At 3am we were woken up by the guard and two ticket inspectors who told us our Eurail Pass was not valid in Serbia and pointed to a statement on the backing sheet to that effect. We knew that was wrong as we had used the pass four times earlier in Serbia, but they insisted we pay 30 euros extra. Presumably the option was to get off the train at Nis, so we paid. This was the worst train trip we had ever endured and we actually paid twice for it. We had to wake twice more at the border for exit from Serbia and entry to Bulgaria. Such a waste of time and money. The rest of Europe functions quite well without border checks.
We arrived at Sofia two hours late and a man holding Euro Travel cards offered to help us book our train to Istanbul, which can only be done in Sofia. We booked sleeper beds for 19 euros with our pass, but the ticket did not say whether we had cabins with 2, 4 or 6 beds. No matter how hard we try, they always give us 6. Our guide found us a taxi and asked for 5 euros for 15 minutes work (pretty good result for him) and the taxi driver charged 10 euros to take us to Hotel Rial where we paid 30 euros for a room. Well worth the shower, wifi and bed. Time only for a sightseeing walk around the block, but Sofia looked a pleasant spot for tourists.
The driver agreed to pick us up at 5pm to catch the train at 6:30, so we wondered why he did not turn up and the hotel rang for another taxi. Half way to the station we saw the clock in the taxi showed 6:23pm. No one told us that we had crossed a time zone. We got to the station at 6:30 but for once our train left on time and we had that sick stomach feeling. We went back to our ticket lady and asked to book for tomorrow. She told us that the train to Istanbul actually had no beds, because passengers were transferred to a bus at the Turkey border.
We went to the bus station to get Bulgarian money to pay the train fare, but before we found the ATM we talked to a calm and efficient young lady who offered us a choice of four buses to Istanbul which would get us there more quickly than the train. We bought two tickets for 48 euros total and left Sofia at 8:30pm. The lady was our substitute for Olivera in Sofia. She gave us an excellent Plan B. We would have been sitting up all night in Plan A anyway.
At the border we took two hours to exit and enter and we were very glad we had our electronic visas for Turkey printed out as there were long queues of cars and buses. We can now see Olivera's point that people find buses more reliable and comfortable than trains in Eastern Europe.
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