Niš to Sofia - Day 16 - Friday 12th September 2025 - Balkan-Georgia Trip - Day 16/34 - City 13/21 - country 8/11
- eusts6
- Nov 3, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 10, 2025
I woke up at 07:30 and started packing, and I threw out another pair of jeans in the process. Breakfast had been pre-arranged for 09:00. It was a simple but gorgeous polenta with white cheese. The coffee was the worst possible instant coffee I ever had, and the orange juice was that fake "Cedevita." But I still love the hotel despite the fake coffee and orange juice.
There was a mistake with the taxi; I had asked for a taxi for later in the day, but one turned up in two minutes. I thought quickly and decided to go to Ćele Kula, a place I visited before. During the Ottoman occupation, the Turks committed a genocide, making a tower out of human heads as a lesson to others. This story has been conveniently forgotten.
At this stage, I still needed a decent coffee, so I walked back towards the city center to the Irish Pub "Crazy Horse," close to where Stanislav and I stayed back in 2019 and also where we ate and drank. I remember an amazing breakfast there.
After coffee, I started a walk, still having lots of time, and very quickly found a wonderful music shop. I bought one CD from Crvena Jabuka and the music from "Black Cat White Cat."
I moved on to the museum, which was very close. They had a small but interesting collection dating from Celtic times to Roman and then Ottoman occupation.
As I had seen the nice wine bar the previous day, I decided to drop in and ask for a good Serbian wine. I ordered in Serbian, but this seemed to cause some commotion, and the young waitress asked her manager, who in turn asked the owner, who dutifully jumped up to give me advice. In the end, I had a nice chardonnay from the region, better than most chardonnays.
It was time to think about food, so off I went weighing up all my options, the lack of vegetarian options being a problem. In the end, I found a nice lady selling freshly made chips/fries. I ate them walking back to the accommodation, already feeling nostalgia as I was about to leave Serbia.
I sat in the garden in the accommodation sipping a cold rakija from quince. The glass was empty, and I had to make the move towards the station. They called a taxi for me, and we had a nice chat. It dropped me at the bus station, where, of course, you still have to pay for the use of the station even though you have a ticket!
The bus made its way to the Bulgarian border, and I savored every single moment, every little village, every family house with bright red tomatoes growing in the garden.
At the border control I noticed a guy flashing an Irish passport and immediately we started chatting before being hearded back on the bus for the Bulgarian side of the border. So I had just made friends with John and Alan, from Wexford now living in Dublin.
When we passed the border, it seemed everything was so much drier, so much more barren than the Serbian side. As we approached Sofia, it got darker and darker. Finally, in the dark of night, we arrived in Sofia, and it seemed to have an austere and threatening appearance, and everyone seemed to be having a bad day. We changed our money into Bulgarian Lev and arranged to meet somewhere for drinks, but the "somewhere" was more difficult than we imagined.
As we walked towards our respective hotels, I looked back at the bus and railway stations, which did actually scream of communist brutality. My hotel just added to the surrealistic feeling; my hotel "Favorit" was decorated with bright neon lights, and the whole scene felt like a bad B movie.
I quickly showered and changed, and as I walked, I found a lovely traditional Bulgarian restaurant. It was nicely decorated, and the staff all wore traditional clothing. I didn't care if it was touristy; I liked it. The waiter asked me if I needed help, so I mentioned that I was a vegetarian, and he recommended the mushroom risotto and a white wine. I was hoping for a menu, but they were efficient.
A very nice touch was the fact that they were playing traditional music. I was starting to feel as if I was indeed getting closer to Turkey.
I messaged John and Alan as I had found a bar, the only bar that was close. When I arrived, he didn't seem too pleased to have me and asked if I was alone, and seemed to be happy when I mentioned I was meeting friends. When he found out I was Irish, he started repeating "Conor McGregor" over and over. The only drink available was Heineken. My night in Sofia was just getting stranger. A large group of guys was getting louder and louder, punctuated by male high-pitched, hyena-like laughter.
The laughter faded and was replaced by the noise of shattering glass. A crowd gathered around two men, leading to a tense standoff, after which the men fled. I believe they were Gypsies. The bartender came back and said, "We don't like black people, so we kicked them out." I wasn't sure how to respond to that.
I was already halfway through my pint when Alan and John showed up. From the look on my face, they could tell it wasn't a great place, but they sat down, and we ordered more pints. Once again, "CONOR McGREGOR!!" erupted from outside. After a few pints, we were asked to leave the premises, and we did so without protest. I asked the guys to stay with me while I bought cans from a late-night shop. Outside, people who were stoned, high, drunk, and hallucinating were moaning like zombies, leaning against walls or lampposts, some urinating, others drinking hard liquor.
They brought me back to the hotel where the bright neon lights "Favorit" were waiting for me. Again, this still felt like a bad movie. I had two cans of beer and went to bed.
In a word #Bmovie
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