2022 in Bulgaria (departure from Sofia)
On October 9, 2022, the Balkan bus tour took me back to Sofia, Bulgaria, after 8 days of travelling around former Yugoslavia and the Balkans:
The bus tour had taken me full circle through former Yugoslavia and Albania. Everything at this point felt like a mirror image of the beginning of this trip: the same hotel, the same airport and the same stopover.
After a night's rest at Hotel Vega, the one thing that distinguished the end, from the beginning, was a free walking tour of Sofia. During the tour, we saw:
- St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
- a really nice building
- Ivan Vazov National Theatre
- ornate exteriors while the guide showed us a Bulgarian circle dance
- Council of Ministers
- during a "changing of the guard" type of ceremony
- Serdika
- remnants of a Roman city
The guide also talked about Communist times and Bulgaria's place during the Cold war era: how it was more aligned with the Soviet Union and separate from Yugoslavia.
I also saw a McDonald's restaurant with its name in Bulgarian Cyrillic!
By noon, it was time for me to leave Sofia, Bulgaria and Europe altogether ... but not before a ride through its subway, the Sofia Metro!
Reflection
Even though I spent 4 calendar days in Bulgaria, I got to visit downtown Sofia only for a couple of hours with a guide. As the hotel was quite a distance away from downtown, I did not venture out much before or after the Balkan tour.
I will certainly need a longer stay in Sofia to have a better understanding of the city. A future trip will definitely happen, probably also to visit the rest of Bulgaria and also as a gateway into Romania and Moldova.