My Home Bulgaria |
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GETTING THERE FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND Given Bulgaria's location on the southeast fringes of Europe, the overland journey from Britain and Ireland can be both time consuming and costly, however rewarding. By far the most convenient way to get there is to fly, although scheduled airline services to Sofia tend to be expensive. Alternative options include flying to another city in southeast Europe and continuing by land, or signing up for an inexpensive package holiday. FLIGHTS The sad fact is that unlike Athens, Istanbul or Budapest there's not enough volume in air traffic to Sofia to have created a discount market: finding the least expensive seat is a matter of scouring the newspapers, checking the independent travel specialists and utilizing any student/ youth bargains you may be eligible for. Peak times for flights to Bulgaria are July and August and around the Easter, Christmas and New Year holidays. At these times be prepared to book well in advance. Only BALKAN, the Bulgarian national airline, and British Airways offer direct flights to Sofia, from where you can pick up connecting flights to Ruse, Dobrich, Kardzhali, Plovdiv, Burgas and Varna. BALKAN has scheduled flights from London Heathrow five times a week (daily except Tues and Thurs). The journey takes just over three hours. An Apex fare (which must include at least one Saturday night away, and is valid for a maximum of 3 months) currently costs about £250 return, as much as £50 during peak times, and you need to book at least two weeks in advance. British Airways offer direct flights to Sofia three times a week (Tues, Thurs & Sun) for roughly the same price, although limited-period special offers may involve small discounts of about £10-20. Discount flight agents can sometimes offer you a place on the BALKAN London-Sofia service for a slightly cheaper price than the airline itself, and most of them will offer discounts for students or the under-26s. However you go, though, you'll rarely pay less than £200 return, and many discount flights involve travelling with another European carrier for at least part of the journey (such as Austrian Airlines, Swissair or Finnair) and changing planes at least once. Independent travel specialists such as Campus and STA Travel (see over) are the best places to start looking. Package tour operators may have a few discounted tickets on charter flights to the coast, which work out far cheaper than scheduled London-Sofia flights; but these are rarely advertised in the press and you'll have to contact operators direct to find out what's on offer. Similarly, you may find packages that fly from a regional airport that's more convenient than London - see "Package Deals", below. You could also fly to another destination in southeast Europe, such as Budapest, Bucharest, Istanbul or Thessaloniki, and continue to Bulgaria overland. Flights to the Romanian capital Bucharest can be as expensive as those to Sofia, but cheap flights to Budapest, Istanbul and occasionally Thessaloniki are frequently advertised in the press - as ever, check out local papers, or the travel pages of Sunday newspapers, or ring one of the agents in the "Discount Flight Agents" box overleaf. BALKAN, 322 Regent St, London W1(0171/637 7637). British Airways, 156 Regent St, London W1R 6LB; 146 New St, Birmingham B2 4HN; 19-21 St Mary's Gate, Market St, Manchester Ml 1PU; 64 Gordon St, Glasgow G1 3RS; 32 Frederick St, Edinburgh EH2 2JR (all enquiries 0345/222111); 9 Fountain Centre, College St, Belfast BT1 6ET (0345/222111); Dublin reservations (1800/ 626747). PACKAGES DEALS The main advantage of package holidays to Bulgaria is their low cost. Flight-plus-accommodation deals are often cheaper than the price of a scheduled air fare alone, and even the most independent of travellers should consider the package option. Although they in theory tie you down to staying in one or two centres, there's nothing to prevent you from absenting yourself for a few days and indulging in a little exploration of your own. The most popular packages are beach holidays on the Black Sea coast, or winter skiing trips in a number of up and coming highland resorts. The season for summer packages runs from mid-May to late September, peaking in the first two weeks of August. The winter season runs from December to March, peaking in mid-February. There are also a number of other options: Balkan Holidays arrange numerous two-centre holidays, combining coastal and mountain resorts, Bulgarian and Romanian, or Bulgarian and Turkish destinations. If you want to tour Bulgaria in a rental car, staying in pre-booked accommodation along the way, Balkan Holidays will organize this for you too; although it's marginally cheaper to travel independently and make all the arrangements yourself. For a city break in Sofia, again try Balkan Holidays, or Peltours, a company specializing in travel to Eastern Europe, who will tailor a flight-plus-accommodation deal to your needs. HOLIDAYS ON THE COAST The main disadvantage of Bulgarian package holidays on the Black Sea coast is the nature of the principal holiday resorts themselves. The purpose-built complexes are often over-large and too far away from the nearest town or village, ensuring that you experience little of Bulgarian life. Beaches, however, are generally spotless, and coastal waters both warm and clean. Sunny Beach (Slanchev Bryag) and Golden Sands (Zlatni Pyasatsi) are the biggest (and the most soulless) of the tourist complexes, chock full of restaurants, bars and discos. Villa complexes and holiday villages (like Dyuni, south of Burgas) will appeal to holiday makers in search of something more tranquil. For now, the only summer package tour operator remains the state-owned Balkan Holidays, although some companies may run summer bus trips. Peak-season prices for holidays in Sunny Beach, Golden Sands, Albena and Dyuni hover around £300-350 for one week; £350-400 for two - but bear in mind that prices