When you are poor and desperate for a holiday, you take any travel option to save a few quid. A train ride across Bulgaria from west to east? Sure, I thought, that'll be fun!
Let me explain that we began this train ride a little shaken following a slightly white-knuckle taxi ride from the airport to the station. Apparently the rules of the road do not apply in Bulgaria. Not even basic ones like, 'Don't drive directly at another vehicle,' or, 'avoid running over pedestrians.' It was tense.
The train station in Sofia looked like a run down version of a disused train station. The sort of place Kevin Bacon might have gambolled around to perform an angry dance during his younger days. The platform was crumbling, the signs barely lit and the trains, heavily graffitied, looked like something dragged up from my grandfather's dusty old toy box.
As a shorty, sweaty man hurried us to our seats, the whistle blew and I clocked the temperature at 29° at about 1pm. Tired from the plane journey, and breathing in the stiflingly muggy air, we fidgeted into the compartment and tried to get comfy. What happened in the following 8 hours, yes, 8 hours, was both entertaining and extremely stressful. The temperature gradually climbed into the mid-30s. The train did not pick up speed. The supplies of water and crisps dwindled rapidly. We were all tired, all hot, all hungry and none of us expected to make it through the trip,(Dramatic, but that's what happens when your brain overheats and rationale turns to mushy peas).
However, when I looked out of the train's windows, Bulgaria surprised me again and again. Buildings were scattered between wide open stretches of dry grassland, and they all stand in varying degrees of disarray. It looked as though, as fast as someone (communists, presumably) built an apartment, factory, farm shed or outdoor toilet, someone else wouldn't be far behind with a buldozer to knock it down again. Even the buildings that were still in use - train and police stations, houses and shops - by and large seemed to feature crumbling roofs or a distinct lack of brick work! All along the journey, however, we saw signs of fruitful agriculture, hundreds upon thousands of beautiful smiling rows of sunflowers and Bulgarians going about their daily lives amidst this chaos. People, and their livestock, seemd to stroll freely across the tracks, like jay-walking Londoners moving in slow-motion, cutting right infront of the train. We saw mountains, lakes, rivers, suburbs, farms, villages, shopping malls, the sea and holiday resort complexes.
About 2 thirds of the way into the trip, at a comically named city called Plovdiv, a young man joined our compartment. He was obviously Bulgarian (I worked this out because I heard him speaking the language to the elderly gentleman who waved him off at the platform) but seemd very engaged in our semi-hysterical conversation as he sat down. It soon transpired that his English was better than most of ours - he was a music student, specialising in the niche musical stylings of the theremin, studying at a university in New Jersey. He shared his grandma's cake with us (and no, it wasn't until we got off the train that I even considered how eating cake offered by a stranger in a foreign country might have been quite hazardous) and told us about where to visit, what to eat and how to survive the heat. Nice guy.
The train sluggishly hissed into Bourgas 8 hours later, almost as hot and tired as we were. We parted company with our musical friend and dragged ourselves to the apartment. We all had to agree it had been quite an adventure.
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