Bulgaria

And so it was that I left Bucharesti, and Romania, with the same number of wallets that I arrived with and without a single unintended dog bite, a much healthier state of affairs than my previous exit. Sadly, the EU means freedom of movement, and thus, less than 24hours after it came in to being, I left Romania without any drama at all and without gaining another passport stamping, and arrived in Bulgaria with even less effort. The train was mostly empty, so I settled down to catch up on my sleep on the way to Sofia. I'm not a heavy sleeper, and thus was awake and slightly intrigued that everybody else in the carriage (baring my cabin companion) left the train at a random station about an hour before Sofia.

I was then even more intrigued when i watched us roll up to, into, and then straight through Sofia station, headed a few km past it to a train yard, got shunted around a few times, went through a shed for no obvious reason and then the train wash (luckily i twigged what was happening quick enough to close all windows as much as possible and didn't get too wet), before coming to a halt in a set of sidings with a number of other trains. The engine stopped, the power went off, and after waking the still soundly sleeping Croat Tomislav, pondered the situation. A few heads leaning out of windows along the train told us we weren't the only ones, but the undeniable fact was that we were locked in a train carriage in some random sidings somewhere in Bulgaria. With little chance of being discovered until the train was next used. Ah great. After a little reality check, taking stock of things, convincing ourselves that (a) we weren't in fact dreaming, and (b) Kiki could in no way have engineered this, we made plans for a daring escape, unlike anything even conceived since, well, whenever the last daring escape was conceived.

Thus it was, that if you had happened to have been a train cleaner that cold, crisp, hungover morning in Sofia, you might have possibly seen two strange foreign guys lower their bags out of a train window, then with slightly less dignity than perhaps was required, clamber out of the window and fall in a heap to the ground. Whilst not necessarily a perfect gymnasts dismount, and definitely lacking in technical excellence, it did fulfil our primary requirements of getting out of the train and onto solid land without getting electrocuted on the overhead wires,or loosing a leg to a passing train, which to me seems a more than acceptable trade-off. After a high tech logic based discussion (we flipped a coin) we then made our way towards one end of the train in the hope that we could work out where the hell we were and how the heck to get out of here. We watched in amazement as a guy of 80 or so who had obviously done this before, vaulted perfectly out of a window a few carriages down, collect the dog and luggage lowered by his wife, then help her down, then limped off, before ducking under a slowly moving train!

Eventually we found a Ukrainian provodnik, who seemed as bemused to see us as we were to find her (Tomislav wondered if we'd somehow ended up in Ukraine by mistake, although I've been to Sofia enough times to have recognised the station as we rolled through it), mostly drunk, and also slightly surprised by the two non Bulgarian foreigners in front of her. But she had at least been here before and in a combination of languages, the 3 of us managed to work out the situation to our satisfaction. Thus, after a bit of a wander, a fall down a big hole, a clamber over a bridge and the stuff under the bridge, naturally) and crossing 8 lines plus some more sidings, we found a tram stop. Using my in-depth knowledge of the Bulgarian language and Sofia's layout, we jumped on the first tram in any direction and hey presto, 3 stops later arrived at the main Railway Station entirely as planned. Slightly muddier and about 2hours later than envisaged, this is true, but that couldn't be helped.

Gangsta Shit Hip Hop...?

Anyhow, that long winded is drag is basically the reason why I ended up spending a day in Sofia, as the whole episode had had the inevitable consequence that my 30min connection window had long since passed, and my Thessaloniki train well on it's way (i assume) to Thessaloniki. Naturally the next one was 12hours later, leaving me with nothing to do at all except walk at random around Sofia, a pleasant place, but one of the least exciting capital cities I know of, on the 2nd of Jan with most things still closed to boot.

I can confirm that it was indeed as noteworthy as it sounds, although there was still enough snow around, lots of drunk people trying to show off on the free outdoor ice-rink [i REALLY need to invest in a video camera], the same dodgy money changer who accosts me every time trying to change every currency known to man, and then watching an underpass slowly catch fire and send noxious fumes into the sky.

Still, you have to kill time somehow.