Sofia, Bulgaria Round Two
I have so many photos from Bulgaria that I decided to make a third, and final, post. I shot about 800 photos in the two weeks I was there. I realize that this is a relatively small number and as someone who used to crack over 150,000 frames a year, 800 in ten days is child's play. All that aside, I like to think I'm a touch more choosy when it comes to shots. Of course I'll be the first to admit that my skills are lacking a bit since I don't shoot every day anymore. Whatever, I still love it.
I think for me the most striking thing about Bulgaria, and really Sofia in particular, is the combination of two worlds. On the one had you have this old-world Eastern European, post-soviet microcosm and on the other hand you have a society that is trying to modernize and get out of the shit. It's happening slowly and when the two meet, which is often, like when hot and cold air meet -- you get a tornado, of conflict and confusion.
I'll begin with the Sofia metro. It is beautiful. As beautiful as a metro system can be I suppose. It goes to places people actually want to go, like the airport. It gets closer to the terminal than the Washington D.C. metro gets to Reagan airport. One station is like a grand boulevard underground with streetlights and benches where people can sit (boldfaced so maybe someone in Prague notices, there are maybe 5 benches in the entire Prague metro system). But then the metro train arrives from 1972 Moscow and you are left thinking, "what is going on here? They sprung for a whole metro but couldn't buy a stupid train?"
See, look at that station. It is an architectural and design masterpiece, probably and engineering one too but no one cares about engineers. Then look at the train. It looks pretty nice, you might be saying right now. I urge you to scroll on back to my post about Budapest. The train you are looking at here is the exact same type of train that runs on the blue line in Budapest. You'll not see this angle from the blue line in Budapest though because those stations are mine shafts compared to this exquisite underground gallery of a metro station. And if you don't believe me that this is a soviet metro train have a look here:
Now, my Russian is a bit rusty, if by "rusty" you'll accept non-existant, but down at the bottom it says "Made in USSR." That's a translation of course. To be fair, these metro cars are expertly restored. And when I say "restored" I mean it, they hardly modernized anything. What they did do was replace nearly everything with new parts.
Once again I will point you back to my Budapest post. Look at the inside of the metro car there. The one from the blue line is the exact same model as this one. Tell me which one you think looks better. Also, Sofia did buy some modern metro trains and they are very nice. On the flip side, I have since returned to Budapest and they have a whole new metro line with new trains too.
The fiercest tornados are the ones that occur when buildings are involved, aren't they all. There are places where you basically end up with the architectural equivalent of an F5, but we'll ease into that.
This scene isn't so bad, but none of the styles of these building match. Here it's quaint (I hate that word) and maybe even a touch romantic. At least they are close to the same colors.
Above is a little bit more extreme example of the lack of architectural continuity. None of these buildings is the same. To be honest, it looks horrible. No one even bothered to look at the buildings around what he was going to be building. Someone just said, "yup there is a building on the right, that's cool I'm still going to do my own thing." So, in essence, modern Sofia's look has been created by angsty teenagers.
Then you get situations like what you see above. This might actually be an engineering masterpiece. How this modern, glass, multi-story building was able to be constructed and connected with this complete piece-of-crap clapboard shack next door without it being knocked over is beyond me. It happened though and this is not the only example in the city. It's kind of fun to walk around and be amazed at how certain things were able to be built without destroying the neighboring structures.
I think much of this inconsistency comes from the vast history of the city. Like I said in the last post, it's possible to see nearly 7000 years of history stretched out in front of you at several places in the center. A good example is at the Cathedral of St. Joseph which is a relatively new building. It's not the biggest cathedral in the world, but it is very modern and cool.
I spent some time in the cathedral courtyard as I was a little tired and there was nobody there. I mean nobody, it was a quiet, shady respite for me for about 30 minutes. I decided to study the building a little bit and the broom and bucket were interesting to me, so I made some frames. I like all the lines.
Behind the cathedral are more ruins. I am not sure if they are ruins of the original church that was there. It's hard to tell. The original church was bombed by the allies during WWII, probably by accident because carpet bombing isn't the most accurate. Sofia was bombed a few times after the Bulgarians decided that maybe the Germans weren't really bad dudes and joined the Axis powers.
In the photo below you can see the ruins I'm talking about as well as a few buildings that don't really match and the back of the statue of St. Sofia, who the city is named after. She's on the right in the middle. It's a little difficult to get a good photo of her from the other side and I didn't want to work too hard to do it.
If you go to Sofia I highly recommend visiting the National Archaeology Museum. It is well worth the price of admission, which is something like €10. They also have a really cool bar out back and it's perfectly located in the center of the city. I could probably make even another post about the museum. I'll just say that they have lots of neat stuff and Thracian artifacts. I always thought the Thracians were just some mythical tribe some TV writers dug up, but they were a moderate civilization. This bronze bust of Apollo is there, it's from 2nd century Serdica, which was the capital of Thrace, it basically came from within one kilometer or where it sits today.
