Bus Station South,” I told the driver of the taxi that I hailed at the Ivan Vazov end of Vitosha Boulevard.
As he speared the car into the Friday afternoon traffic, he glanced up to the rear-view mirror to address me: “You’re doing the right thing, going to Borovets. It’ll be nice and cold up in the mountains”.
“Indeed,” I replied, although I did not really agree with him. I am from Africa and prefer to take my weather searingly hot. After days of enjoying going to work in short sleeves, I had taken the precaution of putting a casual polyester “polarfleece” jacket into my weekend bag, knowing that it gets cold at night in the mountains, even in July.
I noted with interest his word-association with my destination. Bus Station South (Avtogara Yug), near Interpred, is the considerably dowdier cousin of Sofia’s central bus station. It is the departure point for destinations such as Velingrad and Samokov, among others. Unlike its renovated counterpart, Bus Station Yug, as I prefer to refer to it, does not have a website or even a mention on the otherwise really useful website of the main bus station. Finding its telephone number (872 2345) can be a mission in itself. A further tip: try to make sure that you have no need of a toilet when you get there. My only previous encounter with Bus Station Yug had been a trip to Velingrad, and the descent down the stinking stairs into the toilet facilities had involved deep disgust. Hence my penchant for referring to the place as Yug(h).
But first I had to get to Bus Station Yug. Even the skills of the taxi driver could not get us there through Sofia’s coagulated traffic any faster than 50 minutes. I arrived precisely at 6.30pm, the scheduled departure time of the bus. The taxi trip, with a reputable company using a properly functioning meter, cost six leva. Given my previous experience of the trip to Velingrad, I knew where to find the place to buy tickets - or thought that I did. Dashing up to the counter, I was told by the rheumy-eyed ageing Valkyrie, in a snappy voice, “You buy the ticket on the bus”.
Foregoing trying to put my luggage (said weekend bag and a backpack concealing a wedding anniversary gift) into the bus’s baggage compartment, I maneouvred up the steps to the driver. “Four leva,” he said, selling me the ticket and tearing an ear off it in a practiced move, playing point of sale and conductor all in one. This was the price of a ticket to Samokov, even though as the taxi driver correctly had guessed, my destination was Borovets. The bus does not go on there, ending its journey instead in the mountain town best-known, at least to me, for its splendid potatoes and for having been the home town of a notorious Bulgarian gangster, predictably nicknamed Samokovetsa, whose life a few years ago came to a premature if predictable end in a hail of bullets on an Amsterdam street.
Earlier, when I had been told that buses leave for Samokov every half an hour, with the last running at 7.30pm, I had wondered whether there was sufficient customer support to justify the schedule. A glance down the aisle answered my question. I had, in fact, bought the last ticket. Lumbering to the vacant seat near the back, picking my way long-legged over one or two enormous cheap bags blocking the walkway, I gave thanks for my good fortune in getting the last available place, and reminded myself that it is unreasonable to expect too much for four leva. To state the obvious, but that is after all the stock-in-trade of journalists, the fare was two leva less than it had cost to cross Sofia by taxi. I need only sit back, open my book, and await arrival in Samokov, where my wife would be waiting to take me on to our hotel in Borovets. Normally, I get around by car or taxi, have very rarely used public transport in Sofia, and for long distances, prefer the convenience of a BDZ first-class railway ticket in a sleeping car, partly because I love train travel and, to a great extent, because it means exemption from the nerve-wracking lemming-like behaviour on Bulgaria’s roads. In other words, like many foreigners resident in Bulgaria, while I editorialise about the plight of Bulgaria’s less-well-off, I have scant direct experience of it.
The foot space could only just accommodate my weekend bag and my feet. The backpack ended up on my lap. Pulling back the grey-soiled curtain shut out some of the glare, and I donned my sunglasses, realising that the difficulty of even getting my book out of my bag, and the need to wear sunglasses instead of spectacles would mean that there would no Accidental Traveller-style refuge in reading. Never mind, for some time, I had the succession of brainless conversations of the young man next to me to listen to as he bawled into his mobile phone. First came a series of testosterone-spattered conversations with male friends, then an obsequious conversation with his boss, judging by his frequent use of Gospodin (in this context, “sir”) and his pleadings about finishing what he should have done by now, on Monday. The young man and I had a sharp-elbow contest for the centre armrest, which I won, although it was a close-run thing.
But I had a new distraction. Although I had bought the last seat, the driver kept on selling tickets. Passengers cluttered the aisles. Not only is this illegal, it shows that no one has learnt anything from Bulgaria’s several bus accidents, and the vows of strict enforcement of bus regulations that followed tragedies like those at the river Lim and at Byala bridge.
The only saving grace was that speed was not a problem. Leaving Sofia city limits took more than 40 minutes amid the Friday exodus traffic. When we had been travelling for more than an hour, an SMS came from my wife inquiring as to our whereabouts. I replied with the name of the village we were passing through. “V slow bus,” came the reply.
While I know the road well, having travelled it many times to Borovets, Beli Iskar and Goverdartsi, I got to know new detours, as the bus ventured into side-roads to drop off and pick up passengers in villages I had hitherto not known existed.
I regretted my lack of my dictaphone-cassette tape-headphones combination, because all along the way we were serenaded by chalga, Bulgaria’s pop-folk genre that is a cousin to a variety of Turkish pop-folk and Serbian turbo-folk. Every line of every song ended with that peculiar descending ululation which is its trademark.
Samokov, at last, sometime just after 8pm. I was delighted, as I waited outside the town’s own humble avtogara to see my wife finding her way to the bus station; equally eager was my anticipation of our hotel room’s bathroom, given that the toilets at the Samokov avtogara close for the day at 7.30pm and besides, after this journey, I needed a shower.
This tale may seem one of prolonged complaint, but I recount it because it fleshes out those brief sentences in brand-name guidebooks that tell you about buses to towns.
Arrival in Borovets was the point of it all, and after that, the weekend looked up. In summer as in winter, Borovets offers a good choice of restaurants, though for its friendly service, good food and prices, we twice went to the Serbska Skara, across the square from the Hotel Rila. While the weather was reasonably warm by day, it was mountain-crisp and cool at night, and fortunately, with one exception, none of the restaurants blasts out music in the way that tends to happen in the snow season. Nor did we miss the chance to take a gondola ride up to Yastrebets, the sedate half-hour journey ending with the reward of the magnificent panorama of the Rila mountains and the chance to enjoy a bowl of bean soup (I have long since wanted to invent a fictitious restaurant reviewer called Bob Chorba) and rakiya.
It was better to arrive than to travel.
