Day 2 arrived, and we checked out mid-morning after a well needed lie in (until 8am). The storm had long since gone, but the threat of rain was still there as we donned our rucksacks and headed out for a full day in Sofia. First item on the agenda was to get our bus tickets for our journey to down to Macedonia's capital, Skopje. The bus left at midnight, and our attitude at 10am was very much "bring it on."
The bus station offered us, and more specifically M, the chance to try out newly learned Bulgarian knowledge. The first person to have the pleasure of hearing it, apart from a "Good morning, how are you?" conversation with the nice lady who checked us out of our room, was the bus ticket saleswoman. With a little help from a pen and paper to write down numbers and dates, M successfully managed to secure our seats on the bus - and celebrated by ordering "Lodka" from a food stall outside the station - a Bulgarian "delicacy" of sausage on pastry covered with melted cheese. It cost 36p.
On the way back , more food was bought - this time from a fun local supermarket. L was much more successful in choosing edible food this time, with her spinach-filled pastry a much better shout than M's mystery purchase which turned out to be bread stuffed with yoghurt. On the way to find a nice place to sit and eat these snacks, it started to rain. Quite a lot. It got bad enough that we gave up and sheltered under a balcony where we ate our snacks and planned the route for the rest of the day.
Sofia is a pretty large city, and the main sights are spread out over a large distance. Most of the day was spent walking between these attractions. A good proportion were places of worship - big churches, small churches, a Mosque and a cathedral which all had their own history and definitely worth a look around. M gets excited whenever he sees a stadium on the map, and we headed there (about a 25 minute walk from the center) next. We weren't sure if we were allowed inside, and so followed a mother and her children through the only open gate into the stadium we could find - unfortunately, we were stopped by a fairly grumpy woman who shattered the illusion that we had been making progress with our Bulgarian by hissing "No Visit" and ushering us out. We later discovered we'd been trying to gain access to the on-site sport centre's children's changing rooms, so it's really no wonder that two childless adults clutching cameras were given such a cold reception.
On the way back to the center, the weather took a turn for the worse - and we took a wrong turn. After accidentally stumbling across the stadium belonging to Sofia's other football club, we discovered we'd been going in completely the wrong direction and ended up sheltering under an abandoned Coca Cola stand under the curious gaze of the local stray dogs. When the rain stopped, we decided to bite the bullet and cough up the 35p for the metro back into the middle, where we found a pizza stand with plenty of covered seating where we had our lunch and decided on our next plan of action. We still had 8 hours left in Sofia, but felt we had pretty much seen all the main sights. However, something caught our eye on the guide we'd picked up - the museum of socialist art. It taking the metro back beyond the stadium, but we had time to kill, so off we went.
It cost a little to get in (€6 each) but it was well worth it - especially for the impressive collection of statues in the garden outside. The area around it was classic Eastern Europe with massive apartment blocks and concrete architecture, so it was like taking a step back in time. After saying hello to Stalin, Marx, and Lenin (who even posed for a selfie), we headed back to relax, sit, and people watch in the square by the Mosque before heading off to the bus station.
Perhaps the most interesting thing we noticed whilst sitting on our bench in the square were the hoards of people who were taking giant containers by the car load to a collection of fountains - we wondered if there was something wrong with the plumbing in the city which left houses without running water. After closer inspection and, with a little help from our guide to Cyrillic symbols, we discovered the taps were running with perfectly drinkable mineral water. Sofia seems to be built on a natural spring, which would explain why the Romans chose to build a settlement here (the ruins are all over the city, even infused into one of the metro stations), and this spring water is free for anyone who wants/needs it.
With that mystery solved, it was back up the hill to the bus station. The main bus station building in Sofia is surprisingly modern and has good facilities. The same cannot be said for the rest of the train/bus station complex - a crumbling relic from the communist era, whose abundant abandoned spaces seem to have become one giant public urinal. It's fascinating to look around, but not somewhere you'd want to hang out - particularly the section below street level. Sensibly, we chose to hang out in the main bus station and enjoyed a romantic meal to rival the previous evening's Big Macs - kebab skewers and potato wedges on a balcony overlooking the bus stops and a large power station further in the distance. After finishing our meal, there was a fair bit of waiting around until our midnight bus - and the lots of the discussion revolved around whether it would be comfortable enough to get some decent sleep on the 5/6 hour journey to Skopje. Having experienced some decent night buses in the past, we were both fairly hopeful - and M even dared to tempt fate when, with the bus due any minute, he saw a minibus drive around the corner and joked that it was probably ours. Of course, it was.
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