Reader, I’ve pulled this from the archives. I wrote about my trip to Sofia around the same time I started my original blog, in 2011. 

Around the corner from my old apartment in New York City’s East Village, where I loved in my 20s, there was an establishment called the Eastern Bloc. The Bloc was a gay bar with friendly, shirtless male bartenders who turned down the lights and turned up the tunes once it got late enough for the shy guys to start gyrating around the tiny room. How do I know this? Their happy hour lulled neighborhood patrons of all persuasions with $3 cosmopolitans and a great jukebox. Cheap drinks, shirtless barmen…believe it or not, these are the images that came to mind several times on my 90 minute flight from Istanbul to Bulgaria. 

I decided to go to Sofia largely because it’s a convenient border run destination from Istanbul. My residence permit in Turkey was about to expire and flying across the border and coming back via a 10-hour bus was a cheap, easy fix.  My fellow English teacher friends who’d done the border run to Sofia described it as “boring,” and by saying “you can see everything in less than a day.” I imagined a city where the population had been repressed under communism, a people whose artistic freedom had been squelched by the Iron Curtain.  Free from that now, yes, but only relatively recently.  My friend Amanda, who was teaching high school English at the American College of Sofia at the time I visited, pointed out that her students are the first generation to grow up without personal experience with the old regime. They were tasked with expressing their ideas and ambitions through the lingering signs of the old communist control and Soviet-style, cinder block architecture.

Pondering this (and images of my old neighborhood bar), I was expecting to see interesting historical spots, some nice restaurants, a pretty park or two, sure, but I had low expectations when it came to what I might find as far a creative counterculture. My usual travel protocol is to spend my first day in a new city knocking out what I like to call the “guidebookies” – all the monuments, museums, and galleries one might find in the usual Lonely Planet or Fodor’s guidebook. Of course you would be embarrassed to visit Paris and not see the inside of the Louvre, or go to Rome and skip the Vatican. 

I strongly believe, however,  in spending only less than half of my time in a new place on the usual tourist track, and after I’ve performed these required duties I always head immediately for the part of town where there’s the promise of finding something other travelers have not. A bunch of women sitting on a road weaving dandelion halos outside Sirince, Turkey, for instance, or the best pancakes in Amsterdam in an unlisted restaurant. I love to find something unexpected – a nautical themed bar in Prague, a cheap Moroccan Jewelry store in Paris. It’s on this type of exploration that I find the neighborhood with the city’s cheapest pints, and the most passionate musicians drinking them. That’s where you get to have a real conversation with a place. 

I was almost certain this side of Sofia would be hidden or nonexistent. Later, I was so happy to be wrong in my assumption.

I arrived at the Art Hostel Sofia and I was buzzed in through a bright red gate by pushing a matching button on the whitewashed wall. The Art Hostel is situated on Angel Kanchev Street in an area fairly far to the southwest of the major city sights;  I chose it mostly because of the tagline on the website: “Usually we spend our time in the garden.”  Also, the name hinted that if I was to find a grungy Bulgarian underground, it would probably be nearby the Art Hostel.

I was led through the courtyard garden, past graffitied walls, through a  secret passage and up some stairs where we came into a common area that  looked  looked like my coolest, boho Brooklyn-dwelling friend’s living room: vintage striped upholstery, oddball picture frames, and a flower stenciled on the wall.  Not your typical multi-bunk hostel room with no decor other than starchy, sterile sheets (if you’re lucky). 

When I entered my private room I found a giant bed with dark green, shiny head- and  footboards to match the echoing wood floors, golden birds flitting across a mint green wall, and a private balcony overlooking the garden.

I did some exploring and found a mini computer lab under a stairwell, and the basement bar that doubles as an art gallery, their “permanent  collection” being the sometimes confusing, other times shocking graffiti art.  The breakfast room – part of the bar – boasted a creepy window  with stained glass eyes and a table suspended from the ceiling. It smelled like mold and old beer in there. I loved everything about the place. 

I left the Art Hostel to wander for a bit and right there on Angel Kanchev I passed by some polka dotted pots of plants hung from window bars, and a store called Zona Urbana that sells bags, wallets, sculptures and collectibles – including cartoon maps of Sofia – made from 100% recycled materials. I walked by a street artist whose paintings depicting an ironic combination of both capital monuments and anti-political sentiments were spread around the base of a tree.

Suddenly, it seemed art was everywhere in Sofia. I took the 2-hour Free Sofia walking tour the next morning with some other hostellers, lead by a cheerful and lovably nerdy Bulgarian college student. She walked us over the yellow bricks that pave the streets in the city center, near the cluster of historical monuments, and explained that they were a wedding gift from the Austro-Hungarian empire to Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand at the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the architecture in Sofia is a far cry from the Emerald City of Oz, aside from maybe the tinges of copper-turned-green on the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, but to me the bricks add a storybook quirkiness and a hint that the city doesn’t worry about taking itself too seriously. That, and they are really helpful for people like me with no sense of direction, as they always lead you to one famous landmark or another.

Our guide – I think her name was Mulva – made sure to tell us her favorite secret of Sofia, something she said most residents don’t even know.  She led us to a wrought iron fence behind a church near the Square of Tolerance – an intersection shared by a mosque, a catholic church and a synagogue – and asked us to crane our necks to see what was leaning up on a barely visible side of the building.  It was a giant red star made from metal and glass, and according to Mulva, is the same star that was dismantled from the Communist Party House in 1990 on the date that marked the fall of the Communist regime. Now semi-hid it for safekeeping, it’s a beautifully crafted object with obvious controversial significance; I figure they just weren’t sure what to do with it. 

Toward the end of the tour we came across a tree full of red and white string spun together and tied around the branches. Mulva told us these are called Martenitsa, and that on March 1st every year, a holiday called Baba Marta, people tie these woven yarns on their friends and family as bracelets as a welcoming of the spring season, and wishes for good health.  Later in March, whenever the wearer first sees a stork or budding tree, they know it’s time to cut off the strings, and some tie them to trees. A celebration of love, health and warm weather? It’s hard to believe we haven’t adopted this tradition in the US, given the oppressive cabin fever most people with office jobs are feeling by the beginning of March. I might just take it upon myself to spread the word (and the yarn) in New York.

I made my way to an excellent array of junk at the daily flea market and then found my way (with difficulty) to a speakeasy-style dessert and organic cocktail bar hidden in a 19th century mansion with – predictably – no sign. Through an alley there was a door that looked like it lead to an upstairs apartment, and it sort of did, as the place felt more like a wealthy relative’s finely decorated living room than any bar I’ve ever been in. Not surprisingly, the name of the place is The Apartment. There was no hostess and the labyrinthine rooms sprawled in every direction. Luckily, they all lead to the kitchen where two young women were hanging out in aprons, one mixing green liquid together in a blender, the other one watching. The kitchen was homey and non-industrial, with glass case refrigerators holding shelves full of multicolored, pulpy juices and enticing desserts. I paid 4lv (about $2.50) for a sundae glass full of chocolate and cream.

I sat there in the glowing red room under floating origami birds hung from the ceiling, eating a most sublime and original confection, thinking about effortless art, the Eastern Bloc, red stars and yellow bricks, and how someday I’d like to come back in March and tie bracelets all over Sofia.