Last night marked the true beginning of our railway extravaganza.

After another fine day out and about in Kadikoy, Istanbul, we were back at the Mezzo Hotel by about 1800. But we needed to spend a few minutes rationalizing our luggage, which now included a picnic bag. (There's no food available on the train to Sofia, or at the departure station; it's a longish journey; and the Terns are hell to be anywhere near if they've not had their breakfast. So the picnic bag that came free with some recent purchase from Uniqlo had its maiden voyage.)

Let me just backtrack a little on this Istanbul-Sofia journey. A great source of information, as always, is the Man in Seat 61. Following his advice, we had bought our tickets via an intermediary (they can't be bought online, and there's a certain amount of risk if you wait until you arrive in Istanbul to buy them in person -- our train, it turned out, was not full, but they can be). So we put in our order for a two-person sleeper as soon as booking opened (two months ahead), and paid the fare and the commission. It was all very efficient, and the tickets were waiting for us at our hotel when we arrived.

The train goes not from the centre of town but from Halkali, which is out in the wop-wops. As Tom Hall so memorably puts it, "Leaving Istanbul from here is akin to first travelling from Euston to Watford Junction to board the Caledonian Sleeper."

One advantage Halkali does have, however, is that it's on a suburban train line, with a station (Sogutlucesme -- I can't reproduce the accents, but there's one on almost every letter) that is easy walking distance from our hotel.


It's rush hour by now, and the pavements and platforms are busy, so you do your best to keep your laden self out of the commuters' way. When the train arrives, we sandwich ourselves into a corner on the right (the doors always open on the left), and (once out of the tunnel bit) watch the gold of the Istanbul sunset sea pass us by.

Halkali station is really nothing to write home about. There's a basic waiting room; there are toilets; there's a prayer room. And that's pretty much it.


Luckily, we didn't have that long to wait. They boarded us at 2000, and all you have to do is stick your baggage through the Xray machine, find your compartment, and settle in.

The sleepers are really quite cool. In addition to your seats-that-convert-into-beds, you get a wash basin -- and a fridge, so you can stow your picnic away, confident it will still be good in the morning. There are even a couple of snacks and drinks provided.




We left on the dot of 2045, and were soon tucked up for the night. It was a short night, however, as the first border control happens at Kapikule just a few hours in (roughly 0145). While you're waiting to trundle into the station, the left-over pide that you stashed away earlier comes in very handy.

The Turkish formalities require you to disembark, and queue up to have your passport stamped. Your luggage stays on the train, so it's not too onerous. We were towards the head of the line, and were through quite quickly, and back on the train. Later, a fellow-passenger, in conversation with Nigel, commented on the "Cold-War" element of it all. We didn't feel that, to be honest... Really, once you're outside the cocoon of the EU, you find lots of queues-in-the-night. And, while any border crossing is a bit stressful, this one was way down the fright recorder. On the basis of my admittedly limited experience during the real Cold War (Germany to Germany), and in the immediate post-Cold War period (UK to Russia), I would say that crossings were much more nerve-wracking back then. So I wonder if this passenger was more spooked by his imagination of what had happened than by what actually happened...


Anyway, once everyone has been accounted for, you start to move again. It's about 0230 Turkish time by now. And you're not moving for long, because now the Bulgarians want to check you out too. They do it on the train, however. Someone comes round to do a pre-check, and then the officials knock on your door, collect your passport, and bring it back, stamped, about an hour later. By now it's 0340 Bulgarian time (ie, 0440 Turkish time).

But we're in Bulgaria... Bulgaria! Our first "new" country since Portugal in 2019...







A quick shout-out at this point to Digi, our Malaysian mobile internet provider. In times gone by, once you reached your overseas destination (assuming it was covered by Digi), you had to register for a three-day connection, and keep renewing it, until you were either back home, or hit a border, when you needed to start another three-day segment. Now, they do multi-country passes that last a month. So, we had a seamless transition crossing the border from Turkey to Bulgaria, and for this trip, the only polity where we're not covered is the Isle of Man...

We rolled into Sofia Central Station only about 10 minutes late:



When you're fully laden, it's about a 40-minute walk from the station to our apartment, which is spacious and well equipped. We're not quite sure how old the building is:






Nearby are a couple of shopping possibilities, at the first of which (Lidl), we became embroiled in a long conversation about Bulgaria's inflation problem...

Anyway, some pictures of Sofia, as we've experienced it so far:









Very excited to be here. Looking forward to a good night's sleep and plenty of further explorations.