Bulgaria
Me and my friend Andreas had just been to the party paradise Ayia Napa in Cyprus when we arrived to the airport of the capital of Bulgaria called Sofia. It wasn’t easy to understand how to get into the city center because people didn’t know English and the information wasn’t very clear. We got on a bus and hoped for the best and immediately I understood that Sofia wasn’t trashy chic like Bucharest in Romania for example, it was just trashy. When most people left the bus we did too and we arrived at a bridge that was being protected by eagle statues.
And we walked and walked, and walked some more, and we quickly understood that Sofia is a huge city of nothing to see and nothing to do. It’s just gigantic areas that are empty, not even people seem to live there, they are just busy driving around in their cars.
We went down to The Museum Of Totalitarian Art which is a communist museum with gigantic sculptures of Lenin, bottle openers with Stalin as the motif in the museum shop and so on. How ironic when communism is demonstrated by capitalism.
I got so angry by this (just kidding) that we went to find a place called Anger Room which is a room where you pay to go in and smash a room full of old TVs and computers and stuff to get all of your anger to leave the body. The only thing I got angry about was that we couldn’t find the place on any of the locations that were shown on the internet. Maybe they relocate often to make people so angry that they need to have a go again. We went into the place where it should have been and asked them if this was the right address. The man in the shop said “yes, but what are you looking for?” It felt kind of weird to explain to him that we were looking for a room to smash stuff in and he seem a bit confused and he went and got a co-worker to talk with us. She told us that the Anger Room hade moved and that she didn’t know where they had relocated. I asked her as a joke if it was okay if I paid her to smash her place instead and she just laughed and said “No! No! No!”.
Since I wasn’t angry anyway we went back to the hotel instead to go to the spa. It was the first spa that I ever went to that played Guns ‘N’ Roses, a rock ‘n’ roll spa! It wasn’t very calming but it was a breath of fresh air since we had only heard house music in Ayia Napa for the last couple of days.
I thought we would have a quiet night once again but Andreas had other plans, and it ended up with us drinking beer to VH1 - The 80’s before we went to the karaoke bar nearby to finish the trip off by singing a duet of “(You’re The) Devil In Disguise” by Elvis Presley. Or “(You’re The) Fish In Disguise” as we called it, it was an inside joke that started at the karaoke bar Tommy’s at Ayia Napa but I will tell you more about that next week. The karaoke bar in Sofia was empty except for a sign on one of the tables which said reserved. We sat down and the two staff members didn’t care about us at all and just kept playing chess on their mobile phones. We decided to leave and go to the parks instead since it seem like people were keen on partying in parks, rather than in bars. The park was full of people but they seem to drink more out of depression than to have fun and it was really hard to find someone who wanted to invite us in their crowd. We gave it a last chance with the people who sat in such a dark place of the park that you almost couldn't see them. They invited us to sit down and they seem funny, at last we found some fun persons! Or at least we thought so for 5 minutes, then they got boring too and just talked about depressing stuff and we went back to the karaoke place to sing the song no matter what. The people who had reserved the table had now arrived, but no more people than that. They sang Rammstein and I thought at least we can’t be worse than that and we went up and sang. The staff couldn’t care less and the guy who handled the karaoke just kept on playing chess while we sang out of tune for a couple of minutes about a fish in disguise.
* Best things about Bulgaria - the view from Sense Roof Top Bar where Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is a good center point, and Sputnik is a nice bar too
* Most mediocre thing about Bulgaria - there’s nothing much to hate or love, and that’s what’s so boring
* Worst things about Bulgaria - it’s such a bore
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Denmark
3. Belgium
4. Estonia
5. Finland
6. Bulgaria
7. Bosnia And Herzegovina
8. Albania
9.
10.
We decided to walk to the hotel instead of taking the metro the last way but we couldn’t help ourselves, since we had been drinking almost every day in Ayia Napa we thought it would be a good start to go to a roof top bar and take a drink. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was the center point of the magnificent view and I started to change my opinion about Sofia again, maybe I should give it a second chance, and not judge it from the first opinion from the bus trip.
