Sofia at Speed

*Travel*

The sleeper train leaves bang on time. I have the compartment to myself. Initially it's far too hot, so I have to leave the window open all night.

I meet Bruno, who does a similar job to me but as a contractor. He's French-born but has lived in West London for 10 years. We discuss J2EE for a while, and then the tall ship race in the Baltic he's been doing, and is traveling from to a friend's wedding the far side of Turkey. He's on his own too, so we agree to hook up in the morning.

A sleeper train sounds like a good idea, and it is in terms of "holiday efficiency". However, having a border control at some time during the night makes it hard for me to settle. I deduce it should happen at 3:40am, but set my alarm for 5am instead, ending up with about three and a half hours' sleep. At 5 I sort out my bags and I've just finished when the border checks start. We arrive in Sofia late, by what turns out to be 2 hours, once the change from CET to EET is factored in.

Bruno and I get money (3 Dinar = 1 GBP) and coffee, then a taxi to my hotel, the Best Western City Hotel. Bruno takes a room there too. It's before check-in time so we dump our bags and go out walking.

Over the next 6 hours we walk past all of Sofia's important sights, unintentionally starting to follow the "Sofia in one day" walk outlined in Bruno's guidebook. First stop was the golden-domed Alexander Nevski cathedral, which I can't go in because I've forgotten the legs that can zip on to my shorts. Then via Roman ruins and a 3rd Century rotunda building re-purposed in the 4th Century as St. George's Church, and on to the former seat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, described as "Party House" in one guidebook!

We see a host of other impressive mainly domed buildings, and quite a few sculptures obviously intended to encourage the populous to support the work of the state. My favourite has a skirted woman carrying a man slumped across her back. The bright sun makes it hard to take clear photos. I've forgotten my sun cream again, but I'm not suffering after yesterday when I did the same, so maybe I'll get away with it.

Bruno and I met for dinner this evening. We took in a beer somewhere where the menu was all in Cyrillic and only Bruno's phonetic translations got us anywhere. We went in search of a restaurant advertised in the free tourist map and eventually found it. It seems that the Bulgarian food that isn't italian is mainly cooked meats, verging toward kebabs.

I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow before my sleeper train, with all the big sights seen. Maybe I can relax!! Alternatively, I could push on to Plovdiv, which has a genuine old centre. A complicating factor in any case is the fact that, if our train arrived two hours late then mine in the evening is very likely to be delayed by a random period as well. Great!