Tour, Tour, Tour
Free tours were something I had become quite accustomed to. When I reached Sofia I had been on twenty-two walking tours in the three and a half months I’d spent in Europe. I was always excited when I reached a city and knew that there was a walking tour to be had. It gave me something to do on the first day. I could set my bearings and I could determine the layout of the city. I could plan what attractions I’d be visiting in the coming days.
Usually the tour was an overview of the history, culture and attractions of a place but occasionally a city had more than one free tour. In Bratislava I took part in a communist-themed tour of the city where we were taken to the less-glamorous parts of the city, hearing stories of communism and ending with the tour guide in tears reflecting on the current state of Slovakian politics. Or in Krakow, the Jewish tour discussed the history of the jews in Poland whilst pointing out filming locations from ‘Schindler’s List.’ In Sofia, my final stop in Europe (for now), I wanted to go out with a bang. In Sofia I went on three free tours in two days, bringing my European free tour total up to twenty-five. I will discuss these in reverse order.
City Tour
In the morning before I was to fly out of Sofia I finally joined the city walking tour. It was my third day in the country and yet I still knew very little about the history of Bulgaria nor its capital. In a group of around twenty-five people, our guide led us through the centre of Sofia visiting all the essential sites.
I found Sofia surprising. It was very cosmopolitan. It was very central European. As I made my way across the Balkans, the Ottoman influence had become more prominent the more I travelled east. However in Sofia this trend was broken. I felt closer to Vienna than to Istanbul. The architecture was ornate and emblematic of central Europe. There were large green spaces throughout the city centre filled with workers eating sandwiches at lunchtime and couples sipping bottles of wine at dusk. The main pedestrian street was bookended by competing pizza-by-the-slice places. There were patisseries and craft breweries and wine boutiques. There were vegan health food shops selling avocado smoothies and restaurants across a wide spectrum of international cuisines. Not to mention, of course, that the city’s clean and on-time metro system which, much like most businesses, accepts credit cards. This was a big change from the cash-heavy societies I found in much of eastern Europe.
Sofia also had the third largest synagogue in Europe, also the largest Sephardi synagogue in Europe. Set one-hundred metres west of the Banya Bashi Mosque and one-hundred metres north of the Cathedral of St Joseph, the Sofia Synagogue was the centre of Jewish life for the Bulgarian Jewish population present since their expulsion from Spain in the fifteenth century. The large central dome of the building poked out from the orange and yellow bricked exterior. Inside, the circular sanctuary was painted in pale green with sky blue and orange detailing with a chandelier in the centre, the largest in Bulgaria. It is probably the most colourful synagogue I have been in.
Whilst I was not seeking this originally, I realised that in the past six weeks I had visited the three largest synagogues in Europe (the other two in Budapest and Trieste). I had not intended to visit any of these cities initially but, such is the nature of my indecisive travel planning, I had now completed my surprise pilgrimage.
Just down the street from the synagogue was a building, now a museum, which formerly housed Sofia’s ‘Hammam’ - the Turkish baths. Whilst you can no longer bathe in the baths when I arrived in Sofia I noticed that across the road many people were filling up their water bottles in a series of water fountains. My tour guide later informed me that these waters were indeed the natural thermal waters which used to fill the baths. The water had a nice taste to it but what I noticed more was the natural heat of the water as it flowed from the natural spring.
In the afternoon of my first full day in Sofia I had booked a graffiti tour of the city. I was surprised to hear that there was much of a street art culture in Bulgaria but as the saying goes, build a tour for it and I will come. This one, though, I had to pre-register for. So earlier in the day I made a reservation for a six o’clock start. Fifteen minutes before six it started to drizzle a little. Ten minutes before six it was pouring. It was not tour weather. But I had registered and thought it would be rude to the guide and the other attendees if I didn’t attend.
When I got to the meeting spot my guide was there as well as a German nursing student. Her name was Maria and her favourite colour was green. How did I know so much about the other tour attendee? Well, whilst we waited a few extra minutes in the pouring rain for people to show up, the two of us were, in fact, the entire tour group.
The tour guide was very good, especially considering his tour was made up of two people. I learned about graffiti slang, the difference between graffiti and street art and observed some remarkable spray-painted creations.
When I was in Skopje I was told there was a free food tour in Sofia. When I heard this I shuddered in disbelief. A free food tour? A tour where you are not obliged to pay anything and they give you free food? I found that hard to believe. It’s one thing giving your own time with the hope of getting enough tips to make a reasonable hourly rate, but if you are including food then your overheads are increasing dramatically. But, sure enough, when I got to Bulgaria I found out that there was a free food tour. I booked the tour and went to the meeting place, expecting a regular walking tour that would have very small samples of food very occasionally.
There were five people on the tour - myself, an American couple in their sixties and a Belgian couple in their forties. We chatted as the tour guide made calls to the various restaurants we’d be attending, ensuring the right amount of food was prepared. As the couples talked about the differences between Wisconsin and Brussels, I realised something. I had met the Belgians before. Not in Bulgaria and not even in Europe.
In October I visited northern Thailand. On my first night in Chiang Rai I headed to the night markets and, after getting a beer, managed to grab a table. The tables were in short supply so once I got one I did not want to lose it. When I started getting hungry I turned to the couple sitting at the table next to me and asked if they’d hold my table for me whilst I grabbed a plate from one of the hawker stalls. After I got a bowl of ‘khao soi’ I retrurned to the table and talked briefly to the couple about where they were travelling and where I was travelling. I didn’t see them again.
And then they were on my tour in Sofia. I somehow recognised them straight away. I didn’t think I was good with faces but apparently I was. They confirmed that they were in Chiang Rai in late October but I think the wife was still confused. Throughout the tour I don’t think they believed that we’d met before. But I knew.
The tour itself was great. I expected more facts than food. I was wrong. We only ever stopped in two places that did not provide us with some type of foodstuff. The guide called these ‘culture stops.’ Other than that, we stopped at about six or seven restaurants and cafes. We stopped at a soup restaurant and had a cold yogurt soup that was like drinking tzatziki. We had a glass of Bulgarian white wine at a wine bar, a tomato pastry at a health food store, fried dough at a hole-in-the-wall pastry shop and an assortment of dips and appetisers at a traditional restaurant. I still don’t know how the tour company makes any money.
