I find driving in Sofia an absolute nightmare. Inching my way along Bulgaria Boulevard every morning is enough to give me kittens! And imagine doing that with three noisy little lovable monsters in the back seat. My nerves are often just under the surface and if little sparks don’t fly off in muffled expletives during the journey’s duration, then it has been a very successful drive indeed.
But I kind of knew that something was up with my 13-year-old Peugeot when I switched off the ignition one day and the engine kept right on running. Time for the mechanic to be called, I heard myself say, or better still... time for a new car!
We have become so reliant on our cars that when they break down we are stumped and often so irritably inconvenienced in having to find other means of completing our journeys. Even though the trams and mashroutkas (minibuses) around Sofia are well organised enough.
Things can be a little bit more complicated when you have three little kiddies relying on you to get them to their playgroup in the mornings. And your insistence that the “car doctor” (the mechanic to you and me) has still not fixed the poltergeist-infested family car just doesn’t cut it to a five-year-old eager to go play with his little buddies.
So what could I do? Especially as we are not one of those families who takes their kiddies to a playgroup or school that offers home-school pick-ups and drop-offs. Well, out came the speed-dial to my local trustworthy taxi service who, after a total of about 20 minutes (after I call them and then I wait for them to call me back to tell me when the taxi will come, which is usually within 10 minutes, and to tell me the taxi number, which I never ever remember), managed to spare me a taxi to take me and the three impatient angels to their playgroup!
Such trips are usually inexpensive. From Knyazhevo to Lozenets in morning traffic can set you back about eight leva, which is not too bad at all. But then I had to get back home for a few golden hours of peace and tranquility, while the little angels played the morning away, and then I had to go back later on to pick up the brood with a taxi again and before you know it I had spent about 30 leva on taxis in one day. And of course the “car doctor” took his good old time exorcising the family car and after three days of taxi calling and waiting and to-ing and fro-ing I was ready to be admitted!
Our taxi journeys to and from the playgroup were very interesting indeed. Picking a taxi driver is like sticking your hand in to a box of Nestle’s Quality Streets and hoping it’s not going to be the orange- or the coffee-centred chocolates! Some taxi drivers were very courteous, one asked me which way I preferred to travel and another even sympathetically shared how they also had three children. However, others looked rather inconvenienced that three kids were going to make noise in their taxi and even worse still that those little dirty feet, which couldn’t reach the car floor yet, were going to soil their seats. Even though I had little ones in the car I was absolutely surprised that a couple of taxi drivers didn’t even ask if it was ok with me for them to light up a cigarette! And others, interestingly, were absolutely miffed that our back roads in Knyazhevo had so many doupki. As if I had personally dug the road full of potholes just to get up their noses. Such encounters got me rather paranoid to such a point that even before the taxi set off I was already apologising to them for the state of the road.
Relying on Bulgarian taxis for those three days was not as stressful as I had initially feared. In spite of all the orange- and coffee-centred taxi drivers, I was grateful that my car had broken down in Bulgaria and not in London, where we previously lived, because Sofia taxis tend to be well priced, with a tariff of about 0.50-0.70 stotinki a km. So if you’re in a taxi and it’s two leva a km, then just know that you are being ripped off, even if it does say “OK” on it. (Oh ... that’s another story!)
Most taxi firms now have the policy of displaying the driver’s photo ID on the dashboard, which is an excellent idea for security. So do check the rates, which are usually displayed on the windows and on the dashboard, and also check the ID card before setting off on your journey, especially if the passengers along side you can’t even spell the word “taxi” yet.
Our playgroup drop-offs and pick-ups are back to normal again now, thanks to the expertise of the “car doctor”. Although the other day, as I inched my way along Bulgaria Boulevard’s morning traffic, I swear to God I heard a strange gurgling, chain saw-esque sound coming from under the bonnet!
