I started off wandering down the main road, as I did the other day, but instead of veering over to walk through the rather depressing wasteland surrounding the “National Palace of Culture” (a convention centre that needs to be razed to the ground in all its architectural monstrosity), I continued down the main road. One of the strange things about Sofia is the underpasses. When I am wandering around a strange city I am always wary of darkened holes in the ground as my experience is that they generally contain scary people ready to jump out and strip me of my worldly goods (well, when I say ‘experience’ I really mean ‘paranoid musings’) – in Sofia that is not the case, instead they are full of smiley people and shops. So I wandered down some stairs, ready to fend off the robbers, only to be greeted by smiley people buying sandwiches and engaging in other forms of commerce – a much better sight than seeing the Palace of Culture while being buffeted by windblown snatches of Backstreet Boys tunes from a rundown open air cafe, as I was the day before. Anyway, I wandered the back streets a bit, saw the other church that I’d missed the previous day and ended up walking along Bulevard Knyaz Aleksandar Dondukov, which being a whole block away from the main tourist drag to the Aleksander Knevski Cathedral (complete with its tourist trap roadside market) was a much more real street, and looked how I imagined Sofia would look – a combination of central european city with a hint of soviet era housing. I popped out round the back of the cathedral and after some walking through a park and down a rather nice tree-lined street I ended up at the front entrance of the military academy, the other occupant of the park where the military museum hides.

My experience with maps this weekend has opened my eyes a bit. The map I had, provided free at the front desk of the hotel, is accurate and to scale, but my estimates of times to walk distances is very random – the road down the side of the military academy is really long. After a while I heard some ominous rumblings from the sky and the burning hot sun started to be hidden by clouds, as everything got a bit darker and more oppresive. By the time I reached the entrance to the museum I had been struck about the head several times by heavy fat drops of rain heated to body temperature by the warm air. It was a very similar sensation to what I would imagine being spat upon from above would be like, which did lead me to check that there were no naughty children hiding on a balcony, using the weather to hide their naughty actions.

I didn’t have any real urge to go into the military museum, although re-checking google maps after the fact has shown me that there may have been even more interesting things hidden out the back, but the front ‘garden’ was worth the walk – a mouldering graveyard of military hardware. There were tanks, bulldozers, artillery pieces, trucks and three planes. There were also only two other visitors – a man and his primary school aged son, who both climbed on and played in all the vehicles. There’s something quite special about the idea of having your dad give you a leg up so that you can run up and down the wing of MiG 21. I wandered around, took some pictures and tweeted one of my favourite comments I’ve ever made – I’m normally quite a boring chap, and skipping around military hardware made my day.

The rain started looking like it meant business, so I wandered off round the corner, hoping that I would find a taxi before I drowned – luckily the next road junction had an honest to goodness taxi rank, and a serious, thin, silent, moustachioed man drove me back to the hotel as the rain started in earnest.

Taxis were something that I was worried about before I came out to Sofia. Not only had I heard the tales of scary driving and traffic, but I was also warned that all cab drivers were crooks, out to fleece the innocent tourist. Luckily for me, although not for some of the other wedding goers, this has been entirely unfounded. Every cab I’ve got has been honest and they haven’t even tried the old “sorry, I haven’t got any change” routine, which means that I do now have a small pile of stotinki that will be added to my “random coin” collection (a pile that never seems to diminish, no matter how often I try to spend them).

On the way back to the hotel, partly due to the lack of conversation with the silent man with whom I probably shared no common language and partly because I am inquisitive wee bastard, I stared out the window at the various bits of scenery. As we were driving along one of the arterial roads around the outside of the centre of Sofia there wasn’t much to see apart from trees, but all of a sudden, poking through the trees appeared a strange vision – Sofia Land. There’s nowt quite so strange as a big wheel popping up from behind a rather official looking hospital building. Every time I’d got to the point that I thought I’d seen everything Sofia had to offer the bored tourist, the town fathers pull something like this. Unfortunately it’s now raining on and off and I don’t have enough time to nip down to see the closed theme park from the outside, but if I ever return I have at least one place on my ‘to see’ list.

