Finding the bike man: Sofia

September 15, 2012

I never did find out what this statue, or whatever it is, was all about. It was just, er, there

IT WAS TANIA'S first day behind reception. I'd never have guessed and that was because she had worked in a hotel in Maryland, in America. That hadn't given her an American accent in English but it had fired her to find a job there, although not in a hotel for which, with her master's degree, she is overqualified.

The point of this is that Tania reached beneath her desk and said 'This may be useful for you' and gave me a cyclist's guide to the city. I was delighted to find it showed three bike shops or, as the guide put it, bike-repair places. I needed just one to stock inner tubes, since I didn't feel relaxed after the misadventures of the day before.

I don't know about you but, the moment I have stopped cycling, I no longer want to ride a bike. I had this guide to biking in the city but I was far more eager to walk four kilometres, much of it in the rain, rather than ride. I reason there is logic in this because, for me, it's only by walking in a strange city that I can take side-turnings and look into alleyways I would never have noticed while dealing with traffic. So I walked with a happy heart, although with wet feet.

The bike shop was, indeed, a repair place. There aren't many cyclists in Sofia and not much trade for a proper shop, although the slightly stammering man with dark unkempt hair whom I found on a three-legged stool and peering at a grubby bike did have two new machines.

We debated which size of tube I wanted, he insisting that I must be riding 700 rims and my protesting that, no, they were 26s. To which he replied that I was foolish to ride anything but 700s, or 28s as

He needs crutches to walk... but he can sit in the lotus position

he called them, on a trekking bike. It seemed a fruitless debate and the head-scratching about tube width ended when it turned out he had just one width with Presta valves anyway.

'I'm sure they'll be too narrow,' he said gloomily as he handed over tubes made by some eastern European company of which I had never heard. I said they'd be fine, and anyway I wasn't going to give up the chance. And when I got back to the hotel I found they were just 5mm narrower than my other spares.

On guard - and posing for tourists - outside the president's office

Well, mission accomplished, I wandered lonely as a cloud and came upon not a host of daffodils but the government quarter. It is in its public buildings that Sofia has greatest pride. The ministries are a joy, ochre-coloured,

Functional but elegant: Sofia's ministry area

beautifully proportioned for the boulevards that pass before them, neither plain nor over-decorated. And then, turning a corner, I stumbled on the president's office, its glass doors closed and guarded by a pair of soldiers in white, horizontally laced jackets, dark blue trousers, knee-length boots and fancy hats with a feather. The guns they carried may have been armed but the main role seemed to be to stand motionless and allow tourists to take pictures.

By contrast, nobody stood outside the chamber of deputies, the parliament building, which is so unremarkable that it was only because it was marked on my map that I noticed it at all.

The surprisingly small and little-guarded parliament building

But that is the limit of the attractions. My map insisted there were others and I can list some. There was the ethnographic museum, a monument to the Soviet army (Bulgarians, unlike other eastern Europeans, don't feel bitter about the Russians and even elected a communist government after the fall of the Wall), the university, a gaudy cathedral and a shyer mosque, and a handful of churches. There was more, of course, but nothing more exciting than that.

A guide book to Troy says it's good to know it's there but not to make a special journey. And I'd say about the same of Sofia.

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