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Bulgaria’s tourist industry is huge, but concentrated in a few locations. The national tourism agency has so low a profile as to be undetectable. So finding good information online can be tricky. One helpful resource, useful for those who might like to have an independent holiday but to have all their reservations and plans made in advance from the US, is Zig Zag Holidays, a travel agency based in Sofia that offers interesting package tours and can book rooms throughout Bulgaria (although they only offer a limited selection of the accomodation options available).

Right now I’m planning the rest of my trip, from Sofia (where I am staying at the very pleasant, centrally located and well-equipped Hotel Sveta Sofia–more on that below). Tomorrow I will make a day trip to the Rila Monastery, south of Sofia, in my rental car–exciting! My next stop will be Plovdiv (ancient Philipopolis, founded by Alexander the Great’s father, Philip of Macedon), then I am going on to the Black Sea coast. I’ll visit Sozopol (ancient Greek Apollonia, Byzantine Sozopolis), Nessebar (Nesebur, Nesebar, etc.–ancient Mesembria) and Varna (ancient Odyssos), where I will drop off my rental car and take a bus to Istanbul. My Rough Guide’s description of the southernmost stretch of the coast is tantalizing, but I don’t really have time to explore the area, nor are there really significant ancient sites (I am supposed to be on a research trip, after all).

The websites of the Varna and Bourgas airports on the Black Sea coast both list departures to Istanbul, but I was unable to find any available flights on kayak.com, sidestep.com or any other websites–they must be charter flights. So, bus it is.

Fortunately, I get to take a Turkish bus. Turkish buses are, of course, the world’s best! (I’ll have to write a paean to Turkish buses for the site some time.) On the Turkey Travel Planner website by Tom Brosnahan, author of the Lonely Planet and Frommer’s Turkey guides, there is a very useful list of buses departing from Istanbul’s main bus station (that link leads to Brosnahan’s page on the Main Bus Station; the station also has its own home page, but it’s only in Turkish and gives far less information, even for those comfortable with Turkish websites, than does Brosnahan’s page).The Turkey Travel Planner Istanbul bus pages include links to bus company websites–the biggest Turkish bus companies all have online booking facilities that even include seat selection–and seems pretty up to date.

I found a daily bus from Varna to Istanbul, departing at 10:30 and arriving at 20:30, with Metro Turizm; there are  other Turkish bus companies that serve this route as well, but Metro has a website, which probably means that it is a more upscale and therefore more comfortable bus company anyway. Plus, the schedule is perfect: leave at a reasonable hour, arrive in time for dinner. I was unable to buy a ticket online, but I’ll call them here in Sofia and see what’s up.

The only obstacle to booking Turkish bus tickets and getting information online is that the English versions of the websites are often not fully functional; you can probably get some information but may not actually be able to book a seat. If you experiment and guess, though, or use a Turkish phrasebook, you can get surprisingly far. It is much easier to interact with a website in an unknown language than with a person!

Despite the lack of centralized, official information, many Bulgarian cities are served by local hotel booking websites which provide a considerable amount of up-to-date information (although I would check anything in writing, by e-mail or fax, with the hotel before arriving: for example, the Sveta Sofia website advertises an on-site garage, but there is nothing of the kind; I had to pay 20 leva, about $15, for overnight parking at a nearby underground garage).

For Sofia, there is hotelsinsofia.com, which lists discounted rates for the Sveta Sofia–I wish I had found this before I booked my room, but I went directly through the hotel’s website instead. The Sveta Sofia in general seems like an excellent mid-price choice for Sofia. The location could not be better, and my room is very comfortable and quiet. My only complaints are that they nickle and dime you for all kinds of things (5 euros per day for internet; 5% extra for credit cards, etc.) and the reception is not very professional–only one receptionist today spoke decent English, and she was often away from the desk, leaving me to contend with the almost-monoglot, and not very helpful (though fetching) Mirena, who had a very hard time helping me get started on the hotel’s internet service. In the end the computer in the basement conference room that they make available to guests was not connecting to the internet, so the hotel staff gave me a key to the office and let me make myself free of it–a great solution to the problem. I am overall favorably impressed with the place.

