My first ever trip to Bulgaria. I boarded the Olympic airways flight to Sofia, a cramped plane, and a full flight. Our company has a lot of IT people in Sofia so several of my fellow passengers were colleagues. The flight was more or less on time. I had only had luggage but waited for some colleagues to collect check in baggage, while I changed some Euros into Bulgarian currency. The exchange rate was an extremely stingy 1.65 (The official rate should be nearer 1.95).

Armed with the cash, we headed off to take a cab. The drive to the Kempinski Hotel was a drab affair with a heavy drizzle over the city. It will be interesting to see Sofia in the sunshine one day, but it seemed a fairly miserable place. Our driver was also a morose guy who hadn’t spent long in charm school. Having said that, he drove us for 35 minutes to earn a 5 Euro fare.

Check in at the hotel was slow, as the hotel broke one of my cardinal rules. I always think that one way to incense people waiting at check in, when you only have a limited number of people to process them, is to have plenty of other staff standing around who appear to be doing nothing. The Kempinski did this in style with 2 check in staff and 4 onlookers (who occasionally interrupted them). I hated the place before I even got to my room.

The rooms were ok, in the plastic way that most 4 star hotel rooms are.

I determined to get out of the hotel at the first opportunity. Having hung up my clothes I set off to explore. The first thing I learned is that the hotel isn’t particularly near anything, and I wandered around in vain trying to find a bar or a decent restaurant. I also discovered that I had failed to bring my reading glasses, which would make any menu a no-no.

I headed back to the hotel to retrieve them. There apparently was some big government visitor or visitors at the hotel, and this became immediately obvious, as the car park was filled with large black Mercedes saloons, and the hotel entrance with burly bodyguards.

I mused that maybe this is what the Bulgarian secret police may have looked like (maybe do look like for all I know).

I had to wait 20 minutes for an elevator because there are not enough to cope with the level of guests in the hotel.

Glasses retrieved I walked across the street to the one restaurant that was close to the hotel. One of my colleagues said it was good, but I like to have a choice. I went in to find the place pretty empty. The waiters spoke good English and I spent some time studying the menu. Although I’m sure it was fairly expensive by local standards it was fairly cheap if you live in Euroland.

It seems to me that the cuisine has similarities to Romania with a very heavy emphasis on meat. Having said that the food was good and I also enjoyed watching English soccer which they showed on the TV, staying on after my meal to watch the end of the game.

Back to the hotel, and the secret police had decamped with presumably their quarry, and I went to bed.

The following day I was to be delivering a training, so found my way to the room we had booked. The room is in a conference centre which adjoins the hotel. It was cramped and dingy, and most of all absolutely FREEZING. I went out to complain to the manager, and came back to do my prep.

The morning session was fairly shambolic. It seemed that the heating depended on some electrical panel which was located in our room, so periodically and without warning, a flustered engineer barged into the room unannounced. He could see that I was annoyed at the interruptions, but repeatedly gave me the shrug which I guess is Bulgarian for “What else can I do”. I would have been more forgiving if his fumblings had had any impact on the temperature- we shivered in our coats.

The whole conference centre was hired by our company, with multiple meetings and trainings going on simultaneously. Coffee and lunch breaks were a mess as the hotel catering could not cope with the numbers, particularly the buffets running out of food before large numbers of people had eaten anything. When more was brought it was often tepid and ill-prepared. I really hate this hotel.

In the evening the course delegates took a cab to a restaurant. This one was even more upmarket (with prices to match). I’ve heard of the slow food movement- this was obviously the product of the snail-paced food movement. It was a long wait.
In the cab back the cab driver tried to negotiate his tip. I don’t like this on principle, but when we are talking a fare 5 Euros instead of 4, I decided I’d miss a few Bulgarian Lev less than he would.

The next day at lunch time I was collected by a colleague and taken from the hotel to the office, where I had a great meeting with the local HR team. They were bright and very demanding and I worked hard that afternoon. However we hit it off and I had won dome new friends. A colleague drove me through the rain to the airport, where once again the flight was full of colleagues.

I want to return to Sofia when the sun is shining. I don’t think I have seen the best of it.

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