20 May – travelling by train from Sophia, Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania

It is already Day 6 of this epic adventure.  How time have flown.  This morning, we woke up at 6 am and started final packing to get to the station by 7am as we have no information as to which platform we have to board the train.  Platform assignment for trains usually occur just before the train arrives.  As we already discovered the day before, none of the elevators from the street to the metro level worked.  So we put our muscles to work.  The hotel room was on the second floor and there was no elevator, so we had to get our heavy suitcase with wheels down the stairs along with our heavy photographic equipment.  To our delight we found a new shortcut to the main street.  That was nice ... a cobblestone street shortened.  Sometimes clean eyes are good, but sometimes it take experience to find that better path ... corporate lesson : a mix of fresh eyes to ensure that we don't get into the ruts but at the same time, ensure that experience is there.

From there, we heaved ourselves down to the metro level.  The escalators up to the train station were not working and the domestic guy in the customer windows downstairs could not provide us with any information other than refer us upstairs to the International Division for help.  Yesterday, the lady at the Information window of the International Division was most helpful but she had no information as to which platform the train would come to.  Information are on the billboard but they are all in Cyrillic script which basically made us illiterate.  It is not easy to navigate when you do not speak or read the official language of the country and cannot even spell your destination with it.  But at least English is considered international.  Folks would always try to help you or try to understand you.  How much worse it must be for refugees and others who are in the same boat in a country but the prevailing population do not respect the language they speak nor care for it at all.  

Off we went climbing the stairs to the top level only to be greeted by a gentleman in well worn high vis who asked if we was going to Bucharest.  He appeared to know that the train would be on Platform 8 and was all ready to accompany us there.  We checked with the lady at the windows, a different one today.  She did not appear to understand what was being asked.  And then just said Platform 8.  It was a good thing that the gentleman who accompanied us there did as the navigation onto various platforms was a maze itself.  He helped lifted us lift our heavy bag up the stairs to the platform.  There were heaps of ups and down without working escalators or so we thought until we saw a working one later while waiting for the train to arrive.  It made us wonder if he intentionally brought us to the not working escalator so that he could carry our bag up.  He did point us to our coach and train.  We gave him the last of our LEV small change even though he said too little.   It would have to do as we had no more local currency.  He was not too happy but there was nothing we could do.  Up to that point, we thought Bulgarians were nice folks.  Our trust was a little threatened after that experience.

We waited at the train and was a little worried that no one else was coming to this train.  It was not attached to anything either but that is not unusual for trains.  We waited and then got apprehensive so we went to check with a bunch of younger folks nearby to ensure that we had not made a wrong decision.  They had no idea about our train and requested that we refer back to Information which was not useful.  The youngster said : This is Bulgaria when we told her that the Information desk had not been too helpful.  A little wait later, a Nigerian and his mother who is Bulgarian appeared on  the platform.  We approached them with the verifying question and end up chatting with them.  David helped us read our ticket and advised where our seat would be.  Cezerina, his mom, was very friendly too.  Our train was 30 minutes delayed. That explained the inactivity.  Our faith in Bulgarians were restored a little.

We got into my coach to find two other gentlemen already in it.  We showed our ticket and the bulkier of the two, who was in jeans and T-shirt stood up to give our seat back to me.  He helped us put my heavy bag on the luggage rack above our heads.  The other gentlemen who was dressed in office gear tried to start a conversation with us although he only knows Russian and Bulgarian.  He was good communicator.  He showed us his facebook page which provided information about him, including his two daughters.  He had used FB to translate the information to English.  He was going to Medza with his friend.  Medza was 4 hrs away.  Along the journey he pointed out the mountains so that we did not miss them as we railed past.  He tried his best to have a conversation using sign language and paper.  My travelling companion gave him the details of her photo page on Facebook.  He explained because of the Russian era, he spoke no English, only Russian and Bulgarian.  He was a little surprised to learn that we are Australians.

As they got ready to leave, he gave us a snack in a pack and said Au Revoir.  Bulgarians are friendly people.  They had all been really helpful except for the train office folks and even that is intermittent rather than continuous. 

