The Sadness of Sofiastication

(Or "Hope you had a nice trip!")

After a brief, but fun stay in Plovdiv in the last week of January, I headed off to Sofia on Wednesday the 30th. I didn't have my computer with me, but I remembered that my hotel was several blocks to the south and east of Sofia's bus station. So, at 3 PM, I left my bus and walked down the main Sofia road for one block and then headed over to the road my hotel was located on so that I wouldn't miss my hotel. And I walked south keeping an eye out for it. The weather was cold but nice; so, I didn't mind a little exercise.

Over a half hour later, I had passed the central part of Sofia and a bunch of hotels, but no sign of mine. I was starting to get tired. Eventually, I stopped at another hotel to ask if they knew where my hotel was. Initially the helpful woman at the desk didn't, but she looked it up online...and told me it was much closer to the bus station than I had realized. I must have missed it in the first block I went south on the main street.

So I turned around and headed back. Many minutes later, I caught sight of what must have been my hotel within 100 yards on the same side of the road as me since I could see places close to the bus station. A few feet ahead of me there was a car parked on the sidewalk so I had to step off the sidewalk and into the road to get around. Since there wasn't much traffic and I was getting fatigued after carrying my luggage for about an hour, I side stepped into the road without looking down. I expected to step onto a level road surface....

Instead I caught the side of a storm drain in the road (see third picture from top) and the next thing I knew I was headed toward the pavement. I heard/felt a kind of crunchy sensation from my left foot. Some nice Bulgarian close behind me saw me fall and offered to help me up, but I assured him I was fine without really knowing if I could still stand. Fortunately, I wasn't in much pain and I could in fact still support weight on my leg and walk, so no sprain or break.

I limped into my hotel and checked in. I managed to secure some aspirin or something and some ice from the front desk after explaining what had happened. And that was pretty much my journey to Sofia!

I didn't want to risk making my ankle worse since I knew I had 10-12-hour ride back to Istanbul on Friday. So, I just stayed in my hotel for the most part and rested and iced my ankle and foot down. I only left for meals, to buy my ticket back and to get some ketoprofen (I was told it was basically the same as ibuprofen by the Sofian apothecary) on Thursday, and to catch my bus back on Friday.

The top two foot photos are from my hotel room. The final one is from the following Monday after being back in Istanbul for a couple of days.