Public transport adventures, another episode 🚌🚂🚍

Traveling by public transport in Bulgaria is a big challenge. Let me put it this way this time so I don't repeat myself. 😅Because in previous posts I talked only about the rail transport, today I will talk about the bus transport, which I had the misfortune of having to use last week.
A guy then told me the following about the whole saga with the difficulty of organizing a simple route from the place where I live to the capital: "In Bulgaria, public transport is deliberately so disorganized and in this state, because the state wants to force, and it manages to do it, the common man to buy a car (because otherwise he can't get by with transportation from point A to point B), buy gas and pay excise duty." And that explanation really makes sense in this case, based on what I encountered on this otherwise simple trip. And also, you probably paid attention to how much you pay in excise tax to the state every time you fill up at a gas station.

So, the distance between the place where I live and the capital is about 220 km, and according to Google Maps, it takes 2 hours and 8 minutes by car, something like that. However, when you try to understand how to get from the one place to the other by public transport, things change drastically. And I must tell you that all this very vividly reminded me and took me back about 20 years and more in my life, in my student years, when I had to move often from the capital to another place in the country where I lived then and back. But then things seemed a little more organized. There was a clear route with a clear timetable, if there were any doubts, you knew who and where to call, the phone was picked up, information was given and things went on no matter what.

Now, the first thing I did was to go to the bus station of the neighboring town and ask about the bus schedule to the capital. I found some information on the internet on their site, I found a bus that I thought was very suitable because it left at 15:00, but I still wanted to know the details, buy a ticket in advance, etc. After all, this would be my first such trip to the capital from my current location, and I wanted to make sure everything would be okay.

Well, that was a wise decision on my part. Because at the cash desk at the bus station, it turned out that the bus at 15:00 does not exist. There are two other buses, one of which leaves at 6 a.m. and arrives in the capital around 9 a.m., as well as another that leaves at 11:45 a.m. and travels for about 5 hours, stopping here and there.

Both buses were not suitable for me. The first leaves and arrives very early in the day, there was no point in it. The other travels 5 hours.
5 hours!!! 😮 This is just enough to drive across the whole of Bulgaria in length from the Black Sea to the capital - about 500 km. And I only have to travel these 220 km.

Already at the ticket office at the bus station, it became clear to me that this would not work for me and I should look for other options. This happened on Friday.
On Saturday, I started looking for information about the bus schedule to Sofia from another, larger, regional city nearby, which is 21 km away distance from the settlement where I live. Of course you had to drive to the bus station there, but it would be worth it if they had a proper bus schedule.

I found some information on their site, but as it already turned out, I couldn't rely on it. I called the given landline and... no one picked up.
I also called one of the transport companies/travel agencies whose bus seemed most suitable and... no one picked up.

I thought about it. It was a weekend, but it looked like people didn't travel on the weekend. Don't people need tickets, bus information at any time? Or not?

I can't risk going 21 km distance on Monday, with all my luggage, to just find out the bus I decided to travel with does not exist.

So I had to come up with another option. And I started looking for a bus schedule from the second largest city in the country, Plovdiv, to the capital. I would get to Plovdiv by train, however, this route has already been tested twice in the previous two weeks, 🤭everything was checked, it works, and there is nothing to worry about. But I had to check the schedule of the buses from there and not only that, but where exactly they leave from, because this city, logically, has more than one bus station.

And I came across a new surprise - guess what, this city, the second largest in Bulgaria, has no websites for its bus stations 😂

With a combined effort of me and my partner, we dug up the internet for information though, in some comical and super weird blog sites there was information, yes, even pictures of the timetable boards. But you'll agree that this is super weird, right?
And not only that, Plovdiv is a big and international city, as I told you before. Big for the size of the country, of course, but otherwise not so much. But there are a lot of foreigners living there as students, and there are super many tourists as well as certainly other foreigners living there. How do they cope with traveling to other parts of the country in this situation? And how are any foreign tourists who have come here outside of an organized excursion doing? This is a huge mystery to me. 🤔 What an impression we leave on foreigners too, since the impression the whole organization leaves on me as a local myself is disgusting.

Well, I traveled the distance to the capital in the following way:

I traveled by train to Plovdiv, then took the bus from there to the capital, and traveled much shorter in terms of time than I would have traveled if I had only taken this bus from the neighboring city, which would have dragged itself like a folk song for 5 hours. Also, I paid less money for these two tickets together than if I had paid for just one bus ticket (I also found the bus ticket prices unreasonably high for what they offer and the distances they travel)
But how passed this trip, I will probably write in other posts further on, because yes, traveling by public transport in Bulgaria is an epic experience, a challenge unmatched in any western country, starting with its arrangement and organization, as you've already seen it, I hope. 😄

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|