565 km, this is the distance between Istanbul and Sofia. The Bosforo Express will bring me, just for one day, back in the European Union. Departure time: 21:30, Arrival Time: ? Undefined. After all these are still the Balkans. The ticket, that I bought in the morning (no online ticketing), is saying 4 people sleeping compartment. Price? Only 120 Turkish Lira, 28€ at change, not bad. The quality of the trip/train was a surprise, for that price I couldn’t have asked better. My 3 travel companions for the night are all young backpackers: One from Switzerland, he’s traveling from 6 weeks and now he’s coming back in Europe from Armenia; The German guy is doing is third Interrail and he is trying to reach Italy; The Turkish guy, the less experienced one, is at his first time in this kind of trains. We discussed a lot, the topic? Travels, of course. The only negative aspect of the trip were the 3 hours of stop at the border for passports control. The train arrived in Sofia in the morning (around 10:30). Once there, I directly went to buy the ticket for the next destination. Then, I left my only, always more heavy, travel companion and I reached the city centre. I already have been in Sofia, for 10 days, during the summer of 2014. For this reason, I had still a bit of familiarity with the streets. But, this time something was different, I was no more facing the dirty and poor organised city I visited 3 years ago. I saw a cleaner, more organized and modern city. Before to leave to next destination, I spent my afternoon in the centre, that is year after year hosting always more tourists. At 18 o’clock, the bus was waiting for me. Next destination? Skopje, Macedonia. I almost forgot, the air pollution level reported on my CleanSpace tag was low-medium. That’s good, but it can be due to the fact that the city is almost empty during summer.
