Bulgaria - Sofia 14/05

We left Thessaloniki at midnight on the scariest looking train ever. The train was really old and run down looking, the lights were off so it was completely dark inside and there were people who looked like homeless people hanging out the windows smoking. It had been raining and the windows were down so it looked like water was dripping into the train. We were told there were sleeper cars but not told they cost extra once you got on (doubled our fare from 15 to 30 Euros each) so we just stuck to what we had. We got a room to ourselves so we were able to lie across the seats, but the door didn't lock so we agreed that one of us should stay awake just in case. I was going to type the blog but we didn't want to advertise that I had a laptop. Steve started nodding off within 5 minutes however, so we decided to just sleep - we locked all our bags together and used our sleeping bags for pillows. We really feel like back packers on days like this!

We got woken in the middle of the night by the police when we got to the Bulgarian border. Greek police stamped my passport out of Greece and the Bulgarians stamped me in - I got a 30 day visa at the border. Steve had to get my passport back for me as I had fallen asleep again by the time they'd sorted it out. Steve has no stamps in his passport yet, as he is traveling on a British passport and considered an EU citizen. Woke up at around 5.30am and we had another hour until we arrived in Sofia.

When we got off the train in Sofia, the train station was very run down. The escalators down off the platforms looked like they hadn't worked in dozens of years as they were all rusted and taped off. The toilets in the station were like the floor style ones in Thailand and you had to pay for toilet paper just like Thailand. We got the tram to the city, although it was very hard to work out if we were getting the right one as almost no one here speaks English. The trams were also very old and run down, even older that the 70s ones that get around Melbourne.

We arrived at the hostel and we were allowed to check in (it was 8am) so we slept for another few hours before heading out for an explore around. We just wandered around checking out the buildings, having a feed and beers - nothing very eventful. At around 11pm we headed out in search of some happening night life. We found a club with bad music, expensive drinks and the only other patrons a bunch on English yobbos. We left and walked around until we found a cool little bar that was playing rad prog/house and stayed there for a beer but it was empty and we were tired so we went back to the hostel and slept.

Ruth