Classic Oriënt Express 2009: Days 4, 5, 6 & 7

I recently found my old travel diary again and started reading it.  Seems that I made 2 very nice trips in the past, which I think may be very interesting for my blog.  Thus I decided to copy what I wrote about these train journeys through Europe on my blog.

These are the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh day of my Oriënt Express Journey.

Day 4:
This morning I arrived in Sofia with a delay of only one hour, which is rather punctual for the Serbian Railways.  Upon arrival at the station, I immediately bought my reservation for the night train to Istanbul in a few days.  When I got to my stepmom Aleksandra (Sasha), she was quite angry as due to a miscommunication she was very worried about my well-being.  She expected me to arrive yesterday. Since my phone was switched off, nobody was able to contact me.

I've already been many times to Sofia, so I'll use my time here to relax a bit.  Today in fact I haven't done anything big, except for a walk through the shopping streets and a visit to a brand new shopping mall.  After that I had a very nice bowl of salad at Ugo and I bought some fresh baklava for everybody "home" (that is home in Sofia), in the hope sweets would soothe the mood.

Day 5:
Another day of shopping, but this time at the infamous Ilyantsi Bazar.  When I tried to login to my internet banking account this morning, my connection was refused, so I couldn't check how much money I could spend today.  So instead of buying lots of stuff, I only bought 1 sweater, which was 17 leva (or 8,5 euro).  Sasha, of course, bought plenty of stuff for her.

After our shopping morning, we were invited to have coffee at her parents place.  We had such a great time there, that it was already dark when we left.  Thus ending the 5th day of my journey.

Day 6:
Today we went to a furniture exposition at NDK, the national Bulgarian culture palace.  There wasn't really much to see there, but on the 3 lower floors of the building there was a travel exposition going on at the same time.  At this exposition I found plenty of brochures about the cities which I'm still going to visit on this trip.

After our visit to the NDK, we walked on to Vitosha Boulevard to do some more... shopping!  Next to the boulevard there were plenty of small stands selling martinitsi.  These are small puppets made out of white and red wool, which announce the coming of springtime.  Finally we took the trolleybus back home.

Day 7:
It's the 1st of March in Bulgaria, so it's the Baba Marta holiday.  This holiday celebrates the start of the spring.  Everybody gives martinitsi to each other, these are the small puppets which I saw yesterday on Vitosha Boulevard as well as red-white friendship bracelets.  While giving them to each other, you wish the other person all the best and a good health.

In honour of this holiday, we were invited at Sasha's place to have a typical Baba Marta-meal, which was chicken and banitsa.  Banitsa is a salty puff pastry with white cheese.  Coincidence or not, but today it really got warmer and by the evening almost all of the snow melted.  Just a pity that right at this time I had to leave Sofia again, to take my night train to Istanbul.

I shared my compartment on the night train with a Slovenian exchange student, who studied in Istanbul.  The evening started with a very interesting conversation about the Turkish people and Istanbul.  Tomorrow morning I'll be waking up in Istanbul, where only the sea will divide me from Asia in this bi-continental city.