Vitosha Boulevard

Locally known as Vitoshka, this is Sofia’s main tourist street. If you’re looking for drunk British stag parties, this is where they’ll be – in fact, you probably hear more foreign voices here than Bulgarian. Each side is lined with cafes, restaurants, and branded shops with a wide cobbled promenade in the centre that becomes a slippery death trap if it’s raining. At one end – facing the view of Vitosha Mountain – is the National Palace of Culture. Head the other way, toward the domes of Catedral de Sveta-Nedelya, and you’ll find the Court building and Serdika, the city’s main metro station.

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’.

Migration Directorate

There are two booths assigned for foreigners’ visa applications and it’s obligatory that at least one of them is staffed by someone who doesn’t speak a word of English. These booths are right by the door, the entranceway intersecting the queue which is sandwiched between the information desk and the kiosk where you pay so you need to stand firm to hold your place. In this swirling maelstrom of people, you can hear the same stilted and vapid small talk between new foreign arrivals and the Bulgarian handlers that their employers have assigned to them to help navigate the paperwork.

Museum of Socialist Art

It’s in three parts: the garden where they’ve collected the statues that were removed when communism fell, a gallery (exhibiting student posters when we went), and a video room showing old newsreels to provide historical context. This room seemed decidedly ‘pro’, as did the two elderly staff and the souvenir cabinet selling Stalin mugs and Lenin keyrings. It’s interesting to visit alongside someone who remembers what life was really like – the red scarves, the youth groups, the formal salute when submitting schoolwork, the party terminology, the secret jokes, and the many ingenious ways that Bulgarians found to circumvent the rules.

Megapark

The name, logo and slogan (‘meet tomorrow’s standards today’) seem as though they belong to a ruthless dystopian corporation in a lazily conceived action film. The building hosts multiple companies in a maroon coloured, 15-storey tower sitting between a McDonalds and a shopping mall by a highway on the outskirts of the city. The ground floor canteen is white and plasticky with counters along one wall selling slightly different foods from metal trays and the wipe-clean tables in the central seating area are scattered with universally standardised office workers in security lanyards scrolling phones as they pick at their lunches.

Sveta Sofia

A gold and black statue on a 50 foot pedestal in the centre of the city that looks a bit like a sex robot from a 60’s film. She has an impressive décolletage, visible nipples and, surprisingly for a Christian saint, is depicted with three pagan symbols: a crown, a wreath and an owl. She replaced a statue of Lenin in 2000 and represents where the city got its name – except she doesn’t, Sofia was named after a church. Apparently, her face does look a lot like the face of the wife of the mayor who commissioned the project though.

Hambara bar

It looks like the kind of place where 16^th Century plotters would meet to discuss a revolution and is hidden away at the end of an alley off a side-street that’s impossible to find again. It has a door that only opens from the inside, no windows, stone walls and fittings made from ancient wooden beams – the boards of the mezzanine floor creak alarmingly and contain shadowy gaps that make you tiptoe to the bar like a ballerina. There’s no electricity, only candles. The barmaid periodically stops serving so she can go around and replace the ones that are guttering.