Delightful Bustling Bucharest

We left Sofia on an early morning train.  The train followed the narrow Iskur River valley with villages nestled on the steep hillsides.  Wood smoke hung in the valleys in a thick, hazy smog.  The hills turned into fertile plains as we made our way northeast into Romania.  We spent all day on the train.  The seats were fairly basic bench seats and there were absolutely no amenities except a basic toilet.  We were glad we enquired before we left so brought drinks and snacks with us.  By the time we arrived in Bucharest it was dark and cold and we were happy to just crash at the hotel and leave the exploring for the morning.

Crossing the Danube into Romania

 Romania seems to have shaken off the legacy of communism and Ceaușescu.  There was a liveliness and vibrancy in the streets.  We stumbled across some lovely sculptures and street art. 

A wagon full of musicians

Violin Sculpture

Flower sellers were everywhere

I was amazed at the language.  Romania is this enclave of Italian sounding Romance language surrounded by Slavic and Germanic languages.  I was fascinated and would love to know how that evolved.  It was lovely to hear and so much easier to negotiate after the challenge of the Cryllic alphabet of Bulgaria. 

Mosaics on the Church of St Anthony

There were still reminders of Ceaușescu, mainly in the Parliamentary Palace he built but did not live to see its completion.  This is the largest civilian building in the world.  It is massive containing 1,100 rooms.  It has 12 stories above ground and 8 below.  It is 82 m high and measures 270m by 245m and cost €3 billion to build.  In short it is quite obscene. 

The mammoth Parliamentary Palace

A children's playground below the Parliamentary Palace - a sop to the masses?

The Old Town was delightful.  We found a wonderful cafe for coffee in the morning and liked it so much made our way back there for lunch.

Old Town

Coffee at Le/Bourgeois/

And a few hours later lunch

Our visit to Bucharest was short as in the evening we caught an overnight sleeper train to Budapest.  I would love to come back to Romania in the summer and explore some of its countryside and other cities.

 

So So Sofia

We had a quick overnight visit to Sophia.  For a capital city it was fairly low key and although pleasant enough didn’t hit any keys with us.  We arrived about midday and treated ourselves to a nice hotel.  We dropped off our bags and hit the streets. 

View from our hotel

We first came upon a bizarre monument that from what we could piece together seems to have been built after tearing down a memorial to WWII soldiers.  Very strange but then Bulgaria did fight against the Russians so there would have been no love lost.

One of the ugliest monuments

However Western consumerism is well entrenched in the city.

City park - note the multinational food brands

The streetscape was looking a bit grim until we came upon the National Theatre and the Art Gallery.

National Theatre with Christmas decorations

Sculpture outside the art gallery

Then we came to the Alexander Nevski Cathedral which was quite impressive.  There was a flea market along the boulevard leading up to the cathedral with amazing WWII paraphernalia, old violins and a surfeit of icons.

Alexander Nevski Cathedral in the late afternoon sun

Icons on display

The short winter days meant our sightseeing of the city was brief but we did discover a few nuggets of interest. 

Bulgaria is doing it tough.  The countryside is poor and the cities run down outside the tourist areas.  The population is haemorrhaging, losing 5% annually for the last 20 years.  Politically and economically it has struggled to make the transition from Communism.  In recent years the economy and government corruption has improved.  We could see a lot of potential in the country.  The people are lovely and if they could just hang in there and keep the recent improvements growing, I suspect the next 10 years will see Bulgaria as an up and coming Eastern European country.  At least I hope so.

Pleasant, Promising Plovdiv

Plovdiv getting ready for the European Cultural city of 2019

The outskirts of Plovdiv did not ease our concerns that Bulgaria might not be the most comfortable or pleasant of travelling destinations.  The Russian influence was still evident.  We went through the small city of Harmanli which seemed to be made up entirely of gray crumbling concrete tower blocks.  The Stalinist architecture is soul destroying.

As the early dusk was enveloping the already gray cold sky, we were deposited at the central bus station surrounded by disintegrating mid 19^th Century neo-Gothic buildings that must have been quite charming in their day.  

Building next to the bus station

The holes in the footpaths showed signs of long abandoned attempts at repair.  We rolled our cases down the bumpy potholed footpath in search of our hotel.  The location of the hotel according to Google maps turned out to be a vacant, cleared demolition site.  

