HELLAvatrip 2022 – εις την Πόλιν – Chapter 6 – Sofia, the city of σοφία (and surprises)

Oh boy, what a ride it was in that old carriage. And now we are in the capital of Bulgaria, the city of Sofia. Its Greek name is Serdica and it might be derived from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian, Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin. The name Sofia comes from the Saint Sofia Church, as opposed to the prevailing Slavic origin of Bulgarian cities and towns. The origin is in the Greek word sophia (σοφία) “wisdom”.

And I must say, it was a heck of the city. The city of surprises and absurds.

Why surprises, you might ask? Well, I was definitely positively surprised how clean the city is and how the infrastructure is well-kept. Not everywhere, but it was not the state I've seen often in Balkan cities. Of course, a bit post-modern, but overall nicely build metro (with a mediocre frequency nonetheless), but also the main railway station was at least heavily renovated (including the platforms, but not including the rolling stock), the trams were… in worse shape, but still in progress (better than in Bucharest), the streets were clean (better than in Greece).

The architecture and composition of the city was also nicely surprising. I like the communist-era government architecture (Largo square is just amazing), I like the composition of Ottoman, Eastern Orthodox and middle-European architecture, I like the shady streets etc. I don't like the centralization of the Bulgarian state, but they can't do much about that, can they?

However, it's still Balkans and you cannot miss plenty of absurdities. First, the ticketing system. Yes, the city has integrated public transport tickets, not like in Bucharest, where metro and everything else is separate. You can buy a nice one day ticket in the metro ticket counter (ah yes, Eastern Europe, where the labour is so cheap such mundane things like ticket sell is not put into a machine, don't get me wrong, where are some ticket machines, but they are really basic, they can't, for example, sell every type of ticket), but it is literally stamped with a current date, so it's not machine readable. But metro has ticket barriers, so what should we do? Well… we should scan the ticket in the ticket counter (it's fast, but c'mon) every time we want to use metro. It's not very practical, especially if you already-invested-in-machine-reading-ticketing-system, as we still have to scan the ticket at the barriers. Why can't be the tickets stamped/printed in a machine readable way.

The other funny thing was that although there is a way to pay in the metro using your contactless. Yay, open loop, who doesn't like that (well, there are some disadvantages, but sure it's convenient). Well… yes, you can pay using your contactless only on the metro and only for single rides. Which is not great and more similar to Kyiv than to London or Wrocław. Fortunately, you can at least buy a separate city card and use this.

Ok, more about ticketing oddities. This time – BDŽ, the national train operator. Did you know, that the only place where you can buy your ticket for Sofia–Istanbul Express is the international ticket counter in Sofia (which was already closed when we arrived in the city, so we had to go there in the morning to buy there)? Sure, they are always available, but it is still 2022 and we like our tickets digital, it's safer this way. And you can't even buy the return ticket there, only one way, the return ticket is available only at international ticket counters in Istanbul (including Hlkali).

Ok, that's probably it. Please enjoy the sightseeing of Sofia and thank you Wikipedia for providing me the information I needed.

I strongly suggest looking at Transport in Bulgaria as well.