So, I’m now sitting in the hotel, leeching their wireless despite being checked out, waiting for an hour until it’s time to get a cab to the airport. It’s been a good trip and the main thing I’ve learned is that I’m not anywhere near as self-sufficient a traveller as I thought. Luckily I’ll have people to talk at on my next couple of trips, and I pity those people in advance.

So I went for a wander – as shown here on a beautiful Google map, with notes. Yes, I was a bit bored when I got back.

And then the wedding. I’ve been to a couple of international weddings, getting scared by the admiration of my facial hair at a swedish one, and wondering why the country and western singers were so depressing at the welsh-chinese one, but this one was the biggest departure from the normal form that I’ve seen.

Firstly there was the dancing. The constant, constant dancing. Not generally being one for a boogie, I was slightly mystified, but from the time we walked into the ballroom and sat at our tables until I slunk away in a slightly drunken state to my room there was somebody dancing. From the traditionally dressed pros who whirled around the wedding bread (of which more later) to the enthusiastic guests, music of various kinds boomed out of the PA and people whirled around in the middle of the room. The mix of music was also interesting, having been primed by a Bulgarian landowner of my acquaintance (well, he owns a house somewhere near Varna, but ‘landowner’ sounds much more impressive) to expect a non-stop barrage of 90s eurodance, I was pleasantly surprised that they also included more modern eurodance and a selection of random Choons that took me back to my uni days. That said, the inclusion of “I want to break free” by Queen and “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell were considered by my table to be interesting additions to a wedding playlist, and the background playing of “The Jack” by AC-DC (a happy ditty all about a woman with gonnorhea [based on a true story]) while the cake was cut and the enthusiastic Bulgarian MC (translated for us language-deprived brits by a very hard working, permanently smiling translator who often wrestled succesfully with the translation of uniquely Bulgarian concepts into english) layed the innuendo on thick about why Adam would need the energy from the large slice of cake that Rosie cut him…

The next bit was the bread. The big round wedding bread, whirled about the room by traditionally dressed dancers, before it was used in a bunch of rituals during the evening. Firstly, there was the feeding of the bread to the bride and groom by the groom’s mother, during which Adam’s beaming but slightly worried mum tore off bits of bread, dipped them in salt and the popped them into the mouths of the happy couple, followed by a repeat with honey. A top bit of ritualling that, followed by the bride kicking a silver pot full of water and differing coloured roses across the room, the colour of the rose that came out of the pot predicting the sex of their first child (white – girl). Unfortunately none of the british contingent were fully prepared for the pot kicking, leading to mild exclamations of surprise and at least one attempt to intercept the pot ready for pass back into the centre for a shot on goal.

The role of the wedding bread was not yet over. Prior to the bread being ripped up into table sized chunks and distributed around the room, Adam and Rosie had to tear the beast in half, the person with the larger half being the one that would do more work in the marriage. At least I think that’s what the translator said, there was a lot of Bulgarian shouting at the time and the waiter had decided that I needed to have my rakia glass filled whenever I wasn’t watching. And then to heap further expectation and mild embarassment upon them one of the kids was told to count how many crumbs had fallen on the floor, that being the number of children they’d have. Rosie displayed a stoic calm when informed that there were four.

Dinner was good, although with all the dancing us non-dancers weren’t entirely certain when it was polite to tuck in, as half of the room were on their feet at almost all times, and was gracefully spread out over the entire evening, to give more time for the dancing. Did I mention that there was a lot of dancing? In addition to the DJ, a band appeared at one point, playing a bunch of covers that became even more excellent when backed with a mildly bulgarian inflection – the performance of “Wake me up before you go-go”, being an extra special highlight – and there was even a slinky dress clad, fedora toting young lady who popped out for a bit when the band went for a rest, mic in hand and with a backing track of karaoke classics. She belted her way through a pile of songs, keeping the dance floor full as I discovered that I was sitting on a table with a bunch of people who work almost next door to me in London (note to any City dwellers – the mighty Young Bean, which closed a few months back, has reopened on the site of Noto, which also closed a while back, up on Bassishaw Highwalk near the Guildhall. This is a good thing. There’s a bunch of details up on the randomness guide).

