofia but because I was only meant to be staying one night there and I didn’t want to miss the train that evening) I was clearly identified as a lost tourist and was pounced upon.

Fair enough, I was a bit lost, and my new-found friend insisted on walking me to the international tickets booth, then to the currency exchange place when it turned out the ticket booth didn’t take plastic, then to his mate when it turned out that his mate offered a significantly better exchange rate than the official one, then underground to the locker room where I was shown a locker to put my stuff in, guarded by another of his mates. And then I was asked to give them money for their assistance. Aware that we were alone in this underground space, I didn’t really feel like I had much choice, but it is true that they had helped me find the things I needed in half the time it would otherwise have taken me. I agreed to give them some money but only upstairs as I needed some change (when I needed a one bulgarian monitary unit piece for the locker and only had a fiver, they had taken my fiver, given me the one and pocketed the difference!)

With so little time and no guide book, I reckoned upon doing little more than wander around the town centre and warming myself with regular doses of food and coffee. The centre is a twenty minute from the station along a bleak suburban boulevard. When the mobile phone shops gave way to important looking buildings with flags atop, I was reassured that at least I was heading in the right direction. Feeling the cold, I dipped into a shopping centre for lack of any other shelter. Though Bulgaria is not quite yet in the E.U., the western chains of shops are already well installed, from Miss Sixty through to Timberland and Zara, all of which was quite depressing to see especially when the products are being sold at Parisian prices despite the poverty I had seen coming into town. I quickly left.

Giving up the main streets, I found a friendly and, best of all, warm looking bar selling food. I was feeling low on account of the weather, the hassle at the station and maybe because of a touch of loneliness – nothing however that a beer and an enormous pizza for 1.50€ couldn’t fix. Recharged and re-inspired, I set off again into the snow that was falling thick but not yet settling. I walked through the beautiful houses of the embassy district, I resisted the temptation to buy an accordion from a man in the street, and sat for a while in the serene confines of the basilica.

In a leafy neighborhood bordering the centre I found a shop selling scarfs. Using my best Bulgarian (a language which is closely related to Serbo- Croat) I was able to ask for a scarf that matched my orange shoe laces. The shopkeepers were surprised to hear that it was colder in Sofia than it had been in Belgrade. That scarf however made all the difference, I was toasting!

When I did venture to take my camera out, it was in front of the beautiful state theatre. I was immediately pounced upon by a man who said he had seen me a few blocks back and had been following me to see if I could sell him any currency. It took my some time to shake him off. As night started to fall, I went back to the station, all the time paranoid that my friends from that morning had kindly taken my backpack off of my hands.

Of course, when I got to my locker, all my worldly goods were where I had left them. I later encountered the only tourists that I would see in Bulgaria: a group of Americans and Canadians who hadn’t even planned to come to Sofia. They had been on a night train from Istanbul to Zagreb and had been turfed off at the Macedonian border because they didn’t have the right visas. They had had to spend the night in a prison cell before being put on a train to Bulgaria where they were allowed without a visa.

My last act in as a tourist in Sofia was to buy a bottle of water, to understand the price as it was said to me in Bulgarian, and to manage to use up the last of the tiny coins rattling around in my pocket.

Wednesday 1st Novemeber – Thursday 2nd November

Half an hour later than expected the Belgrade Sofia express night train creaked its way out of the station in the pouring rain. Out of the window I could see signalmen in their signal boxes crowding round televisions to watch the football. To save a bit of cash I had opted for a six-person sleeping compartment (compartments tend to come in twos, threes or sixes, with privacy varying inversely proportionately to beds). As luck would have it however, I had the entire six-person compartment to myself. I took pleasure in using all the little kitsch features in my moving hotel room for the night: the little hooks, reading lights, built in radio and light switches everywhere. Bizarrely I had to ask the attendant for permission to change bed even though I was the only one in the cabin.

I awoke at 4am to bright headlights shining into my cabin from both sides. I had forgotten to close my curtains, and dazzled by the lights, I scrambled to close the curtains without compromising my modesty. Anticipating that we had arrived at the frontier I lay there for some time, maybe half an hour, waiting for the border guards to come into the cabin to check my passport. Being quite drowsy it took me a while to notice the dull metallic clicking sound coming from outside. Finally I got up to find out what was going on. It transpired that my carriage was in fact stopped midway across a level crossing – hence the lights shining in from both sides. The train had hit a car which I could now see shunted over to one side of the road. The clicking sound was the sound of the alarm to warn people that train was coming.

