9 days and 10 trains after leaving London, I made it to Istanbul, and immediately loved it. Mainly because if how much of it there is. Which is weird for me: I’d realized not long after moving to London that I naturally prefer cities of about a million inhabitants — big enough that there’s things going on; small enough that there’s a common culture because only one of those things happens at a time.
But somehow Istanbul sidles up to you and says, “you know how you like port cities built on hillsides? How about that, but… more? Say, hillside port city in every direction you look?” And I totally fell for it.
Did you know the Orient Express had the nickname “Spies’ Express“? Look I know the Orient Express doesn’t exist anymore but here’s my fellow travelers on the night train from Sofia to Istanbul, ranked by how definitely they were spies:
Clearly Sofia station is so empty because the locals want to get away from all the spies
The guy who stood in the corridor looking out the windows for ages: if he was a spy he wasn’t very subtle. Probably just wanted to stand for a bit. Or is that what he wanted us to think? Ultimately, he’s the least spy-like of the passengers.
The South American couple who asked me to swap compartments with one of them so they could travel together: hah, a likely excuse. No doubt there was some nefarious reason to have me further away from the toilets.
The conductor: had us all writing our names on a sheet of paper. Clearly a tactic to gain information; only worked because he was wearing a uniform.
The guy in my compartment who appeared to know my name even though I never told it to him: yeah, 100% spy.*
*if you’re wondering, it’s because he filled in the piece of paper with everyone’s names on it after me. There’s no gdpr on Turkish trains I guess.
I arrived in Sofia at nightfall, not sure what to expect. It was noticeably quieter than Bucharest, which I’d left 10 hours ago that morning, and the calm was nice — though in an unfamiliar city, quieter can also mean sketchier. A fact I was reminded of when I realized the way out of the station was down an escalator into an underpass with just one shop open, and a mini casino. Well, I only had to get a few blocks to my hostel, and then I could reassess in the morning.
I could have skipped the city altogether. You can roll right through Bulgaria on your way from Bucharest to Istanbul, but I’d decided to make a detour and spend some time in the capital, Sofia. There wasn’t any particular reason for this — I don’t know anyone from Bulgaria, I don’t know anyone who has been to Bulgaria, I hadn’t been prompted by a compelling travel article about the place… honestly my only connection is that I once went to a Bulgarian restaurant in Grenoble, France, and it was a nice time. (Hit the subscribe button for more great travel planning tips.)
Anyway, I can only conclude that you should get all your travel ideas by going to restaurants, because my initial misgivings were totally off-base. Sofia was the perfect balance between “real city” energy (unlike old-town Brasov) and laid-back (unlike Bucharest). It’s not exactly full of sights, apart from approximately 5 million billion churches. But it’s got quiet tree lined streets, fun cafes and local shops, it’s near mountains that you can see as you look down the street, there’s working public transport (that you can pay for using contactless, do you know where you can’t do that? Frigging Paris), the drivers obey road rules… Oh and it’s super cheap by European standards. Basically, if you want somewhere to chill out for a couple of days in your crazy cross-Europe train trip, Sofia is a solid option.
Did you know that Romania has an oil industry? Yeah me neither until I looked out the window and think, are those… oil wells? Turns out, the oil from Romania played an important role in WW1 and 2.
Perhaps more stereotypically, as the train goes through a level crossing the first vehicle in the queue, in front of all the cars, is a horse-drawn farm cart with hay in it.
Speaking of stereotypes, the train out of Bucharest has quite a few Brits on board. All sitting in the same part of the carriage. None of us talking to each other, even when interesting things happened like the Romanian border police collecting all our passports and getting off the train. (I later spotted some of the same people on the street in Sofia and we all politely pretended to not recognize each other. Honestly, what a nation.)
On this trip, I’ve been writing postcards as I go. Initially I thought I’d hang onto them all until I get to Australia and post from there, but then in Budapest I decided I’d give the local post office a go. And since then I’ve done a post office trip in every city I’ve stayed in. Here are my reviews.
(“Did the card actually get to its recipient” — arguably the main function of the postal system — is not a criterion, because it’s far too early to judge that. I’m still in Istanbul for goodness sake.)
Budapest
This was my first post office, and I approached with trepidation. Would there be some obscure queueing system that I would get yelled at for misunderstanding? Would I be waiting all morning? Would I be able to explain that I would like a stamp for this postcard to the UK?
Lol. There was one person ahead of me in the queue. The lady behind the counter both smiled at me(!) and spoke perfect English. I regretted having only 2 cards to send, given how successful the exercise was.
The 19.10 overnight train from Budapest to Bucharest, calling at Brasov, consists mostly of seated carriages, with just a couple of Romanian couchette and sleeper cars attached at the front. I loiter on the platform as long as possible, awkwardly eating my dinner from McDonald’s (don’t judge) while leaning against a wall — with a scheduled time of nearly 12 hours to Brasov, I want to enjoy non-train-life as long as possible. Most of the passengers are getting onto the seated carriages, some with heavy bags and suitcases, one guy with 6 tins of beer in a plastic bag and seemingly nothing else.
1. Everyone outside Romania who heard I was going to Brasov, in actualreal life Transylvania, cracked some kind of joke about visiting Dracula. Brilliantly, Brasov itself is well aware of being a tourist destination — as a well-preserved medieval town founded by Germans in a beautiful natural setting, thank you very much. Seriously, the place is tasteful. I think I saw more “let’s go party with vampires!!!!!” tat within 5 minutes of wandering around Bucharest old town than I did in Brasov.
…It’s totally doable, and feels adventurous in a gentle, fun way.
So the thing about a lot of “I got there by train” articlesin newspapers is that you find out in the small print that the author was comped the trip and they did not once have to deal with a train company website or railway station ticket machine, or they do railway stuff professionally, or they travelled in first class. So, for the rest of us, this is how it actually works.Don’t necessarily follow all steps, unless you want the full Zoe can’t-take-her-anywhere experience.
A week from now, I’ll be waking up in Paris. A week tomorrow, I should be rolling into Budapest on the sleeper train. Beyond that? I have an interrail pass and a flight to catch in Istanbul in mid-April… I am so excited.
Welp, it’s been nearly a year since I wrote anything here (oops) but if you’re interested, I have recently gotten myself an Instagram account like all the cool kids. If writing on wordpress is “blogging” and twitter is “micro-blogging”, then I guess what I’m doing on insta is “meso-blogging”*, in the sense of being a bit like my “postcard from” series — I quite enjoy the photo+a paragraph format. If that sounds fun to you, check it out here.
Where's Zoe now? 