Bulgaria: Sofia & Plovdiv

The past weekend, my friend Iwona and I flew to Bulgaria. We were couchsurfing in Sofia and a great hostess: Gergana. She was showing us around and even cooked for us. She also recommeded us to visit the city Plovdiv the second largest city in Bulgaria, which I didn't know before. It was worth going! I kept a good impression about the country or especially about the Bulgarian people

The early bird catches the worm

Very early in the morning, my friend Iwona and I had to wake up to catch our train at 4:31.

4:31, Train S7 to Vienna International Airport

... depature time: 6:30am

Impressions

To be honest, I was curious about how difficult it will be to handle the Cyrillic alphabet in the daily business, like on bus-schedules or in a restaurant:

Bus schedule on Sofia airport

The menu

It wasn't very easy, but still we managed it, because we had small translation book :-)

Anyway we got somehow to the city center very easily. The first eye-catcher was this small tower:

A small tower, but what is it for?

It's a kind of traffic observation tower. The guy working in this tower is supposed to control the traffic light, if it isn't in automatic mode.

As Bulgaria is only one year within European union, we weren't sure at all, how life will be there, but as everywhere you can find the "American embassy", or also called McDonald's (tm) nearly everywhere:

Choose which restaurant you'd propably like to go

The next conspicuous point about Sofia: Sport utility vehicles (S.U.V.) everywhere. Even within "Western Europe", you won't find as much S.U.V. as you do in Sofia. You'll see many BMW X5, X6, Mercedes ML-Class, Audi Q7 or even Porsche Cayenne.

BMW X5 and BMW X6. Of course the latest edition

The next thing, that catches somone's eye: Banks, insurances and supermarkets from Austria. But it's somehow funnyto see them in Cyrillic letters:

Can you read it? It's Raiffeisen Bank.

But of course there is another part of Sofia: A very root one sometimes. Like the way some people are handling their phoneline

Would you find the wire, which is not working?

As the website of foreign affairs of Austria mentions, that sidewalks are in poor condition, I have to be honest: That's definitely true. I realized that this country is developing, and it's developing fast. So they'll mange it someday or pretty soon.

But I realized something else, that the website of foreign affairs didn't mention: The differences in income seam to be colossal. I saw very rich people and also very poor ones. I am of course not entitled to judge, but this is something that should be handled also pretty soon.

Old people playing chess

Sights

Sofia might be unknown to many of you, but actually there is no reason for that. As a tourist or guest, I felt pretty welcome. Like everywhere now, young people are able to speak English here as well. So it wasn't a big deal for asking the way. As your hostess Gergana was showing us around, we didn't had to care much about finding the right way.

The sights were all clean and easy to find.

Alexander-Newski-Cathedrale