Riding the Sophia Metro...

[khiemtran]

So, you'd like to ride the Metro in Sophia? Well, it's quite easy, actually. Especially since there are only two lines...


Buy your ticket from the machine at the station. Each ride will cost you one Lev. Incidentally, Lev, plural Leva, is an archaic Bulgarian word for "lion".



Insert the ticket into the scanner at the automatic gates, then walk through when they open.
One odd thing here is that the scanner may be on the left side of the gate, unlike most automatic turnstiles I've seen around the world, so if the gate doesn't seem to be opening, look around in case another gate has opened over to your right...

Once you're on the platform, signs will tell you how many minuti until the next vlak.



If you're at Serdika II station (Serdica, as you may recall, is the ancient, Celtic-derived name of the city), there will also be some interesting archeological exhibits to study while you wait for your train. You can just see the glass cases over on the left of this picture.



Here comes the vlak! And now another warning. The Sophia metro system may be small in size, but it is also fast. The trains will really take off once the doors close. If you haven't found a seat by then, make sure you've grabbed a handhold before the train starts moving, otherwise you might come a cropper, experienced globe-trotting metro rider that you are... (cough).



End of the line (for now!). And also an example of how the Cyrillic alphabet deals with those tricky names from the exotic west. James Bourchier, incidentally, was an Irish journalist who became a champion of Bulgarian nationalism and an advisor to Tsar Ferdinand.

Comments

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

Most educational and interesting!

Thank you.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

That third photo down really puts the London Tube to shame. The Tube is so small, dark and shabby in comparison. I suppose that's the problem with being an early adopter. :)

I did try to learn Russian once in my teens and can still sort of read Cyrillic. I'd have to polish it up if I went to a country that used it, but I can just about pick out the "James" part.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

What made you want to learn Russian? It's interesting how many of my British friends seemed to have studied it.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I can't actually say I studied Russian. It was not much more than a passing fad, along with learning to read and write Elvish runes from TLoTR. I was just trying to teach myself from a BBC radio programme. I still have the booklets somewhere, though I suspect the language is a bit dated now. People no longer greet one another as "Comrade" for one thing!

I have to admit that one reason was my crush on Illya Kuryakin from the Man from U.N.C.L.E., but my fascination with Russia goes back further than that because as a small child, on being told that bears could be found in America or Russia, I decided my Teddy was a Russian bear. As to why, I'm not sure. Despite the Cold War, there was still a feeling of gratitude and sympathy in Britain for what they did and what they endured during WWII. Also Manchester (where I come from originally) was twinned with Leningrad, which of course was still Leningrad at the time. I really wanted to go on the student exchange trip, but the year it was my school's turn to send pupils, I was doing my A-levels and it clashed with exams.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think I first had an interest in going there after seeing Russian Ark. Plus reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, of course. I'm not sure if I'll ever get the chance to go there, but it would be nice to go one day.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Washington doesn't have the early adopter excuse, and the Washington Metro is dipped into eternal twilight.

Yesterday I had a 'shoot the architect' moment on the tube when it turned out that the only way to get to line x was along the platform of line y. Which was absolutely utterly packed with people who needed to circumvent the closure of line z, whereas the second half of people doing exactly that were trying to squeeze past them. At rush hour. I ended up taking line y on a detour because it was easier than fighting to get through...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I guess the cost of an underground station is related to the amount of rock that has to be removed. It certainly makes a difference having nice, airy platforms though, with lots of room for people to move.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I can live with crowded, but lighting (and not cladding your stations in dark brown tile) is something you control. That 'move one set of commuters along a split platform where other commuters will wait' is a bad idea is, well, not rocket science, and I don't care _when_ the station was designed, railways - and experience with crowds on railway platforms - already existed. Add the line closure and it was mayhem.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Wow, it is so clean and bright.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That's probably also because it's very New. It remains to be seen how good it will look after a few decades of use...

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Nods. I thought about that in relation to the Paris metro. The stations are renovated from time to time and they are glaringly bright and clean and New, and little by little, as they serve their purpose, the old and used creeps back in... So, yeah, Sofia's subway will mostly likely lose its gleam, too.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on how good Bulgarians are at looking after things. The MRT in Singapore and MTR in Hong Kong are still very impressive after many years of service.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I really liked that modern take on a Classical mounted warrior, and then... I realised that the figure was sitting like he should be wearing stirrups, and he wasn't wearing stirrups, which meant he wasn't sitting properly. And there wouldn't have been stirrups at that time, anyway, and in the Classical idoion he should even have a saddle.

And at that point, I slunk away, disillusioned:-(

But the HORSE is nice!!!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The Archeological Museum in Sophia is also worth a look if you ever go by that way. No photos unfortunately, but they have some amazing things there.