Post 48. Bucharest to Sofia

The (Long) Journey

I left Bucharest’s Gara de Nord at 10.11 on the train to Sofia. This would be the longest train journey of this year’s travels; it was scheduled to last 10 hours and 5 minutes, but it departed 30 mins late leaving,  so it didn't arrive in Sofia Central till 21.00. This made it the longest train journey of my short train travel life.

Unfortunately there was no catering service on board, so I stocked up on plenty of food and drinks for the journey and had a large coffee and croissant in Ted's Coffee in Bucharest - and very good coffee it was ! 

My second class ticket cost about €35. The train was continuing to Istanbul, after the stop in Sofia. 

I dreaded to think what time the remaining passengers would reach their destination, as Sofia seemed to me to be only about half-way there. 

The train wagon wasn’t modern and consisted of small compartments with eight seats, with a long connecting corridor. 

There were six of us squeezed into one of these and with all our luggage, it was a tight space. We were all tourists and I felt we would all know each other intimately by the end of the journey. 

To make matters worse, my seat was in the middle! I did try to change it after booking but this was not possible. When the ticket collector came round and saw how we were all squeezed in like sardines, he told us we could sit anywhere we liked.

I moved to a compartment that I had to myself for the rest of the journey and settled in. A really loud American, two compartments away, started to tell his life story of life in the military to anyone who would listen. I was glad to be able to close the compartment door to dull the noise, but not completely shut it out!! 

At one stage I put the armrests up and lay down on one banquette, and though I didn't quite manage a full stretch, I did get a short nap.

The one thing I missed on board was being able to buy some coffee, but my research had forewarned me about this and I had stocked up on picnic supplies. 

You would think though, that having a captive audience on a train for over 10 hours would mean there would be profit in installing some class of hot drinks vending machine. 

I was determined to finish my well-thumbed copy of John Simpson's personal account of the uprisings in Eastern Europe from over 35 years ago and this journey would be the perfect opportunity.

I have had this book for 30 years, but re-reading the first-hand accounts of all the revolutions, brought them all to life. The three chapters on Romania were particularly well-written. 

The train stopped at Ruse for 40 minutes while all the wheels were adjusted for Bulgarian tracks, but there were no facilities at the stop. 

Once we crossed into Bulgaria, the landscape changed from the flat farmlands of Romania to a more varied terrain with lots of small hills. The farms looked much smaller than Romanian farms. 

There was widespread evidence of large-scale burning of household rubbish in many places along the railway tracks and you could definitely smell it in the air. Some fields contained piles of rubbish like unofficial landfill sites. 

Rural Bulgaria looks far poorer than rural Romania, with lots of crumbling train stations, rundown villages, empty apartment blocks, unfinished new builds and burnt out warehouses. The station above was the exception, most stops were just halts in the countryside!

This was slow train travel, much slower than on the route from Brașov to Bucharest. 

On the whole, the poverty, dereliction and piles of rubbish visible on the route did not paint a  positive first impression of a country, but the landscape itself was very scenic and the unhurried pace of travel made it very relaxing.