The party continued and eventually I deserted, as it was after 3am and I found myself falling asleep on the table. Things were still going strong when I wandered off, although they had replaced the videographer (a man of great bravery who was seen earlier in the day sticking his entire body out of the window of a moving car to make sure that he got a shot of the groom’s wedding car driving to the registry office – a shot dominated by the looks of shock on the groom and best man as they saw a bloke with a camera start climbing out of a car as it drove through the rather scary Sofian traffic) and the photographer had run away to process the ridiculous number of photos he had taken. Top do, and worth the trip.

My problem now is that everyone else has gone home, I’ve hit the edge of my limited attention span and I have no real idea what to do before I get my plane home at 5pm tomorrow. I’ve heard tales of a military museum with MiGs and tanks outside, which tickles my fancy, so after my intrepid trek of yesterday I think I will be going to find myself a cab.

So here I am in sunny Sofia (and I don’t mean that lightly – it’s knocking on 35degC and I’m hiding in an air conditioned bar, slightly dazzled by the reflection of said sun on the umbrellas protecting the fools sitting on the patio outside) for Adam Horner’s wedding. That’s not until tomorrow evening (which if I’d actually read the invite would probably have meant I wouldn’t have added an extra day onto the end of my stay, as I have the attention span of a tiny child and expect that I will either be bored or arrested by Sunday afternoon when my plane is due to whisk me back to blighty) so in the meantime I’m going to take advantage of the rather swanky hotel I am in and eat their delicately arranged Pringles (BBQ flavour) and drink this rather nice beer.

Despite some slightly sour twittering (as I have discovered I am actually a very bad traveller, and my attempts to convince myself otherwise were a mere sham) my journey was fairly uneventful. Up at 5am to pack, at Heathrow for 7, checked in and through security by 7:30, eating a rather tasty breakfast by 7:45, laden with whisky and Bulgarian leva. Having not realised that Bulgaria is now part of the EU and rumoured to be fond of euros, I grabbed a stack of currency (with a buyback guarantee due to my guidebook questioning the acceptance of the average common-or-garden exchange kiosk when it comes to the cyrillic laden notes from Bulgaria) and after my first spending of a shiny 20 lev note (about a tenner) it seems that I may well be selling a few back to the happy folks at Travelex, as you do seem to get a lot for your cash (as long as you spend it outside of this scarily pricy [apart from the rooms] hotel).

I flew over here with Swiss (formerly Swiss-air, but now air-less for reasons of German acquisition), who are a rather lovely airline. The planes are spacious and clean, the service efficient and friendly, my raisin roll edible if brick-like and the orange juice medicinal in the strange way that mid-continental orange juice so often seems to be (I did acquire a taste for it during my summers sojourning in Austria, although I did often mix it half and half with beer [Ottakringer out of choice], which I am now mildly ashamed of, despite its rather excellent cooling/endrunkening properties). Being the cheapskate and lazy bastard that I am, I chose Swiss due to them being very slightly cheaper than BA, flying at a very slightly more friendly time of day than BA and departing from Heathrow, the airport that I almost call home. A side effect of this rather sensible choice is that I have now visited another city – Zurich, terminus to the east. I arrived, proved that my german was awful by attempting to buy euros and failing to express the concept of “Bank Card” (helpfully in german said as “Bank Karte”, if I remember correctly, although the lady behind the counter didn’t quite get it until I broke down and sprechen-Sie-English’d), realised that I had left my emergency Swiss Francs (which I refer to as chuffs in my head, due to their ISO code being CHF, a foible that I almost let out to all and sundry when talking to the nice lady behind the Travelex counter) on my desk at home, and as such was at the mercy of whatever Swiss (formerly Swiss-air) decided was food – the raisin roll (announced to me as “RAISIN ROLL!” by the slightly on-edge stewardess, as she rolled her cart very quickly down the aisle, throwing out vittles with deadly accuracy) was not only edible but rather tasty, so I had high hopes.

