I settled on Bulgaria because it was cheaper than the other option, Greece. Luckily a classmate from England had gone to Bulgaria the week before for exactly the same reason and offered a few pointers (along with some Bulgarian phrase books). Train was the best method and there was a night train once a day in both directions. Take the evening train, arrive in the morning, take the evening train back. He had gone to Bulgaria's second city, Plovdiv, and said he was bored out of his mind while he was there. No one spoke English and nor was there much to do, so he just waited around until the train came. Sofia, Bulgaria's largest city, offered far more, and being farther west, I would have less time there that I'd have to waste than at Plovdiv. So on Friday I headed to down to Sirkeci Train Station near the Golden Horn, once the eastern end of the Orient Express.
Boarding at 10 PM, I was one of only 4 passengers it seemed heading to Bulgaria. While this meant that I got a got a sleeper cabin to myself, it lent also a spooky air to the train, not helped by the fact that the train seemed to be a relic of the Soviet era (maybe just due to the Cyrillic) or that the light in my room was partially broken casting everything in an dark olive drab. The other travelers were a couple, one German, the other French, and another American exchange student at my university, whom I had never met, but was travelling for the exact same reason for me. The other passengers confirmed my suspicion that train travel had fallen out normal use and was generally reserved for youthful travelers, seeking an adventure, or train aficionados. While the train is generally quite comfortable and I passed the 14 hours far better than I would have on a bus, several things did detract from the trip. First, the track itself did not seem to be in good repair and several bumps even led me to think we'd jumped off course. Secondly, the Bulgarian/Turkish border crossings comes at the most inconvenient time of 2 or 3 am. Normally the border guards enter the train to stamp your visa and cast a cursory glance at your belongings (cigarette smuggling is a problem), leaving you quite comfortably sitting in the coach. Turkey likes to run things differently, however, and you must disembark to get your visa stamped at a rather dismal border station. Thus, if you're lucky enough to fall asleep, every stop until the border (and there seemed to be a quite a few) jars you to awake, making you think it is time to get off. And when the time finally does come and you get off, bleary eyed and feeling terrible, you get your passport stamped after a miserable wait and then crawl back into bed only to be bothered by another Turkish border guard who comes down the train to make sure everyone's gotten their passports stamped. The ordeal doesn't end there, though: 20 minutes later, in Bulgaria soil, customs comes by again to give you a entry stamp. Thankfully the train was late (they typically are) I had plenty of time in the morning to doze off to recover the missed sleep before arriving in Sofia at around 1:30.
Buying my ticket for the return trip, I headed out to explore the town, in the direction a cursory glance at a online map had indicated where all the stuff was. A fellow traveler (in Southwest Turkey, actually) had alerted me several weeks before that Sofia followed a standard pattern of revitalization for post-Communist cities: while the area around train tracks is bleak, farther in town is nice. This pattern proved to be true (and if you think about it applies to American cities as well). While the train station was an impressive albeit cheerless building, and nowhere near as frightening as the one I'd encountered in Romania, the town changed as I walked towards the center. Though many of the new apartment buildings and older row houses had a battered look to them, there was a distinct feeling of grand boulevards, despite the not so pretty urban infrastructure. New modern buildings could also been seen, peaking around corners. After about a kilometer or so, I reached another large parallel street and saw down it what I am told by Wikipedia is the old headquarters of the Communist party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Party_House_Sofia_2.jpg). Murky past aside, it was a beautiful building and I decided to head towards it. This seemed to be the correct decision as as I found out that most of the sights laid in that direction. Immediately to the building's left was the Sheraton, a medieval church and a very nice shopping avenue. Getting a map from a Sheraton, I proceeded to go a self-tour of some the sights. I decided to set as my destination points churches, given my limited time and their lack of admission charges (ignoring donations). Highlights included the Church of St. George, a 4th Century Church which includes the runs of the ancient Roman city around it, and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a magnificent neo-Byzantine Cathedral, painted from floor to ceiling with frescoes (some of which, painted towards the more recent side, happen to be a bit tacky). The Cathedral also housed a museum of religious icons, which I very much liked. The area where I wandered too was quite nice, housing what I took to be some of the important buildings of the Bulgarian government, along with some other museums. It also seemed to be very much revived--I got a cup of coffee at a distinctly hip looking cafe--and rather affluent. Near the open space by the Cathedral, there was also an open-air market selling standard souvenir fare and in addition six or seven vendors selling icons, which appeared to be some of the more popular items for tourists to buy. Ranging in size from small to enormous, they were hand painted in Bulgaria, and were made mostly as copies, the vendors said, of more famous icons. They were truly exquisite and I decided to get several to bring back to the US. The vendors were also pretty impressive--the two whom I dealt with spoke good English and were quite capable salesmen (magnifying glass in hand to show me the fine craftsmanship). They also affixed little certificates to the back of the icons, with some of the information on the original and the vendor's contact info, so I guess they weren't fly by night operations. Capitalism seems to have a future in this country.
As it started to get dark, I headed back to the train station, picking up a sandwich on the way there--with everything in Cyrillic, the only restaurants I trusted were ones where I could point to the food. I got to the train station a little early and sat around. The other Bogazici student, who had went her separate way earlier, emerged and we chatted about how our days went. We narrowly avoided missing our train because of the confusing platform numbering system and found it more crowded than the way there. I shared my cabin with Nao, a nice Japanese guy who was travelling around Europe, with Istanbul as his next stop. He was getting a Masters in the Netherlands and gotten his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University of all places, which he said he went to because they offered him as a foreign student cheaper tuition than any public school. He was well aware of the peculiar view of America he had seen in Utah, and was not a Mormon (apparently his friends at BYU had been other foreign students who had come for the same reason--cheap tuition--as him). Getting up for the border crossing was just as hellish as the night before (perhaps more so because of my lack of sleep the night before), but I got a new visa without a problem and was able to eventually return to sleep. We arrived back in Istanbul about 35 hours after we'd left. I gave Nao directions how to get to where the hostels were and returned home, very excited at the prospect of a shower.
All in all, it was quite the successful trip and I did enjoy what I saw of Bulgaria. I think I've had enough of trains though in post-Communist countries for a while (earlier this summer I traveled from Budapest to Istanbul with my parents). I'll try to post pictures of Bulgaria and also my trip to the Southeast soon.
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