For Plovdiv, I am trying plovdivhotels.com, which could conceivably be a related website, given some verbatim identical text. Either that or these people are copying each other like bandits! I’ve e-mailed them with requests for information on three hotels in Plovdiv: the somewhat pricey but luxe and atmospheric-looking Hebros (warning: their website has some bad Java script on it, it crashed Explorer on my computer 4 times), the brand new Odeon, and the blander Hotel Bulgaria (I also e-mailed them directly; they have a decent if rather basic website, in English and Bulgarian).

For the Black Sea Coast there’s a surfeit of “information” online, much of it more or less spurious, or at least repetitious. The sleek sozopol.com website is more substantive: it doesn’t book rooms, but has a search service for both private accomodations and hotels, with links to websites for many of the listings. The Hotel Diamanti looks gorgeous, but they don’t have any availability–it’s the first weekend of the high season, so I may have some trouble finding a place (luckily, I will be driving!). The Lola Hotel comes recommended by the Rough Guide, and looks decent too. There are lots of rooms in the new part of Sozopol, so I’m sure I’ll find something.

Nesebar is famous for its picturesque architecture, but the Rough Guide makes it sound miserably crowded. So I’m thinking I’ll just make it a day trip on the way to Varna–the distances are not terribly long on this stretch of the Black Sea coast. There is a varnahotels.com site, clearly a relative of plovdivhotels.com–it’s the same travel agency. 

That’s it for now; I’ll revise this post with the results of my e-mail inquiries.  

I was thinking about taking the bus to Sofia from my next stopping point, Niš, a major transport hub and also the site of the early fourth-century palace built by the Roman emperor Constantine I (”The Great), the first Christian Roman emperor, at Mediana a few km outside the city. But then I read this article from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting on the border hassles that bus passengers often face, and decided that however inconvenient it might be, I should take the train, even though it is much slower and less frequent.

There are two trains a day from Belgrade to Sofia, both stopping in Niš. One stops at 1:50 am, the other at 1:10 pm. I gleaned this information, after a certain amount of coaxing, from the immensely helpful German railway site, www.bahn.de, which covers just about everywhere in Europe and beyond (since the Serbian railway site was not responding).

Since I need to be in Sofia in the morning, I’m going to just stay up until the 1:50 am overnight trains crawls in sometime in the wee hours (supposedly Serbian trains are not always punctual–I’ll update this post to report on that when I get to Sofia). I can’t imagine that the border guards screw around with through trains in the egregious manner documented for buses!

Update: whether I would have faced problems with the bus or not, the train trip was tiring but completely hassle-free. I bought my ticket in the Nis train station, then came back after 1 am. The train was quite late; I think it finally left around 2:30. I purchased a couchette supplement on the train from the conductor for 470 dinars, which helpfully used up all my remaining Bulgarian dinars. The train was not very full, and I got an entire compartment to myself. Reassuringly, there was a sturdy-looking manual latch on the door, which allowed it to open a couple of inches but prevented anyone from entering. I got sheets, a pillow and a blanket, which allowed me to get a pretty decent few hours’ sleep. The passport control both leaving Serbia and entering Bulgaria was extremely slow but completely painless. It took about 3 hours, I think–I don’t remember clearly because by that point I was asleep most of the time. The bathroom stank but was not actually very dirty. No toilet paper, soap, or running water though (but the toilet did flush).

Bottom line: this is a good way to get from Serbia to Bulgaria. The train from Belgrade would probably be even better since it doesn’t leave in the early morning. It’s very slow, but you have a decent chance of arriving in Sofia reasonably rested, and it’s very cheap. I felt completely safe.

Traveling from Sarajevo to Serbia is not simple and not obvious. There is an incovenient obstacle in the way: the Republika Srpska, an autonomous region within Bosnia and Hercegovina controlled by Bosnian Serbs. Not to say anything against the Republika Srpska–I am sadly ignorant about it–but it is IN THE WAY.

There is a separate bus station in Serb-controlled Sarajevo, a 15 KM (about $10) taxi ride away, and all the international buses leave from there, including of course those going to Belgrade. The bus to Belgrade takes 9 hours.

