Sofia to Istanbul – Across Borders by Night

Sofia, in the pale light of morning, revealed itself as a city where East and West have been in dialogue for centuries. Lorena and I joined the Free Sofia Tour, an inspired introduction to a capital too often overlooked. Our guide led us through broad boulevards and intimate courtyards, unspooling stories that reached back to Thracians, Romans, Ottomans, and Communists.

We stood beneath the gilded domes of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, its heavy silence punctuated by the shuffle of visitors. We lingered by the National Theatre, admired the worn dignity of the St. George Rotunda, and traced the shadows of empire at the Bulgarian Presidency. The tour’s charm was not simply in the monuments but in the way it revealed the layers of the city — one civilisation pressed upon another, a palimpsest of time.

Yet Sofia has its disappointments. Once a capital of mineral waters, the city’s reputation as a spa destination is now a ghost. The Central Mineral Baths, where generations once sought health and renewal, have been stripped of steam and silence, converted instead into the Regional History Museum. The tiled halls no longer echo with the splash of water or the murmurs of bathers, but with the tread of tourists. I felt a pang of loss: the first Turkish bath of the journey would now have to wait for Istanbul. A shame — for Sofia’s subterranean springs deserved better.

As dusk approached, we made our way to Sofia Central Station. The building, all faded concrete and broad corridors, seemed a relic from a time when train travel was the pulse of the Balkans. At 18:40, the Sofia–Istanbul Express pulled out, its carriages groaning into motion. This was no sleek modern line but a train of night and memory, where time stretches in the rhythm of wheels on rails.

We settled into our compartment, small but sufficient, and watched through the window as the city dissolved into the countryside. Bulgaria slipped by in twilight: villages with tiled roofs, fields turning dark, the occasional church dome silhouetted against a fading sky.

There is a peculiar intimacy to night trains. Compartments become cocoons, corridors echo with whispers in a half-dozen languages, and sleep comes not in silence but to the percussion of steel on steel. Somewhere beyond the border, before dawn, we would enter Turkey. The names themselves seemed charged with romance: Kapıkule, Edirne, and at last Halkalı, on the edge of Istanbul.

And so the journey continued — eastward, onward — the rails bearing us into another world.

Balkan Express