We would recommend Bulgaria, especially the smaller villages outside Sofia as these are rather pretty.  Terra cotta roof tiles on cream coloured buildings surrounded by green tall mountains and fast moving streams.  These were the beautiful scenes we observed as we railed by.  As we pass one swift stream, we spied nests of cormorants in the trees that line its banks.  And on another junction of the same stream, we spied this majestic, yet mysterious handsome bird in total black.  We had finally seen the black stork.  The train was too fast to capture it on film but it went into the memory bank of the mind.

The train was a little run down and slow.  It reminded us of the trains we caught in Italy back in 1988.  2^nd class = 8 seats in a room, 4 on each side.  It is possible to recline the seats some 45 deg but not when all 8 seats are taken.  When the two gentlemen left, we had the room to myself.  A little warm and a little stuffy and run down but otherwise comfortable.

Surprisingly, although we have seen the conductor, we had not seen anyone come up with snacks or water.

The train has to stop to wait for the other trains to pass or just for some mechanical reasons.  Now we understand why the journey takes 9.5 hr when a bullet train would probably complete this trip in less than 2 – 3 hrs.

*****

Next door was this tourist that was not from the Balkans.  He turned out to be a German from Berlin and he has this niffy tool which he used to open the windows that were locked.  Good on him!!  Our cabin was getting stuffy in the hot afternoon, so we sought his help to open my windows.  He stayed in his car and we in ours.  We notice that he has a camera too and he was making photos just like we were.

At Ruse, the Bulgarian border control was really quick.  They used the radio to call out the passport details and exit was duly stamped on the passport.  Then at Griggio du Nord, the passport control for Romania made off with our passports for more than 30 minutes which really made both of us a little apprehensive.  He did return and our passports were given back to us.  We stopped for a long time here.  So these countries are in the European Union but not with respect to passport control and currencies.  The train going towards Bulgaria from Romania appeared to have been there a while too. They moved before we did.

As a result of all the delays, the train arrived 1.5 hr late at 7pm instead of 5.30pm.  The German gentleman helped me unload my luggage on to the platform before hurrying off.  We headed out into the station where an ATM was found and 200 Romanian LEIs was withdrawn.  As soon as we were outside the gates of the Railway Station, someone yelled at us in Spanish asking whether we would like a cab.  Considering that our hotel wass marked as only 200m from the Station, we yelled back in Spanish, No!  The lady at the flower shop was not too helpful because she spoke no English.  As we were not sure where the hotel could be hiding … note to self … next time check with google map ahead of time to see what the destination would look like.  We walked down the right side of a street facing the station and asked a young lady where my hotel would be.  She advised after walking with us for almost a block, to go through the garden … informing us that it was safe … to the other side.  We found someone along that street and asked again for directions, and was told to go back towards the station, turn right, end of the block, turn right again …. and this time we found it …. It was right next to an exit for the metro.  Things are easy if we know exactly where we are going and what we are looking for.

We checked in and found Europe Jazz festival in progress at the hotel lobby.  We went back out to the street facing the station and got ourselves some fruits and water from a mini mart there.  It was really inexpensive – 14 LEI for a 2.5 litre of water, 2 bananas, 2 nectarines, a bottle of yogurt.  That should stave off the hunger from the train trip earlier … we must remember there may be no catering cars and no one selling snacks so it is necessary to provision before starting a train trip!  We decided that since it was so reasonable, we would eat at the hotel restaurant that evening.  A main dish and a small bottle of sparkling water set us back 40 LEIs (AUD $15) while at the same time we were entertained by international performers from the Europe Jazz festival in progress.  That was not bad at all. 

We were told that Ibis is usually a transit hotel for business folks here so the weekend tend to be quiet when we asked where everyone was at the restaurant.  The jazz folks were eating earlier or later.  The audience was not huge … may be about 100+ people, but the music was good.  All international languages could be heard. 

Having had an exhausting day travelling, we made for bed early that evening … in fact, we could not fight falling asleep at all.  Oh, our room was really nice ... almost 4 stars nice.  And it had cost us less than AUD 50 per night.