Before departure from Belgrade I spent my remaining Dinars to by beer and peanuts for the road. I came to the station an hour before train departure and I didn’t know what to do. They don’t have a waiting room there, all of the benches are located throughout the station. The station is quite open disposition and there was quite cold there. I decided to take a walk, went to the grocery store for fruit. In addition to apples I found some exotic fruits called “Mushmula”, it turned out to be tasteless, it tastes like dry persimmon.
The trip to Sofia was hard. I bought a ticket in common car for 20 euro but it turned out to be very uncomfortable. There were a lot of people, they were constantly going somewhere, coming and then moving again. The light was on all night and I was not able to sleep.
Customs were easy. On the Serbian side the guy just collected the passports of all passengers and brought in 20 minutes with stamp. The same thing on the Bulgarian side. No question, no additional documents, no luggage inspection. Easy. That was a good thing.
The other guy five times checked tickets. I don’t know why. Every 1.5 hours ticket control.
In the end I was sleeping perhaps 30 minutes and was woken by the train stuff. They told me that we were in Sofia already.
Ok. I got off the train and went to the tram to get to my hostel. I thought that Bulgarians use euro already, but it turned out to be false. They use they own currency – Lev (like in Moldova). 1 lev is 0.5 euro. Quite easy to count.
I changed 10 euro and got on my train.
Here is my first picture of Sofia.
Finally it turned out that I chose wrong tram direction and went 7 stops (as per my hostel booking direction) to wrong way somewhere to the Sofia’s outskirts.
Got off and changed tram, went another 14 stops to the center. By the way, I didn’t pay for the tram. I thought that I could buy a ticket right on the tram but it turned out that I should have bought a ticket on the stall next to the tram stop. Fortunately there were not any inspection and I was going well.
There is a picture right in front of my hostel.
The hostel is very cold. They don’t use heating but there is about only +5 degrees on the street. Madd bricks.
The rest of the day I took a nap and went to the grocery store. In the evening I was sitting on the internet and working in such cold conditions.
