Sofia

12/28/2011

When we got to the train station in Sofia, we dropped off our bags in the luggage room and then bought our tickets to Istanbul for that evening. Then we headed out to explore the city. 

 When we first got to Bucharest we walked to the center. On our way, we saw a Dunkin' Donuts. Not all the donuts were the same as we have in the US, but they were done in a similar style. It was basically the same as one in the US except that the menu was in Russian. Bulgaria has it's own language, Bulgarian, but it is written in Cyrillic and a lot of public things seem to be in Russian. I had been in Romania, so in Bulgaria I could use Russian to communicate again. I didn't really need to though since most people seemed to speak at least some English, a big change from Moldova.

 After Dunkin Donuts, we found a really old church. I think it was built in the fourth century. Apparently it is one of the few that is still in decent shape. This is a picture of an entrance to the church. We couldn't go in that way though. There was a basement that was open to the public. Since we didn't have anywhere in particular we were planning to go, we continued exploring the city.

 While exploring, we found a park. In the park was a music area and statues. We also ran into some Mormon missionaries in front of the theater pictured below.

 This is a picture of Ivan Vazov Theater. None of us were sure of what they were building, though I thought maybe they were building an ice skating rink.  Either way, the theater was very interesting from the outside. We didn't go inside it though.

 Shortly after we left the park, we ran into two other Peace Corps volunteers that had been spending time in Bulgaria. We went to a tea shop and had some tea and some snacks. The restaurant had a used book store inside of it in addition to some interesting teas. The server spoke English, so I didn't need to order in Russian. When we left, we saw another church.

 This is a picture of Alexander Church. It looks like a lot of other orthodox churches I saw in Romania and Bulgaria, but bigger.

When I got closer to the church I took another picture. It is really an impressive building. We went inside it quickly and then tried to find food. Unfortunately, we didn't find the Bulgarian place that our friends recommended to us. Instead, we made our way back to the train station, stopping for food at a grocery store. We had a little while at the train station before we were able to board our train to Istanbul.