More Romans and the Ottomans

First full day in Sofia, a city we both know nothing about. Although we did know it was the capital of Bulgaria, which Graham didn’t when we rang Elle for her first birthday. Great to see pizza and mac and cheese going down well. Hope you enjoyed your birthday!

First up today was a free walking tour to learn about where we are. It started a quick 15 minute walk from where we are staying. The tour leader Niki was great and went into the history of the city and who had lived here over the years. Sofia is said to be the second oldest city in Europe after Istanbul. One of the highlights was Serdika, the ancient Roman city that is being dug up all around the centre of the city. Serdika metro station in central Sofia is built around the ruins of this city and you can actually walk through the Roman ruins to get into the Metro station. Pretty unique. They also have a square kilometre around Serdika where you can see an Orthodox Cathedral, a Catholic Cathedral, a Mosque and a Synagogue. It is known as the Square of Tolerance and must be one of the only places in the world you can see this. Bulgaria was a communist

country after World War One, however they were not part of the Soviet Union. Whilst their own country, they were a staunch ally of Moscow as Russia helped them gain independence from the Ottoman empire in 1867. Pretty fascinating history.

We then needed to sort our bus tickets to Istanbul. When we made it to the bus station there were three people having what I think was a heated discussion about something in Bulgarian. No idea what was going on, but we ended up sorting our tickets with a lady with some stereotypical Eastern European customer service, she did not want to be there!

Back to the city for some lunch and to the Museum of History located in the old baths. Sofia is situated atop of more than 30 natural mineral springs. Bathing in the waters was seen to bring healing and was a great time to socialise. Sadly there are no baths left in Sofia,

nor was this part of the history of Sofia mentioned in the Museum, but there are still some taps around the city that dispense this warm water. Once it’s cooled you can actually drink it too which is pretty cool! The museum started off well describing the very ancient times in Sofia but then disappointingly skipped forward to more recent history. There was no mention of the Ottoman rule, which lasted 500 years, or the Communist rule. Apparently they don’t talk about that one at all.....

More Bulgarian meat and beer for dinner followed by a walk home through the park containing the palace of culture. A massive park and it was packed full of people enjoying the warm night. Sofia is a pretty cool city.