I'm going to try to make this post brief. Our trip to Sofia was ridiculous! Our train left at 9:15 pm from platform 3. At 8:40 a train pulled into platform 3...a two-car train. I went to confirm that the train went to Sofia with the conductor and he said no, it was going to Skopje, Macedonia. Immediately after I walked away, another American woman (Alaskan) asked him the same question...apparently one of the two cars was going to Skopje and the other one was going to Sofia.
We had seat reservations, but there were no seat numbers. Apparently they sell reservations but then let people sit anywhere on a first-come-first-served basis. Luckily we got two seats because there were a number of people who spent the entire 9 hour train ride standing up in the hallway. We were sitting by the window and my folding table didn't fold...up or down. If you tried to put it all the way up, it just fell down. If you tried to fold it flat against the wall, it wouldn't work. It was perpetually stuck at a 45 degree angle...awesome. We had a nice thing going with four people in our car. However, then a very big Serbian man came in. He didn't cause too much of a problem.. Our sixth person wound up being a tiny blonde French woman who had, not one, but two giant suitcases and a huge bag and a giant purse. To make matters even worse, she snored like a banshee! The wheels screeched constantly and it got really cold in the cabin in the middle of the night. Kati and I, sitting across from each other, just pushed our chairs together to make a cot-like bed. It wasn't very comfortable. Somehow I slept alright but Kati couldn't sleep at all.
We had an interesting experience at the border. I was awoken by Bulgarian police several times as they pulled off paneling on the train, checked in vents, and everywhere...except inside our bags. We learned after we got off the train (From the Alaskan couple) that they were searching for cigarettes. Why they looked all over the train but not in people's luggage is beyond me. We finally got into Sofia around 8:30 in the morning (After crossing a time-zone, so now we're 7 hours ahead). It was a rough night, but we made it through.
We had seat reservations, but there were no seat numbers. Apparently they sell reservations but then let people sit anywhere on a first-come-first-served basis. Luckily we got two seats because there were a number of people who spent the entire 9 hour train ride standing up in the hallway. We were sitting by the window and my folding table didn't fold...up or down. If you tried to put it all the way up, it just fell down. If you tried to fold it flat against the wall, it wouldn't work. It was perpetually stuck at a 45 degree angle...awesome. We had a nice thing going with four people in our car. However, then a very big Serbian man came in. He didn't cause too much of a problem.. Our sixth person wound up being a tiny blonde French woman who had, not one, but two giant suitcases and a huge bag and a giant purse. To make matters even worse, she snored like a banshee! The wheels screeched constantly and it got really cold in the cabin in the middle of the night. Kati and I, sitting across from each other, just pushed our chairs together to make a cot-like bed. It wasn't very comfortable. Somehow I slept alright but Kati couldn't sleep at all.
We had an interesting experience at the border. I was awoken by Bulgarian police several times as they pulled off paneling on the train, checked in vents, and everywhere...except inside our bags. We learned after we got off the train (From the Alaskan couple) that they were searching for cigarettes. Why they looked all over the train but not in people's luggage is beyond me. We finally got into Sofia around 8:30 in the morning (After crossing a time-zone, so now we're 7 hours ahead). It was a rough night, but we made it through.
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