Districts

Some areas have purely functional names: Iztok, for example, simply means ‘East’ and Sredets is ‘middle’. Then you’ve got the more interestingly named Studenskigrad which has lots of university accommodation (and Chalga clubs) and Hladilnika which is the closest city district to Vitosha and is presumably quite cold as its name translates as ‘refrigerator’. If you didn’t know that Bulgaria used to be Communist, you could probably assume it from the Orwellian naming of many other of Sofia’s municipalities. Izgrev means ‘sunrise’, Svoboda means ‘freedom’, Druzhba means ‘comradeship’ and there are four numbered districts called Mladost which translates as ‘youth’.