This is where our hotel was suppose to be

We asked around and were directed further down the pedestrian mall intersecting the area of Kabana.  Kabana is a lovely neighbourhood of wide public spaces, upmarket shops, cafes and vibrancy.  Things were looking up.  We found our hotel in an ideal location on the edge of the Kabana district and the Old Town.  We dropped off our bags and went in search of dinner.  The whole mall was twinkling with Christmas lights and happy shoppers and workers on their way home.

 

We found a very nice restaurant and had a delicious meal.  Back to the hotel to crash and have an early night after more than 36 hours since being horizontal.

The next day we explored the town.  Plovdiv has been selected as the European Cultural Centre for 2019 and the centre of town is undergoing extensive renovations and refurbishment.  Plovdiv proved to be a delightful town of pleasant parks, cobblestone streets, Hellenic ruins interspersed amongst charming 19th Century neo-Gothic houses in various states of repair.  There were a few Stalinist monuments and government buildings just to remind us we were in an ex-Russian satellite country; but not too godless as there were also many ornate Orthodox Churches.

Beautiful houses along the city park

Cobblestone streets

 

Old Town Plovdiv

Greek ruins nestled in the city

Reliefs on a government building

One of the many churches

Icons

Churches and cobblestones

We stumbled upon the School of Music next to a large Greek amphitheatre and went into their cafe for a cuppa feeling very hip to be amongst the talented students.  

School of Music

Bob was very impressed with the coffee machines dotting the street corners.

Bob getting coffee from one of the many street side machines

There was some fantastic street art on the sides of buildings and wonderful views from the seven hills that surround the city.

 

Street art

That night we had one of the best restaurant meals I have ever had.  The flavour of the Bulgarian dishes only ranked behind Gordon Ramsay’s La Noisette but unlike Ramsay’s restaurant, Raya cost a ridiculously low $25 for drinks and two courses for the both of us.

Our fantastic pork dinners

So Plovdiv gave us hope for Bulgaria’s future.  It is a vibrant city of culture, history and haute cuisine.

North to Bulgaria

We left Marmaris late afternoon on an overnight Metro bus to Istanbul.  The trip was reasonably comfortable with the usual good Turkish bus service of drink and snacks provided by a steward and stops every two hours at clean facilities where the traveller can stretch ones legs, have a comfort stop and buy gifts or food.  We managed to get snatches of sleep and I was relatively rested by the time we arrived at the huge Istanbul Otogar.  The bus station had close to 100 bus bays and shops and cafes all around the circumference but was looking a bit worse for wear and could definitely due with a bit of a renovation.  We had some breakfast and caught the 9 am bus to Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Now the adventure begins into new territory.  We were travelling through the ancient land of Thrace, today a rich agricultural area of undulating plains.  The fields of newly planted winter wheat provided a verdant backdrop to the bare winter trees.  The land seemed to be raptor heaven.  Looking out the window I would see a beautiful hawk or eagle (name – Look up) sitting in a bare tree or on top of a fence post close to the highway.  I must have seen at least 50 along the way just causally glancing out the window.

This is the common buzzard which looked like the birds I saw

About midday we arrived at the border crossing into Eastern Europe.  I was feeling quite excited and Bob kept humming the tune to 39 Steps (yes I know that was Vienna but it was one of the iconic early post-WWII Iron Curtain films.  And yes I know the Iron Curtain fell 30 years ago but was so much part of the political intrigue in our formative years).  Alas the immigration check point was a staid, routine affair.  Bob and I reminisced about some of the more colourful border crossings in Asia where camel carts would pass or where chickens were scratching in the dust outside of the ramshackle corrugated iron immigration office.

Mulling around at the border checkpoint

Once in Bulgaria the plains became more undulating and we could see snow covered mountains in the distance.  Less seemed to be planted in the fields and fewer displayed the lush green of winter wheat.  The village houses were a different design than in Turkey and all the villages had derelict buildings.  Often it was difficult to distinguish the inhabited dwellings from the derelict abandoned ones.  The highway turned into a two lane bumpy track and we began to wonder about the wisdom of coming to Bulgaria.

A blurry view of the mountains taken from the bus