It is also possible to get to Serbia by train. However, the route goes from Sarajevo to Banja Luka (in Republika Srpska; 4 hrs) and then from Banja Luka to Belgrade (about 12 hrs). That’s what the Lonely Planet says, anyway, and I have verified the existence of the train from Sarajevo that stops in Banja Luka (at least I think so). However, Banja Luka is far to the west of Sarajevo, while Belgrade is north and east. And there is only one train a day on each route. Finally, the official Serbian Railways site (just one of the many delightfully informative sites linked from this post) does not give information on trains from Banja Luka to Belgrade, which I find somewhat worrisome.

So, I think I am going to cut the Gordian travel tangle created by the Republika Srpska’s inconvenient presence, and fly. JAT Airlines has one daily flight at 6:30 am from Sarajevo Airport (which by the way has an absolutely amazing website, listing all flights and giving real-time information on flight status), and according to kayak.com the ticket is $159. Unfortunately jat.com does not support online booking, but there are plenty of travel agents in this neighborhood.

Finally, it appears that the Belgrade airport (which has an even more amazing website, complete with information on travel from the airport, hotels in Belgrade, and everything else you might want) is only 60 km from the place I want to go next: Sremska Mitrovica, the ancient city of Sirmium. Sremska Mitrovica has an impressive municipal website, linked to above. It even has an attractive and informative Flash animation on the town’s history–and I hate Flash.

On the municipal website, I found a link to the Bela Ruza (White Rose) Restaurant, which has rooms for rent. I’ve e-mailed them and I’ll see what happens. They give three phone numbers: +381 22 640 400, +381 22 640 644, and +381 63 54 11 76. The website gives both Serbian and a rather picturesque English translation, and the rooms look nice.

I had the unfortunate experience of finding out the hard way that my MasterCard debit card is blocked in several Balkan countries, including Bosnia and Hercegovina, Serbia, and Bulgaria (though it worked fine in Croatia and Montenegro).

According to this article by David Breitkopf for American Banker, MasterCard disapproves of such “country blocks” as an anti-fraud tool, but does not actually stop card issuers from imposing them. Visa has a similar policy.

Apparently this is much more common with small local banking institutions, especially credit unions, whose members do not tend to travel extensively overseas. I have e-mailed my credit union to see if they can take the block off, or at least give me a complete list of blocked countries so that I can be prepared in the future.

There is shockingly little information on the web about this practice. The article I linked to above is virtually the only thing I can find. Moral of the story: always have several different ways of getting money when you travel! It’s too bad that travellers’ checks (inconvenient as they often are) are becoming nearly obsolete. I feel unsafe carrying large amounts of cash with me when I travel, but it’s the only way to be absolutely certain you will have money wherever you go. 

Unfortunately, the new pre-paid “travelers’ check” cards carry tons of extra fees with them. For example, an American Express Travelers Cheque Card, if purchased in the US and issued in pounds or euros, imposes a commission of 3% over the current bank rate for changing your money. Then there is a $2.50 charge for each ATM withdrawal (or similar amounts for pound and euro denominated cards), and various other charges as follows (from Amex’s web site): 

This information is buried at the bottom of page 3 of the Terms and Conditions, of course. It doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me.

Finally, you are limited to the network of Express Cash ATMs, which is virtually non-existent in many parts of the world. I searched for ATMs in Bosnia and Hercegovina and the nearest were in Italy, though there is an ATM on every corner in Sarajevo! There are a number of locations in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and they seem to be plentiful in general in Bulgaria.

On the same topic: when you travel in the former Yugoslav countries, the most convenient currency to carry is the euro. This is already the currency of Montenegro, though that country is a long way off from EU accession, and is the shadow currency of Bosnia and Hercegovina, accepted for most transactions at the current rate of two KM (Konvertibilnih Maraka, or Convertible Marks) to the euro. I had some euro coins with me when I got here and have been using them to pay for small purchases while I waited to figure out what was going wrong with my ATM card.

My cash supply is in Swedish krona (don’t ask!), which I’ve had no trouble changing, but certainly I couldn’t pay for anything with Swedish krona here. And the dollar seems quite obsolete. I had meant to take out a few hundred euros from an ATM in Italy at the beginning of my trip but forgot. Now I wish I had been more on top of things.