Leaving from Nis, Serbia to Sofia, Bulgaria would be a longer trip than expected. Not because of any bus delays, or bad traffic, it’s just that the Serbia-Bulgaria border is a total zoo. Buses were piled up in a long queue and most people were just milling around outside waiting for the extremely slow process of getting them through. On some of them the Bulgarian border people searched the cargo holds, which is the first time I’ve seen that in the Balkans. Our bus was 4th in line and took 1.5 hours to get through, but there were probably 10 buses in line by the time we left, so it could have been worse.
And because this bus left at 4pm it wasn’t until after 9pm that I arrived in Sofia and made the 30 minute walk to my hostel. One of the first things you notice is that Bulgaria uses pretty much all Cyrillic for their writing, no English, unlike most other Balkan countries. Fortunately I remembered the Cyrillic alphabet pretty well from traveling around Central Asia a few years ago. And once you know it, the Cyrillic alphabet actually makes the pronunciations make much more sense than using the English alphabet, because in the Balkans whenever I see the English alphabet I want to pronounce the letters like I do exactly in English, which means I butcher words left and right. For example Nis, you would assume it’s Nees but if you saw the Cyrillic it’s spelled with ш at the end, which is an SH sound, so you know it’s pronounced ‘Neesh’. Knowing the Cyrillic, there is no ambiguity, each letter has only one way to pronounce it. And fun fact, most people assume Russia invented the Cyrillic alphabet, but nope, it was Bulgaria! Hence their fondness for it.
The name of the place I was staying was called “Many Rules, No Party Hostel”. So they get right to the point! It was highly rated and reasonably close to the bus station, so that works for me. Although I’ve been in many hostels that could successfully convey they were not a party hostel much more tactfully than this place, which decided to hammer you over the head with it. The Bulgarian way I suppose. I managed to check in before 10pm (and avoid the late fee of checking in after 10pm) and sign up for the Rila lakes and monastery trip, which I guess would just me and one other person.
Rila Monastery
I woke up at 7:15 to have some breakfast before the 8am departure and there was also one other person in the kitchen, also wearing hiking gear, so it wasn’t hard to deduce that this person would be on the same trip as me. A late 20’s American girl, who was from Georgia, but was living in California, and about to be teaching in the Czech Republic. I was just relieved it was someone who spoke decent English, it was a bonus to meet someone I had a lot in common with.
It took almost two hours in the minibus to reach the Rila Monastery, which is the largest and most famous one in Bulgaria. The country’s heart of Eastern Orthodoxy as they say. Even though it is geographically isolated in the mountains, visitors from other countries have bestowed upon it many lavish gifts throughout the centuries, as you can see in the museum. It has been functioning continually since the middle ages, although much of it burned down in a fire in the 1833, it was rebuilt in the style of the Bulgarian National Revival. They also serve fried dough covered in powder sugar for 50 cents and coffee for 70 cents, which was the type of revival I needed after only eating a banana and yogurt for breakfast.
From there we drove another 45 minutes up into the Rila mountain range to do the famous 7 lakes hike. You get to cheat a little bit by taking a chairlift up to the trailhead and down again when you finish. Our driver, who didn’t speak almost any English did a translation on his phone that said “I leave at 6pm”. So we certainly knew what time we had to be back by or possibly be left in up in the mountains!
The hike was really nice, a 6 mile loop of alpine lakes in a pristine mountain environment, whats not to like? It wasn’t very difficult compared to other hikes I’d done in the Balkans, but it was lots of nice scenery packed into a small area. The clouds would roll in that afternoon and that would be the last time I’d be seeing the sun in Bulgaria! By the time we took the chairlift down it was drizzling slightly and quite cold, something I’d get used to.
Once back in Sofia it was now a cold rain, which is how I will remember the capital: chilly, gray skies, a constant never ending drizzle. Which is also somewhat of a match to the personalities I ran into in Sofia, cold and aloof. The worst English I’ve seen in the Balkans, the exact opposite of helpful to tourists. At the supermarket I had trouble with the fruit and veggie weighing machine (which is the same everywhere in the Balkans, you type in the fruit or vegetable’s specific number, weight it, it prints out a barcode, and that way the cashier doesn’t have to any of that), but for whatever reason I couldn’t get the thing to print and had to flag down a middle aged woman who worked there, it felt like I killed her dog. She stormed over to the machine, angrily mashed the buttons, put the printed barcode on the bag, and quickly left without even making eye contact with me. Alrighty then.
The cold rain would basically continue unabated for every single waking hour I was in Sofia, but I guess it was a decent photography opportunity to get some nice reflections and umbrella shots. The only touristy thing I did the following day was stop in the National Museum, which was maybe $6 to enter, and of course completely fine to take photos on your phone, BUT if you had a real camera it was $15 to take photos. Uhh what? I mean I couldn’t care less about taking photos in a museum with my DSLR, but there were just a lot of things in Bulgaria that rubbed me the wrong way.
The final evening I visited the huge church, the ‘Patriarchal Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky. Gorgeous cathedral, could do with better lighting though! Alexander Nevski was a Russian Prince and the cathedral was built to honor the Russian soldiers in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, which lead to Bulgaria being liberated from Ottoman rule.
The way it was so dimly lit gave off a bit of an eerie feeling
I left the option open to stay 4 nights in Sofia, but after seeing the bleak weather forecast, I felt that 3 was plenty, and booked a Flixbus to Skopje, the capital of N Macedonia. 7am bus. I wake up at 6, get moving by 6:15, get to the bus station by 6:45 (it’s drizzling of course) and stand by the international part of the terminal. At 6:52 I go in and ask the lady from the one bus kiosk that is open about my bus, she tells me to go to the other side (across the street, 2 minutes walking). I get to this side and I still don’t see anything that looks like my bus. It seems to be the domestic terminal, there is zero English anywhere. I ask a bus driver, he points me further down, there’s only one bus at the far end, but that’s not it. I run into the terminal and ask at the kiosks, they don’t speak English, but point me to the one young guy who does, he says to go back to the other terminal!
It’s 6:59 now, there’s only a few buses even in the parking lot. I’m asking random people and nobody knows anything or just says No English, No English. By 7:15 it’s clearly game over. There’s one other S Korean guy in the same boat as me, trying to figure out how find this bus. We both have to book a new bus 3 hours later, 30 euros down the drain. I’m not positive, but pretty sure this bus didn’t even exist, and dealing with Flixbus customer service was beyond futile, so I think I may attempt my first ever credit card charge back ever. Exciting stuff!
So I must say, Bulgaria was not my favorite country!