I was able to ascertain that the while hurt, the driver of the car had not been killed. It was a rather unsettling spectacle. My mobile hotel room had unexpectedly arrived in their high street. I felt like an invader; a morbid tourist. There was little else to do except go back to sleep.

When I woke again it was eight and we still hadn’t crossed the border. The train cut its way through steep-sided valleys and as we climbed the rain that been falling since we left Belgrade turned to sleet. We arrived at Dimitrovgrad, the last stop before the border, six hours later than expected. There was little to distinguish this station from a goods yard save for the fact that most of the passengers on board got off here. Shuffling along the ground between the high-sided goods trains, the alighting travellers struggled with heavy suitcases in the sleet, which was now turning to snow – the sinister side of this spectacle didn’t escape me.

With the border guards happy, the train left an hour later towards the frontier. On the road that followed the tracks, a traffic jam of lorries stretched for what must have been several kilometres leading up to the customs point. Sights such as this demonstrate just how much easier trade must be within the Schengen zone. Finally we left the mountains of Serbia and made headway into the brownish high plains of Bulgaria, the rhythm of the rattle of the train on the tracks have changed when we changed country.

Apart from the odd isolated village and an enormous open mine, there was little to see in that barren landscape until the train started to approach Sofia. I could see the city appear on the horizon. First there were tower blocks, but before we reached these, the train went past fields just filled with rubbish. These fields gave way to ramshackle houses typically made up of a solid core supporting lean-tos and tarpaulins. The sight was quite unlike anything else I have seen in Europe. We went past train sidings where carriages stood with trees growing out of them. The train slowed and on either side I could see people walking along the tracks in the direction of the train. Seven hours later than expected, I arrived in Sofia

Wednesday 1st November
Having decided upon taking a detour via Bulgaria, I embarked upon finding out some basics about the country before my train that evening. My first port of call was the Architecture faculty where I met Barabara who was able to get me on line. An hour of searching yielded a map of Sofia city centre, a vocabulary list, an article about Bulgaria’s president (who if I remember correctly is the only democratically elected European head of state who has also been the king of the same countrt) and a key piece of advice from Barbara: in Bulgaria one nods to say “no” and shakes the head from side to side to say “yes”. This latter point proved a bit of a challenge for the old neuro-linguistic programing.

Later that afternoon we met Ana, and after some divine tasting cakes (that ensured I wouldn’t be eating again for at least two days) we scoured that capital for an English language guide to Bulgaria. The main shopping street’s many book shops are well stocked with lonely planets to anywhere you could think of – the Azores, Vietnam, Jamaica, Vancouver Island – everywhere it seemed except Bulgaria. It seemed extraordinary that I couldn’t find any information about the country next door! On the one hand, the prospect of going somewhere off the not-so lonely planet beaten path (as it appearded to me from Serbia) was quite exciting. On the other, it did leave me wondering why so few people, judged purely on the relative number of books detailing the deligts of other local capitals, seem to head next door.

My tireless and ever-resourceful guides took me on a tour of the disused dock area down by the river Salva just before it joins the Danube. The dockside buildings are in the process of being converted into super-trendy galleries and a bar. We had drinks on an almost floating bar – that is to say, it wasn’t floating but on dry land, but from its windows one might think one is afloat- the nearby real floating bar having been booked out for a private function. To help us believe that our bar was in fact floating, we drank coffee laced with booze. It worked.

By early evening, the cold dry spell had given way to rain. I tried to buy my train tickets to Sofia down at the train station, only none of my cards wanted to work. Ana was able to lend me the cash, but I was suddenly worried that I would arrive in Bulgaria with not a euro cent. I tried to do the sums in my head. With the 100€ in my pocket, I might just have been able to buy tickets to take me as far as Budapest from where I already had tickets home booked, as long as I only ate apples along the way. It didn’t bode well.

Luckily however, just when my worst fiscal nightmares had flashed before me, a cash machine finally decided to be nice and give me the dough. Stocked with food for the journey it was time to wait on the dark and dingey platform for the train to take me away. I was sad to be leaving Belgrade. I had had such a great time with my friends and I was in no mood to continue on my own. Ana and I plotted when we would see each other next. When we first met in Ljubljana the year before, it hardly seemed possible that we would meet again, such is the distance from the UK to Serbia. But with two visits to Belgrade since then already in the travel log, the city doesn’t feel that far away. Roll on our next encounter, Paris in the spring…

Tuesday 31st

I first went to Belgrade in this summer enroute to Greece with Mary so I already knew bearings in the city. After a very agreeable lie in I met Ana and Barbara for the start of a more comprehensive tour. We started in their favourite and super trendy coffe shop “Greenet”. We then made our way over to a street on which each of them, as part of a group project on their architectural course, had a house to redevelop. The street has some buildings which are derelict and some which are still inhabitted. The principal question was whether or not to keep any parts of the old buildings or to start afresh.