I then gave up on the shopping area and went over to my gate, which in true mainland europe fashion was guarded by a metal detector and security gate – why have one security check point when you enter the airport, when you can have full-employment and one at every gate, hein? It was at this point the minor hiccoughs in my travel experience reared their less than beautiful heads. Firstly there was much eyeing of my whisky bag – I was assured by the nice chap at Woooooorld of Whiskies in Terminal 2 that as I was ending my trip in the EU there was no limit to what I could buy and take through customs, a dangerous thing when they had tasty things in the “buy 2 bottles from this range and save a tenner” section. I trusted him and felt that I may have been betrayed when the security girl started fondling my heavily sealed industrial grade duty free bag. Eventually she was mollified by claims of having come from London and I proceeded to stage 2 – bitter guy with an x-ray machine and a mild dislike of the US and the UK, especially their “special relationship”. He pointed out to me in efficient english that I could not carry my bottle of water any further. I protested mildly, asking if it made any difference that I hadn’t had the chance to leave the airport and thus had bought the water in a secure area. Unfortunately his english was not quite good enough for my mumbled and incoherent argument (paraphrased in the previous sentence) and he resorted to a simple and winning argument – “It is your fault, you english, you and your special friend the USA [queue cheesy grin]. It is that Mr Blair and Bush”. I stepped down at this time, knowing that there was little point in doing anything but admit defeat in a graceful manner. My water was binned, my bags returned and I continued to my gate.

My bad eyesight was compensated for by my knowledge of german at this point, as the tiny text saying “Delayed” on my gate’s departure board was complimented by a large flashing german banner claiming the same in that differing tongue. There were no further details that my broken eyes could see, so I sat down, surrounded by large, bored businessmen, and proceeded to use my in-phone internets to pass the time. The swiss’s (that’s way to many Ss in a row) love for the measuring of time is well known, and thus I shouldn’t have been quite so surprised when the rest of the passengers for my flight turned up as one, queued and then wandered on to the plane as the gate opened, a mere 25 minutes late. I had experienced a “telling the time” failure, that in the end was not resolved until I arrived in Sofia and twiddled the clocks on my various electronic aids for a third time in the day, and thought that I had a further hour to wait, and thus was unsupectingly whisked along with the crowd and deposited in my plane seat.

This time Swiss decreed that the snack would be bread based and containing cheese and tomato. I was starting to ebb, mainly falling back on sleep to conserve my energy for the dreaded taxi trip from airport to hotel, and the bready snack was needed, although the effort involved in chewing the dwarfbread-like mass is probably as good a recipe for weight loss as any celery stick, no matter how engineered to be nutritionless and fibrous it may be. I soon found myself trying to translate signs from the cyrillic alphabet, a worryingly difficult task considering that they were written in roman text as well, and having obtained my efficiently transferred bag (which I was certain would end up in Azerbaijan or somewhere. Although I doubt that Baku is on the list of 76 airports that Swiss so proudly point out on the constantly looping in-flight video, interspersed with bad Swiss tv prank shows) I proceeded to the arrivals hall, there to take on the task I had most feared – not getting ripped off by a taxi driver. I followed the directions in my guide book, fended off a taxi tout with one hand while dragging myself towards the OK Supertrans stand, billed to be the only honest cab company in town. I was quickly shown outside by the taxi-pimp, informed that the cab shouldn’t cost more than 14 leva and then bundled into the first cab that turned up, causing dismay to the rather large queue at the taxi rank who hadn’t come up with the cunning plan of cutting out the middle man and going to the taxi source.

And then the taxi driver tried to kill me.

I know there are often jokes about cab drivers being mad and cities with interesting traffic and all the rest, but I had always dismissed them as stories and fun reconstructions on the telly (apart from the blog I was reading a while back about a guy doing some volunteering in Freetown, Sierra Leone – he posted a video of his host’s commute to work, which seemed to involve driving down a cliff between shacks. Which is basically what it was). No longer. Whether it was chasing trams down the tracks, trying to get air over cobbled hills or racing other cars by cutting them out on every corner, whilst turning against the oncoming traffic, he was definitely going to give me money’s worth by providing a Grand Theft Auto-like cab ride. Eventually he screeched to a halt outside the aforementioned rather fancy hotel, waved his hand and then only charged me 10 leva. Well, he at least gave me 10 leva change when I gave him a 20 – my command of numbers only currently goes as far as “pet” (five), as it sounds funny.

That’s it for now. I’ve just finished up this post this morning and will save the tales of the bikini pool party and the strange Playboy bunny bar for another time, but in the meantime all you need to know is that I have a mild headache and a strange urge to go walking in the hills before the destruction begins anew for the wedding party this evening.