Now I just know that you're all waitıng with baited breath to hear about the train journey to Sophia. Well suffice to say that this time we ended up in a 3 person compartment (that's not unusual, that's the sort of compartments we've been in up until now) but this time there was another person in there. An older woman from Hong Kong, who was on the bottom bunk. This would not have been a problem if the top bunk was full size, but it wasn't. Agnieszka drew the short straw and had to lie up there with her feet on top of the luggage. But there was another problem. Apparently it's quite claustrophobic up there in the rafters, next to the ceiling. And also, the air conditioning in the train did not work. At all. And the windows in the corridors did not open. At all. The only window we could open was the small one in our compartment. This was fine for a while, but as you know, hot air rises, and poor Agnieszka couldn't breathe up there. Also, during the night the HK woman down the bottom got cold, and slammed shut the window (nearly taking off my toes at the same time, as my feet were poking out - don't know what the people waiting at the various platforms thought, seeing my feet hanging out of the train...).Suffice to say this was not a very pleasant journey. Especially when the conductor started smoking outside our compartment.
So we arrived in Sophia some 2 hours late, left our luggage in the locker and then made our way to the bus station to make reservations to go same day to Varna. This is because we are running a bit behind in our schedule to be in Istanbul for Sunday's train to Aleppo. Secured the bus ticket, spent a couple of hours wandering around Sophia, which was nice, nothing out of the ordinary though. Nice enough place though, beautiful cathedral.
Then we were on the 2pm bus to Varna, a beach resort. Only problem was the bus took 6 1/2hours to get there. Then once we arrived, we couldn't find any accommodation. In the end a guy at one of the agencies booked us something (we were again having the problem of no-one would book us for less than 2 nights) in some woman's house. We finally got there after some taxi driver wanted to rip us off (he was acting ignorant when we told him we wanted him to use the meter, so we got out of that cab and found one who would) and this is when it got funny. See, apparently the Bulgarian language is fairly similar to Russian. And Agnieszka speaks fluent Russian, so she had been doing all the conversing for us. So anyway, the woman whose house it is, is an elderly woman and doesn't speak any English. Agnieszka manages to ask her if there are any restaurants around, and the woman starts shaking her head. But we've seen one across the road? So she tries again, and again the woman shakes her head - but says 'Da'. Then we remember that in the guidebook it says that in Bulgaria (and Albania, to be fair) they shake their heads for yes, and nod for no. Talk about a spin out...
It's not a normal head shake either. They do it like in a figure of 8. It happened again the next day when we dropped our bags to the left luggage in the bus station. Because it was a Sunday, the woman was trying to get us to understand that the office closed at 10pm. So Agnieszka is nodding her head 'yes, I know' and the woman is shaking hers - took a while for them both to realise why the messages were mixed...
Spent the day in Varna, wandering around the town. Agnieszka wanted to spend some time on the beach ('chocolate brown, chocolate brown'), but alas, it was overcast. Managed to have a little swim though, which was nice, and Agnieszka even got in some windsurfing later in the afternoon.
Then we headed back to the bus station for our bus to Istanbul, which was leaving at 9.30pm. I was looking forward to this bus trip because it was going to be a Turkish bus - the Turks have the best bus service ever - you get on and they douse your hands in 4711 cologne, then make you a cup of tea (or coffee - best ask for Nescafe sutlu though - or you'll get thick, black, Turkish coffee) and then give you a small cake. And the buses are very quick, very clean, and very comfortable. Anyway, this had been a bit of a hassle to book because the woman told us that there were no more seats left sat together. "That's not a problem", we said. "Ah, but it is" was the response. The reason being, that Turkey, a Muslim country, apparently won't allow women to sit next to men who are unrelated to them. And she couldn't find any seats with just a woman by herself. Eventually she found something - seats 18 and 32 for us. Ok, no worries. Except that when we got on the bus, seats 17 and 31 respectively were men!
The funny thing too was that the bus conductor was a woman, Bulgarian, so we were back to the wierd head nods....
The border check for Turkey was unreal. It was about 2 am, and we were all hauled off the bus, into the customs building, where we had to queue up and get a visa, except that different nationalities have to pay in different currencies for the visa. So Agnieszka's visa cost her 10 euros (like about £7), and mine cost me 20 US dollars (about £10)... go figure...
Then we had to all take our bags off the coach, place them outside on benches, open them up, stand to attention behind your bag and wait for the customs dude to come and inspect them. Which basically meant that he walked around them doing nothing, then we closed them up and loaded them back onto the coach. Got back on the coach, drove for a couple of hundred metres, then the customs dude got back on the coach and now checked that everyone had had their passport stamped...
Finally we were on our way again, on to Istanbul...
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