Another worthwhile place to visit is the Church of St. Sofia. I could also do a post on the tomb under the church with funeral vaults from the 4th century. Like these funeral vaults below. You can see the inside of the church through the window in the crypt ceiling.
For some reason I like to take photographs in graveyards. I don't know why they are fascinating to me, but they are. I felt that I needed to go see Sofia's cemetery. It is huge. The most striking thing about it to me though is that the entire place smelled of incense. I don't really understand why, but it did. The graves aren't very well maintained, which is what I was hoping for, but the place wasn't particularly scenic either.
As you can see the maintenance isn't what I'd call spectacular. I think families are mostly responsible for maintaining these places and as generations pass people stop caring about the graves of their ancestors. It's a shame for this to happen, but I understand it. Perpetual-care cemeteries are normal in the U.S. but I expect they are quite expensive. Europe also has a much longer history of people dying, so there are laws and provisions in many places for how you remove remains from your family plot to make space for new dead people. It's interesting. There are also ossuaries, which I don't think we have in the U.S.
Benches and such are really quite normal in cemeteries. I just liked the way this one was situated.
What I found interesting was the organization of cremated remains. The structures you see below mimic the thrown-together style of the city center in a way. There were other structures that were better constructed and organized almost exactly like communist blocks of flats, or apartment complexes to us Americans.
Then there is this thing where the family puts up what I can only assume is a paper headstone. I've seen this in Prague too, but it always looked like it was a temporary solution while a more suitable and permanent headstone was being created. I don't know for sure. Seeing this tree with paper headstones pinned to it was pretty fascinating to me. It definitely appeared to be for more than just temporary use.
As I was leaving the graveyard, I decided to make my way to the bathroom. It was a long trip to the cemetery and I didn't want to have to deal with any police if an urgent need to micturate struck me while walking back to the center. That is when I really realized I was in far Eastern Europe because I saw this:
Now, this isn't the first toilet photo I've posted in my blog. I was pretty awestruck when I saw this. The farther east I traveled in Bulgaria the more of these I started to see. I'll leave everything else about this device up to you to answer with your imagination. Even if you don't read Cyrillic at all, it's not hard to figure out where the bathrooms are though, thank God.
Sofia also has a few outdoor markets. They are generally busy. They even have a market solely for books, I didn't look to hard at it but I didn't see any books in English. I'm sure someone somewhere at the book market had a few classic English tomes though. I wandered through the biggest outdoor produce market. I honestly don't know it's name, but I know a few Sofians I can ask. If I find out, I'll make an update. While I was talking to some Sofians about my trip to this market they told me that the best scad in town are to be found at a stand in this market. If you're brave you can try scad, it's basically a small fish fried whole. You get a plate of 5 or 6 and chow down. I had them in Burgas, they are tasty.
Anyway, I digress from scad back to the market. I wandered through and shot everything from the hip. It shows, but the great light and subject matter made for some decent frames.
You could buy a lot of things at the market besides produce. I saw a guy selling used light bulbs. At least I assume they were used, they certainly didn't appear to be new. This guy had about a thousand different kinds of honey. I saw a few stores just for honey throughout Sofia.
The great thing about this market is that it was actually crowded. Now, I really don't like crowds and try to avoid them if I can, but this was different. I also stayed alert and kept my hands on my stuff to make sure I kept it all. I would do the same thing at a crowded market in Prague or Barcelona too.
And what outdoor produce market would be complete without the potato man? Certainly not an Irish one, that is for sure. The potato man was well lit too, and he was one of the last stands in the market.
From the potato man's stand it is a very short walk to the Lions Bridge. As you look at this photo of the bridge you can see a few things, one of them is the majestic, raging Vladaya River. It's the broad, romantic river that runs through the city. I'm kidding, it's four feet wide and I swear I saw poop floating in it. This bridge it totally overkill for this river, even in pretty good flood stage.
The Lions Bridge is named for the four bronze lion statues on it and was built by a Czech architect. I think there is some other cool history about it, but I'm not sure. But you can see the older-than-the-metro-train trams crossing the bridge in this photo.
Below is another photo of the super-old trams. Trust me, traveling by tram in Sofia isn't really for people who don't know where they are going. There are no announcements as to which stop you are approaching or what the next stop is. It's actually positively intimidating if you don't read Cyrillic. I had to look at the tram map at the stop I was at, then use a mapping app to get the name of the place I wanted to go and think of it like a picture, then find the picture on the schedule and count how many stops away I was. Then, once I got on the tram I had to count the stops carefully. If you know where you're going, you can just look out the window and you'll know when to get off.
Yes, Sofia has a few modern trams too, but they don't go anywhere a tourist would want to go. Also in the photo is another vegetable market. This market is a lot closer to the book market and there are a lot of rouge sellers who don't want to pay for a table all around it. Some of them looked to have really good stuff.
So that's it. I promise no more posts about Bulgaria for a while. I'll wrap up by saying it was a wonderful place to visit. I think it's highly under rated. Of course I didn't see any mobsters or crazy violence like I've heard about, but I did see gypsies and stray dogs, so I think it all worked out.