After checking in at the hotel we went out to find another bar called Sputnik but before that we got an Italian restaurant to open up the kitchen for us again since they had just closed. When someone who looks like Mario from the Nintendo games serves you pizza it can’t go wrong. Sputnik was a great bar mixing retro and trashy stuff with hip microbrewery beers and I wish I wasn’t so destroyed after Ayia Napa because I was more interested in going back to the hotel to sleep than to party. We called it a night and we would give the next day our full attention instead, to see most of Sofia.
The next day we walked to some tourist attractions:
Church Of St. George - review: boring
1300th Anniversary Monument - review: ugly
Culture Beat Club - review: beautiful view but the toilet had been overflooded so we weren't allowed in, they said we could sit outside if we wanted to but it was hard without pads on the furniture
Borisova Gradina - review: a huge park of nothing
And we walked and walked, and walked some more, and we quickly understood that Sofia is a huge city of nothing to see and nothing to do. It’s just gigantic areas that are empty, not even people seem to live there, they are just busy driving around in their cars.
We went down to The Museum Of Totalitarian Art which is a communist museum with gigantic sculptures of Lenin, bottle openers with Stalin as the motif in the museum shop and so on. How ironic when communism is demonstrated by capitalism.
I got so angry by this (just kidding) that we went to find a place called Anger Room which is a room where you pay to go in and smash a room full of old TVs and computers and stuff to get all of your anger to leave the body. The only thing I got angry about was that we couldn’t find the place on any of the locations that were shown on the internet. Maybe they relocate often to make people so angry that they need to have a go again. We went into the place where it should have been and asked them if this was the right address. The man in the shop said “yes, but what are you looking for?” It felt kind of weird to explain to him that we were looking for a room to smash stuff in and he seem a bit confused and he went and got a co-worker to talk with us. She told us that the Anger Room hade moved and that she didn’t know where they had relocated. I asked her as a joke if it was okay if I paid her to smash her place instead and she just laughed and said “No! No! No!”.
Since I wasn’t angry anyway we went back to the hotel instead to go to the spa. It was the first spa that I ever went to that played Guns ‘N’ Roses, a rock ‘n’ roll spa! It wasn’t very calming but it was a breath of fresh air since we had only heard house music in Ayia Napa for the last couple of days.
I thought we would have a quiet night once again but Andreas had other plans, and it ended up with us drinking beer to VH1 - The 80’s before we went to the karaoke bar nearby to finish the trip off by singing a duet of “(You’re The) Devil In Disguise” by Elvis Presley. Or “(You’re The) Fish In Disguise” as we called it, it was an inside joke that started at the karaoke bar Tommy’s at Ayia Napa but I will tell you more about that next week. The karaoke bar in Sofia was empty except for a sign on one of the tables which said reserved. We sat down and the two staff members didn’t care about us at all and just kept playing chess on their mobile phones. We decided to leave and go to the parks instead since it seem like people were keen on partying in parks, rather than in bars. The park was full of people but they seem to drink more out of depression than to have fun and it was really hard to find someone who wanted to invite us in their crowd. We gave it a last chance with the people who sat in such a dark place of the park that you almost couldn't see them. They invited us to sit down and they seem funny, at last we found some fun persons! Or at least we thought so for 5 minutes, then they got boring too and just talked about depressing stuff and we went back to the karaoke place to sing the song no matter what. The people who had reserved the table had now arrived, but no more people than that. They sang Rammstein and I thought at least we can’t be worse than that and we went up and sang. The staff couldn’t care less and the guy who handled the karaoke just kept on playing chess while we sang out of tune for a couple of minutes about a fish in disguise.
* Best things about Bulgaria - the view from Sense Roof Top Bar where Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is a good center point, and Sputnik is a nice bar too
* Most mediocre thing about Bulgaria - there’s nothing much to hate or love, and that’s what’s so boring
* Worst things about Bulgaria - it’s such a bore
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Denmark
3. Belgium
4. Estonia
5. Finland
6. Bulgaria
7. Bosnia And Herzegovina
8. Albania
9.
10.
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