Sofia City Center

Flying into Sofia reminded me of many Balkan capitals. Socialist flats lining the outskirts of the airport like tombstones. High mountains in every direction. Old Russian logistic and firefighting vehicles lining the runway next to rundown warehouses.

This would be my first adventure to a country that exclusively uses the cyrillic alphabet. Luckily my frat days at uni taught me the Greek alphabet, which in turn helped me learn Serbian cyrillic, which in turn didn't make me feel like I had arrived in China when i landed in Sofia. It's amazing what a funny alphabet can do to your perspective of a place. Just the familiar letters made me feel at ease. Then the customs official spoke to me in Serbian. I was so dumbfounded that i had to ask him was he speaking to me in Serbian or in Bulgarian. The resemblance is striking. He informed me, however, that he was definitely speaking to me in Serbian. Fair enough.

Two young comrades were waiting for me after I effortlessly passed through border control and customs. Everyone was pleasant and unbalkanlylike not annoyed that i dare come to their country. Maybe its my trauma from the former Yugoslavia and the horrible entrances and exits to Romania that had me prepared from the worst. But I must say that the entire 20 minute Sofia Airport experience was a perfect one.

The two comrades quickly took me to a taxi. Now it gets Balkan. I jump in the back and have to slide down behind the driver. He has his seat in extra-cool taxi driver position, which means i have about NO room for either leg to fit in front of me. So I sprawl one leg over the other towards the comrade sitting next me. Even though after a few minutes i started to loose the sensation in one of my legs....i began to thoroughly enjoy the experience. Turbo Folk music beamed from the radio as we cruised down towards Sofia City Center (SCC).

I was pleasantly surprised in Sofia City Center about pretty much everything.
Run-down socialist buildings toking massive Coca-Cola and Oriflame adverts. Ridiculously expensive Mercedes stopped at the light next to a 1970 something Ficho. But as we neared SCC the architecture transformed, parks appeared, well kept cobble stone roads ran in every direction, beautiful Bulgarian women sported Europes best fashions in laid back and swanky cafe's. It felt like home. I was happy.

Being that I cannot disclose my reasons for being in Sofia (other than that is was, of course, for revolutionary purposes) I shall skip the details of my meetings. I checked into my four star hotel (for disguise purposes only of course - no legitimate revolutionary would stay in a multi-national hotel would they?). The location, the room, everything about the place was perfect, except one thing. There was no electricity. It wasn't a hotel problem, but just my room. Of course, I immediately expected it was the damn jankees who, once again, were following me and decided to eliminate any chances of easy communication with my other comrades. I went down to reception and the cute receptionist, shoes off and all, couldn't really be bothered with my complaint. She was obviously watching a very important soap opera and i was very obviously disturbing her. She did send the security guard to my room though. You can imagine how much that helped.

"Good evening sir'
'Oh, good evening comrade. I don't seem to have any electricity. Maybe its a circuit breaker or something?'
'Ah, I don't speak English'
Then i thought 'so why did you start speaking it to me in the first place?'

I then started to converse with him in Serbian, and we got to a point where he understood the problem. He confessed he was just a security guard and couldn't do anything until morning. I inquired about checking the fuse box, but he adamantly refused, shrugged his shoulders, and left me in a pitch black four star room. So I decided to be naughty and flip all the switches in the fuse box. The last one, as always, did the trick. And then there was light.

After a little horribly dubbed television i cut out my new found lights. End of day one in Sofia City Center. More tomorrow.