Stuck in Sofia

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So the train was pretty sweet, we had our own little room and everything. The border guards rudely awakened us in the night to sign out of Turkey and into Bulgaria but otherwise it was pretty mellow and we slept alright. The countryside as we drove through was prety cool - lots of wildflowers and burnt out old communist bloc style bunkers and buildings, nuts.

We arrived in Sofia around 1pm and unloaded a bunch of our passengers. We were just chilling in the carriage waiting to zoom off again when our friend from the next room, Samir from Serbia, poked his head round the corner and asked if we wanted to cry now or later. Turns out the engine forgot us. Our little carriage, with 6 passengers, was stuck in Sofia. And the next engine wasnt arriving til 10 that night. Bugger.

So we all clambered out (us, Samir and three friendly Brazilians) and set off through the railway graveyard to check out the city. And boy was it exciting. The place was dead. Barely any people or cars, and nothing much to look at it was pretty grey and depressing. Then we rounded a corner and saw it , The Mall of Sofia.

It was brandspanking new and very, very shiny. We wandered the shops while Samir took hundreds of crazy posed shots with his cell phone camera. Surreal. I found a Mango (of course, Auckland doesnt have one but Sofia does) and even got myself a top which says Mango Bulgaria. Wicked. We had some food and spent another few hours wandering the city, checking out the shops and people watching (there are some interesting fashions in this area, white pants are cool apparently).

Back at the train station we found our little conductor man asleep, but he sorted us out and our carriage was lonely no more. We spent our remaining leva on icecream and chocolate and jumped back on board and we were off!

Immigration was not a problem and we at last escaped Bulgaria. The Serbian was a different story. Unforunately Mariana was travelling on her Brazilian passport while the others were on Portugese ones. The Serbs wouldnt let her in without a visa so the poor girl had to get off the train in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and head back to Sofia. Sux. Add that to Rafael getting his bag stolen with their railpasses and all his gear in the Rome train station and it doesnt make for a pleasant holiday. Hope they make it to Budapest ok.

But for us, Samir, and the scantily clad Croatian women he picked up on the way, it was on to Belgrade.

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