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.)

At Ruse, on the border, we have to change trains but first we have to hand over our passports again — this time to the Bulgarian police. The police officer waiting with us somehow manages to avoid sounding like she’s spent every day of her working life explaining to tourists that the train we’re due to catch is not going to leave until the border police are done. Even as she explains it at least 3 times that day to various worried-looking people toting backpacks and suitcases.

One of my many good intentions on this trip was that I was going to learn the Cyrillic alphabet before I got to Bulgaria (“oh I’ll have ages on trains to work on it, I’m sure there’s a flashcard app for it”). Yeah nah I didn’t study it at all on the road, until I get to Bulgaria and try to teach myself from the place names on train station signs, which are given in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Which, let’s be honest, is a more fun way to learn than a flashcard app.

The landscape in southern Romania is flat; big horizons and small villages. As we make our way into Bulgaria, hills start to rise up, first the rolling hills of farmland and later deep valleys in a karst landscape. April is a good time of year for the trip, because the train passes through the most scenic parts in late afternoon, the light golden on the rocks.

Unlike the train to Ruse, the Bulgarian train is divided into compartments and 7 of us (plus a large suitcase) cram into the 8-person space: 4 Bulgarians, a couple of British backpackers and me. Facing me is a tiny babushka, who, owing to her age, is granted 2 seats by the rest of the compartment. She sits across them sideways (when I say she is tiny, the full length of her legs fits on 2 seats), reading the newspaper and occasionally looking up and smiling at her fellow passengers. She and I don’t have any language in common but her (I assume) granddaughter sits next to me, translating the odd comment between us. Baba accepts my offer of blueberries, which I bought in the supermarket in Bucharest station as a train snack. The granddaughter declines, as she finds blueberries too rich.

The sun is setting as we leave the hills and roll into Sofia: a broad streak of orange that characterizes sunsets in that city the 3 days that I’m there. In perfect timing, the sun has just dropped below the horizon as we arrive into the station, only 10 minutes late after our all-day train journey.

PS: if you want an email every time I post (which I promise will not be excessively frequently), you can click the “subscribe” link on the bottom right of the screen