Summer Trips: Sofia

The days are getting shorter, the dark is coming earlier – this is the time of year when Hungary starts looking like Mordor, and so my mind goes to sunnier times in the summer.

The glorious Palace of Culture in all its Brutalist glory.

Sofia's mosque

An artsy shot from Sofia's synagogue.

The Russians built St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral to commemorate their liberation of Bulgaria from the Turks.

It was not until I moved to the region that I could tell you what the capital of Bulgaria was. Like so many North Americans, I was blissfully ignorant of the jumble of countries in Central and Eastern Europe – the easily confused names (Slovakia and Slovenia) and names impossible to pronounce (Herzegovina) with the untrained tongue.

Thanks to fifty years of Soviet occupation, it was easy for everyone to lump everything east of the former Iron Curtain into the same culture.

Sadly, that’s the way things are.

And so, we come to Sofia, deep in the old East bloc. Carlos, a Brazilian who’s passed through Toronto before landing in Bulgaria, pointed it out – the language, the cuisine, the architecture is more Greek because they were here in the beginning and their influence has never left this place.

To get to Sofia wasn’t easy on a budget. We had to book a twelve hour bus ride from Budapest through Serbia to Sofia. Due to booking issues, I had to leave a day early on the overnight bus alone.

I grabbed snippets of sleep all night through Serbia, awaking at the border. As dawn came, the fog cleared and I realized I was entering Serbia, but I also way up in the foggy mountains. I crashed for a few hours after checking into my hostel and met Carlos for a Discovery Walk. It was a beautiful day – the only I’d have since it would rain non-stop for the rest of the weekend – and the mountain air felt fresh and crisp.

Carlos took me, and later this rest of the crew, to some of the key points of interests: Roman ruins, the Turkish mosque, a few Orthodox churches, and one of the public fountains that are fed by springs beneath the city. Fifty years of heavy-handed socialist urban planning is also still prevalent, with drab grey apartment blocks, the odd brutalist monument, and the Palace of Culture, in all its concrete glory with its wide, concrete beach surrounding it.

At first it was easy to get lost in all of these outside influences left behind in Sofia from past tenants, but Bulgarian culture is surprisingly resilient and well established. Bulgarian was the first written Slavic language, and their Cyrillic alphabet might look a bit Greek and it might look a bit Russian, but it is very distinct.

Like so many cities in this part of Europe, Sofia is a city on the make. The economy is growing (as there’s political stability), there’s a cool nightlife and a big, beautiful mountain with hiking trails and ancient monasteries just a short bus ride away. But for a city high in the mountains with a dry climate, we got rained on the whole time and never got to see exactly what the city could offer. Maybe another time...

A little bit of old Rome left in the city centre.