Someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night. We wait patiently for him to return. We're still waiting when the helpful Bulgarian bloke next door informs us we need to go for a walk to the passport control, so we walk off across this deserted Turkish station (with no shoes on), and avoid illegally leaving the country. We stop for Bulgarian customs shortly afterwards - this involves one stamp and no problems. The train is now hopelessly late. We arrive in Sofia at about 11am, to a big sign saying "Gare Centrale Sofia". Definitely a good start. A worse start is when we get off the train and are hassled for American dollars.

We head down into the basement for our tickets out. We start at one queue (better described as a barging match) and discover that international tickets are somewhere else. That queue is shorter, and we find out the cost of our tickets. Then we go next door to change money. We hand over 7,500,000 Turkish Lira and the woman hands us a receipt for 3,500,000 and piss all leva. Cathy calls the police, who happen to be standing nearby. They eventually persuade the woman to hand over the Turkish cash to them, grasp the existence of 5,000,000 notes and get her to give us the 'right' money - still about two thirds of what we expect. We then find a cash machine which

[Sofia attempting to Westernise - contrast the Communist designed park with the Coca-Cola and McDonalds signs.]

belongs in a museum, and use my plastic to fund our day. After a nice croissant-type affair and a drink, we decide to brave Sofia.

The first intelligence test is getting to the tram stop. With roads and barriers in the way, we head down into a combined subway / shopping centre / hellhole. Eventually find the right stairs to use - although "stairs" is probably an exaggeration now - the escalators are certainly long gone. After some negotiation, we also find the right tram to take us to town.

[A Communist monument in Sofia, Bulgaria. Quite staggering to find legacies like this for the first time.]

The next problem is working out where to get off. We try to navigate by squares on the Let's Go map and discover that it's rubbish. Instead, we get off when the road changes name. The following hour is a crash course in reading Cyrillic. We walk for ages before finding a better map (the Bulgarians are a bit keen on changing their road names).

We ask people where the Tourist Office is and get widely differing opinions. Eventually, we give up and sit in as café for ages guzzling cheap drinks. Later, we get up and wander around the town. We stumble upon churches and things.

We walk towards the "National Palace of Culture" and find a large open space with large Communist-type statues and defunct fountains leading to the aforementioned Palace. It's full of kids

[The National Palace of Culture.]

rollerblading and huge Coca-Cola signs.

We wander back by way of a big cathedral and accidently discover the parliament building. After this, we decide that we've seen it all and go to another café to kill a few hours.

Time passes...

Tram number 7 takes us back to the train station, where we successfully navigate back through the underpass. We meet a bunch of Merkin cultists who thoughtfully donate a Book of Mormon to us in case we run out of bog roll.

We then saunter over to our platform (accompanied by a native trying to earn a tip by counting to platform 12 for us) and meet a mad bloke with a hat called Dan. Also discover that we've booked couchettes with no locks. The conductor will upgrade us for $15 in his back pocket. He gets £10 - better than your dollars any day of the week. Dan asks us to take his pack, as he's in a seat all night. We politely mumble about taking strange peoples' bags through customs, and he mentions what was in it going across to Greece. We then settle down and wait for the next passport moment.