Sofia

So, at 3 in the afternoon yesterday, I decided to take advantage of 3 days off and take a trip. I packed my backpack (realising later that I had forgotten essentials like toothbrush and underwear) and headed to Kadikoy. I found a bus to Sofia Bulgaria that was leaving at 8:30 p.m. When I called, they said there was no shuttle from Kadikoy to the main bus station, but when I turned up for my ticket, I asked again and they obliged. I went to Kadikoy to buy said forgotten items and got back to the bus station at 4:30, in time to get a little service bus that took me to some way out place, where I was put on a bus that had come from Ankara, and about an hour later, I was in Esenler, with 2 hours to spare.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a pretty spontaneous person. However, this time it was a new level of spontaneity. When I reached the border at around 11 p.m., I went to the currency exchange place. It was at that point that I realised that I didn't even know what currency they used in Bulgaria, and since everything was written in cyrrillic script, the signs were no help either. Anyway, I changed 50 Euros and got 96 Bulgarian Whatevers and got my passport stamped and got back on the bus. I also realised at about that point that I had no idea when the bus would arrive in Sofia. I knew that there were a number of stops in Bulgarian cities, and Sofia was the last one, being on the far side of the country, but that's about it. In fact all I really knew about Bulgaria was that Sofia is the capital and the word "Restaurant" looks like "PECTOPAHT" - this last piece of information I gleaned from the big signs above the places with chairs and tables that served food by the side of the road. For the next few hours, between naps, I looked at street signs and tried to become literate. By the time I reached Sofia at quarter to 6 in the morning, I was semi-literate. Started to figure out vowels and consonants, and which sound the same as English and which are different, and which ones are just strange to me... e.g the "L" sound is made by something that looks like the Greek Pi but with a backwards hook on the left leg. The regular Pi is a P, X sounds like the english letter H, the D sound is made by a weird-looking boxy letter with squggles at the bottom. The backwards N, similar to the one in Hebrew that is the generic vowel with the same range as the English phoneme schwa, makes the I sound. S,T,A and many others are the same.... Anyway the substitution game is kinda like doing a cryptogram puzzle. The trick is remembering the ones you're not sure of and checking them in words you can figure out.
So I arrived at the Sofia bus station at quarter to 6. I had a cup of coffee and a sandwich while working up the nerve to figure out where to go and what to do.I finally went downstairs  and asked directions on how to walk to the city centre. According to the woman it was a 10 minute walk. I know I walk slowly but... it was more like 40 minutes. The walk did me good though, after all those hours cooped up in the bus seat. So I got to the centre of Sofia and started looking for an internet cafe. I think it would probably be a good idea to take a look online and see what there is to do here.
There's something about walking through a city in the wee hours of the morning, just before sunrise. It's like seeing a beautiful woman in the morning before she puts on her makeup. I kind of got an idea of the potential the city had, and what it might look like in the full light of day, but there was something fresh and raw about it as well. Pretty cool.
So I found this place. After walking for about an hour and asking at a bunch of different places (with no helpful answers) I saw this sign, and was able to read the word "internet" despite the unfamiliar characters in it. It helps that the place is called [SITE] as well. Then I followed the signs down a narrow alley past a tattoo and piercing place, into an old building, up to the first floor and in a big steel door. What I found was a sweet old woman and her teenage son in this place with funky music, wooden floorboards, and multicoloured walls. It's obviously a 3-bedroom apartment that has been converted into a nice, airy internet cafe with flat screen monitors, cameras and the works. Very nice.
One of the reasons I wanted to live in Europe was that there is access to so many places. There are a lot of different cities and countries within a few hours' bus ride. So here I am, in Sofia, waiting for the world to wake up and join me here :)