I have been in Sofia, Bulgaria, here are some notes I made along the way:
Sofia here we come!
Not off to the most auspicious start, the M11 is completely closed for a serious accident, and we need to get to Stansted. Also our hire car that we're getting to the airport in is an hour late. Then when the hire car arrived it was doing the bean can clanking like our car was doing recently - nothing visible, but some part of the exhaust loose... we nearly rejected the car, but were running so late we had to risk it. The last sign that we should not make this journey was half the Dartford tunnel being closed when we got there, we JUST switched lanes at the last minute to avoid being stuck there... got to the airport, got a full body scan from security* ran through the shops to get Clare's order of make up, a delicious falafel wrap from Leon, and made it to the gate with 5 mins to spare.
Flight was with Ryanair and felt a bit crowded but was OK.
Sofia airport feels very foreign, seeing the name writ large in Cyrillic really lets you know you are in a foreign place.
We had the thing you always want when you get off a plane, someone waiting with a sign with our name on it. OK my colleague's name, but nice.
We got to Sofia about 9.30 local time, having travelled since just before midday. Taxi driver tried to take us to the coast "it's very beautiful, and for swimming even at night, I can get you back in time for work in the morning" - I think Sofia is about 200km from the coast. We did not take up his offer, nor let him take us to his friend's bar in the centre of Sofia. He phoned her, sounded like she was opening up especially for us... Our hotel, the Latrinka seems to be on the outskirts of Sofia. There's not a lot around here - I can't complain too loudly there is nothing near our office at home either - though we were all up for food and a drink. What looks like a bar opposite our hotel is really a restaurant and was just closing. We went in a Turkish restaurant underneath Hotel Moskva. They were not keen to let us in, their kitchen was just closing, but they had three pizzas left ready to go that the other guys shares and washed down with a Stella. Not even any local beers. People still smoke indoors in Bulgaria, odd to see people eating and smoking at nearby tables.
Nowhere else open, not even a shop to get a nightcap, so I went to bed. My room smells, at first I thought it was a bit doggy, but after a while it seemed more like stale smoke. The room is really big, but a bit noisy, I didn't sleep well. The time difference confused me a bit, wasn't quite confident that my phone had changed to local time, nor what time I would wake up.
I "overslept" a bit, woke at 8am when we had planned to meet at 8.30, but I still had all my breakfast (bread, gherkins, tomato, cucumber) before anyone arrived. We also had time to nip to a local shop, open now, to get the toothpaste I had forgotten before the last of my colleagues had turned up.
Worked through the morning, mostly catching up on yesterday's chatter I had missed then it's time for lunch. We went to Don Domat dondomat.com1 where I had to order three times before they had the thing I could eat. I ended up with mushroom and olive salad, which is only a plate of mushrooms and olives - I thought it would be salad with mushrooms and olives, my fault. Still nice though, obviously chips on the side in the UK style, just to make sure I had enough. Had my first Bulgarian beer a Kamenitza which is just a lager made by Molson Coors.
Is very hot and sunny here, only in the twenties but does feel exotic and holidayish. Everything around is slightly unfamiliar, just different shaped street lights and traffic lights and things, feels like being on holiday. Was apparently ten degrees hotter last week and hard to bear, but it's just great right now.
I worked more or less as normal. Tried to do a little work on the balcony just for the novelty, but it was stinking with neighbouring smokers. After work we got the underground to the centre of Sofia and were guided around the sights by our Bulgarian workmates, they are such good hosts. I particularly like the wooden doors of the cathedral, but wish we could have spared some time for the street market. For dinner we went to a place called Raketa Rakia Bar which is retro themed place harking back to the communist days, pretty cool. They had actual vegan dish on the menu, though was a dessert. I had a great side as a starter of chilis, grated carrots and herbs in a dressing, and then grilled vegetables with a traditional Bulgarian pepper sauce. They were not meant to go together, it was a mish mash for my benefit but it was good. I had a rakia too, it's like Bulgarian schnapps, not to my taste but traditional again. They're quite proud of their cuisine here.
After dinner we split in two, some went on to another bar, I headed back on the underground with the sensible locals who were going home and one other who was going back to the hotel. We went for one more in Brick the bar across the road from the hotel, and then had another from the mini bars in our rooms. So late for a weekday, but I was up early for breakfast and that. Alarm went off at seven as normal. No-one else made breakfast, even the guy who came back when I did, and the student in our party has not shown up for work either. The club they went to was a table service only club, you have to buy bottles of spirits, like I remember hearing about in Miami, and they had three bottles of whisky to accompany their dancing. The two clubbers who did make it into the office are just about hanging in there. The manager in our party has gone back to the hotel to see if the student is still alive...
UPDATE student has crawled in, other colleague who was struggling has gone back to the hotel to lie down!
I will be back with more details from the next day.
💬 *got a full body scan from security
💬 Turkish restaurant from day one was called Konak
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed + father to two, I'm a full stack web developr, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubbing, running, eating, home-automation + other diy stuff, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.