We continued through the neighbourhood. Belgrade has some beautiful old buildings, some of which are in desparate need of repair. It also has some quite oppressive concrete architecture in a greyey-brown darker than I have seen anywhere else. Down some more side streets and up to the Orthodox Church, the largest (or 2nd largest??) Orthodox church in Sebia. It is still under construction but we were able to stroll inside beneath its souring arches. It looks beautiful from the outside, but what is incredible is the sheer volume contained beneath it’s concrete vaults. Huge slabs of marble lay to the sides waiting to be bolted onto the walls. High above us, workers were busy in the dome above our heads. It was only then that I realised we had happily strolled into the middle of a building site with materials being moved around thirty metres above us and we had no hard hats. Still, if a lump of marble falls on you from that height, there is not a lot a hard hat is going to do…

We traversed back across town and back across the main shopping area to a much older part of town. Enroute we passed the site of another project site for the faculty of architecture. This time it was a busy junction with trams cars and people intersecting in a very tight spot. The project had been to untangle as best as possible the mess. From what Ana and Barbara said, there are a great many architectural contests in the city which must make Belgrade a great place to study architecture. Unfortunately only a handful of them are built as there is just not the money.

Ana had picked out a cosy restaurant for lunch. Ever since arriving in Vienna I had been a bit on the chilly side. I really hadn’t reckonned upon it being this cold, a symptom I suppose of the apparently mild autumn we have been having in Paris. As we ate we were accompanied by a traditional Serbian band comprising a clarinet, accordeon, guitar and double bass. The band would improvise on one tune, and then all of a sudden the accordeon player would change tune and a few moments later, the rest of the band would catch on.

I was left to my own devices while Ana and Barbara went to a design workshop. I spent some time rethinking my itinerary for the rest of the week. I had been due to take the train the next day to the Romanians mountains where I intended to do some hiking, but I was feeling more and more apprehensive about this plan. I was concerned about turning up in northern Romania and finding all the hostels shut. I was also a little nervous about the train connections I would have to make, including one change in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with a two hour wait in between. With all this mind I had another trawl through the timetables and another plan came to mind. It was thus that I decided to go to Bucarest (not orginially on my itinerary) and to go via Sofia. The plan had the advantage that I wouldn’t have to worry about accomodation as I would be sleeping on night trains (ultra cheap in this region). There was also the added bonus that I could spend an extra half a day in Belgrade.

That evening we undertook a tour Belgrades night spots including a very cool cocktail bar hidden down an alley, up a stair case and behind a very plain looking door that you had to buzz to open before making your way into the brightly lit lounge. While Ana and I were up for a party, I think the rest of Belgrade went to sleep early that evening but that didn’t stop us having a great night chatting until the rather small hours.

Sunday 29th October

The Gard de l’Est is my favourite of Paris’ railway stations because of the desitnations on its departure boards: Strasbourg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna… and even, with a change of trains at the border, Moscow. This evening I left Paris on the first leg of another trans-European journey: to Romaina and back by train. It was five o’clock by the time we pulled out of the station on the Orient Express from Paris to Vienna.

The first few hours of travel were quiet and I dosed off as we pushed on east. Around 10pm we crossed the Rhine and continued into Germany. I tried to find the man with the trolley so that I could buy a sandwich. The conductor pointed to the cabin door on which I should knock. Just before I did knock, between the drawn curtains I saw a hand slide up a bestockinged leg, accompanied by shrieks of laughter. When I did knock on the door, the laughter became muffled and after some delay the door openned to reveal a sheepish looking man and woman sitting on either side of the compartment with the food trolley between them. I felt guilty for disturbing them especially since none of the food was vegetarian so I couldn’t buy anything anyway.

Back in the carriage a baby had been crying for some time, clearly not impressed by its mother’s best efforts to amuse it for the past hour. I retreated to the vestibule with the girl in the adjacent seat to gain some respite and to play a bit of guitar. No sooner had we started singing a song from the backpacker’s cannon of standards (surely a Beatles number. No tell a lie it was Mamas and Papas) did the mother and baby come out as well, followed by a little girl. The children where thrust into our care and their mother went into the toilet. I carried on playing guitar and the crying stopped. Evidently relieved, the mother took back her kids and returned to the carriage. Suzanne got off the train at Karlsruhe sometime in the middle of the night. When I returned to my seat, the cease-fire between mother and child seemed to be holding and I was able to go to sleep.