September 14, 2012
Sofia, the capital: Cirpan - Sofia
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THOSE GERMAN lads were sincere in their advice and they could well have been right about the road to Sofia being empty once it was shadowed by the autoroute. But I wasn't in a mood to experiment, after following highways and then losing myself on lesser roads. Especially when that direct road connected Bulgaria's two largest cities: Plovdiv and Sofia. I rode into Cirpan (Cheer-pan), where everyone was in best clothes for Friday market, and asked my way to the station.
How do you ask the way to a train station? Easy. It works wherever you are. You bend your arms and circle them together at your side, making choo-choo-choo noises and then a whistle sound. The fact that nobody under 60 has seen a steam engine working for real never makes a difference.
But it can cause amusement.
The first people I tried it on were English. And they were very amused. They had strong accents I'd place from somewhere in the Leeds region. And because they lived not only in Bulgaria but just outside Cirpan they not only knew where the station was - I'm glad I asked because it's hidden from the road - but how long the train took to reach the capital. Which was a leisurely four hours.
Sofia looked the kind of place where people dreamed of going to Tirana for a wild, wild time. It was charmless, with broad crowded highways on a grid, and not a sign of a hotel. Apart from the five-star place next to the station, which didn't count, all I could see were run-down chicken coops with "Hostel" in cracked paint on their signs. I enjoy travellers' hostels, where I am always the oldest one there, but these were some other sort of place, I was sure.
I walked and rode and began to despair. A helpful girl pointed me to a place with flunkies to park cars. It reminded me of the day a London cyclist arrived for a conference at one of the city's grandest hotels; the doorman took his bike and said "I'll just walk him up and down until he stops sweating, sir, and then I'll lead him to the stables.")
It was then that one of those curious coincidences arose which happen only on a bike. I stopped beside a guy peering at his back wheel.
"I've broken four spokes and I've still got to ride home," he said. Or that's what I understood. Something about me suggested I couldn't be Bulgarian and so, motivated to help and make amends for the guys at the bar yesterday, he said "Hablas espanol?"
I speak a little Zen Spanish. Which means there is no future, no past, only the present tense. And on that understanding he rode beside me, his back wheel clicking and clucking, explaining that he had spent a year working in Spain and that if I'd ride another kilometre out of town there was a hotel which wasn't exactly barrato but which would do the job.
And oh si, señor!. A four-star hotel for 25 euros a night including breakfast and a room for my bike. Sofia started to look a good deal better.
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