Wise from previous trips on state-run rail in this fascinating part of the world in that they will gladly sell you train tickets despite all assigned seats having been gobbled up by travellers with more foresight; We set out early to find the train station so we can reserve our seats on the 8 hour train ride from Varna to Sofia in a week’s time. As is customary with many train stations, they are rarely natural gentrifiers. So also in Varna; the surrounding area is, shall we say, rustic. I could therefore only attribute the location of three Scandinavian Consulates in the immediate vicinity of said train station to the inherent modesty and frugality of the Danes, Norwegians and the Swedes. Perhaps there is some element of truth to the age-old expression “gritty as a Swedish Consulate”.

As far as train tickets were concerned, we were spectacularly unsuccessful. Having swung and missed at a couple of ticket counters, we found the area in which supposedly one makes reservations. Makes sense and we’d seen this elsewhere; that agents that need computer access to know which seats are still available to sell are separate from those who hand out tickets like confetti to anyone who waves a Lev-bill around. What we hadn’t really seen, at least not to this magnitude, was the complete and utter disinterest of the sole ticket clerk among six or so tills to sell us tickets to Sofia. Unless we spoke Bulgarian or Russian, this simply wasn’t going to happen.

Had we not known that the railway did have a website where online ticket purchase had appeared possible, we might have pushed it further with Google Translate and savaged her mother tongue to the degree she might just about paid for our tickets out of her own pocket just to get rid of us. It turned out that tickets were quite easy to procure online though. We even splurged an extra 6 Lev to go all one-percenter in 1st class. However, there was a small wrinkle. Yes, the site would sell you the tickets and charge your card after going through what seemed like six or seven payment gateways (it wasn’t but the number of redirects was dizzying), it would not issue a ticket that you could use on the train. I mean, why would it?

After all it’s only an online train ticket vendor and that we should be able to board with an electronic ticket is just outrageous. Instead, the site politely informed us that we needed to print the tickets on white A4 paper. We were only informed of this after having paid, of course. In a stroke of bad luck, in order to save a bit on luggage space when we left Vancouver some six weeks ago, we had decided to leave our printer at home. Turned out that nothing could have been simpler. Close to our AirBnB, in an unassuming building which could describe 99% of the buildings in Varna, by the way, we get our tickets printed in a few minutes for a grand total of 0.14 Lev. We’re a day in and would already be feeling like locals if it weren’t for the fact we don’t speak a word of Bulgarian.

To travel like we do requires a degree of patience, some physical stamina and a significant tolerance for inconvenience and acceptance of the things that come with not paying top dollars for curated accommodation and experiences. That takes us to places like Bulgaria and sometimes reality can be a bit much, even for us. The most difficult aspect of Varna, or indeed the trip thus far, has been the large number of strays; dogs to be sure but cats in particular. For animal well-being bleeding hearts like us, it’s difficult to get past the number of passed out dogs panting in the humid heat and the looks of the timid, emaciated kittens peeking out from underneath parked cars. Intellectually of course we know we can’t help them in a meaningful and sustainable way. They seem to be surviving however as evidenced by the yowling serenades most every evening.