are often well over £100 lower in May and September. For those wishing to avoid big resorts and modern hotels, Balkan Holidays also offers holiday apartments in the old houses of Nesebar and Sozopol - about £275-300 per person for seven days in the high season, dropping to as little as £200 in May or September. Food and drink prices in package resorts are usually twice to three times as high as those in the rest of Bulgaria. Albena and Golden Sands are notoriously expensive, and you'll pay as much here as you do at home -worth bearing in mind when working out your budget. SKIING HOLIDAYS Balkan, Sunquest, First Choice, Neilson and Crystal Holidays all offer one- and two-week winter holidays at the Rhodope resort of Pamporovo, where British tourists make up about 75 percent of foreign guests, and Borovets in the Rila mountains. Balkan Holidays and Sunquest also sell packages to Mt Vitosha, just outside Sofia. Bansko and Malyovitsa in the mountains of the southwest, are up-and-coming resorts, although at present only Balkan go there. Expect to pay £275-375 for a week's holiday, half-board, at any of these resorts in the mid-February peak season, less in early January or March, and even less if you stay in apartments or chalets instead of hotels. Remember, though, that equipment and tuition (usually bookable in advance) will cost extra: about £30 a week for a lift pass, £20-30 for ski and boot rental, and £30-40 for six days' worth of skiing lessons. SPECIALIST HOLIDAYS A different type of package deal is the study tour, a specialized holiday for those with particular interests from monasteries to ornithology, archeology or folk dancing. These tend to be pricier than standard packages, but it's worth contacting ACE Study Tours and the British-Bulgarian Societyto see what's on offer. Balkan Holidays and Sunquest offer more leisurely two-week bus tours taking in Bulgarian monasteries and historic towns. Prices hover at around £500 for seven days, £600 for a fortnight. Another option is a hiking holiday: several operators offer two-week treks in the Rila and Pirin mountains, calling in at tourist attactions on the way. Costs are in the region of £650-700. PACKAGES, STUDY TOURS AND SPECIALIST OPERATORS Balkan Holidays, 19 Conduit St, London W1R 9TD (0171/493 8612). Extensive summer and skiing packages. Crystal Holidays, Crystal House, The Courtyard, Arlington rd, Surbiton, Surrey KT68BW(0181/ 399 5144). Ski packages to Borovets and Pamporovo. First Choice, First Choice House, London Rd, Crawley, Wast Sussex RH1Q2GX(011293/ 560777). Ski packages to Borovets and Pamporovo. Inghams, 10-18 Putney Hiil. London SW15 6AX (0i81/789 3331), Ski packages. PACKAGES Neilson, 71 Hough Side Rd, Pudsey, Leeds LS28 9BR (0113/239 4555). Ski packages. Peltours Sovereign House. 11-19 Ballards Lane, Finchley, London N3 1UX (0181/346 9144). Tailor-made flight-plus-accommodation deals to Sofia Sunquest 9 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, London N41JX (*0181/800 8030). Winter packages and summer bus tours. STUDY TOURS ACE Study Tours, Babraham, Cambridge CB2 4AP 101223/335055). 5-day tours of Bulgaria, including selected monasteries, archaeological sights and folk architecture. British-Bulgarian Society, c/o Finsbury Library, 245 St John St, London EC1V 4NB (0171/837 2304). Membership (£7 a year) gives access to numerous special-interest tours, covering ornithology, botany, archaeology, embroidery and folk dancing. SPECIALIST OPERATORS Contilci Wells House, 15 Elmfieid Rd, Bromley. KentBR! 1LS(0181/2906422). Youth-oriented bus tours of Europe, with a couple of days'stay in Sofia. Exodus Expeditions, 9 Weir Rd, London SW12 0LT(01 81/675 5550), 14-day hiking tours in the Rila and Pirin mountains, including serious treks and camping expeditions. Departures in July, Aug and Sept. Explore Worldwide Ltd, 1 Frederick St, Aldershot Hants 6U11 1LQ(01252/319448). 14-day hiking tour of the Pirin and Rila mountains. Not all walks are compulsory and accommodation is in hotels and guesthouses. Tours run June-Sept Naturetrek Chautara, Bighton, nr Arlesford, Hants S024 9RB (01962/733051). 10-day ornithology tours taking in the Black Sea and the Rhodope mountains. Toms take place in Sept. Sherpa Expeditions, 131a Heston Rd, Hounslow, MddxTW5 0RD (0181/577 2717). 14-day treks in the Rila and Pirin ranges, mostly staying in mountain chalets. Departures in July andAug. BY TRAIN The most direct overland train routes to Bulgaria (Dieppe-Paris-Milan-Venice-Zagreb-Belgrade-Sofia or Ostende-Munich-Zagreb-Belgrade- Sofia) were disrupted by the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia. Services still run via the slightly longer Vienna-Budapest-Belgrade-Sofia route, although over the past few years travellers have been advised to avoid this; primarily because Westerners traversing the former Yugoslavia are targets for petty theft, but also because Yugoslav ticket inspectors often refuse to honour international train tickets. However, the signs are that travel conditions in rump Yugoslavia are slowly returning to normal, so you shouldn't discount the Belgrade route entirely. The safest option for getting to Bulgaria by train remains the significantly longer route, which loops through Hungary and Romania before entering Bulgaria at the northern town of Ruse – a journey requiring two and a half days and a transit visa for Romania, available at the border or from the Romanian consulate in your home country for around £13/$20. Perhaps the most roundabout train route to Bulgaria is London—Paris—Milan—Brinctisi, followed by a ferry to Patras in Greece, from where you can continue by train to Sofia via Athens and Thessaloniki. An even more adventurous variation would be to take a ferry from Bari in Italy to Durres in Albania, travelling by bus across Albania and the Former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia before entering Bulgaria from the west. Bear in mind., though, that Albanian public transport is notorious for its slowness and lack of timetables, and that Albania is pretty wild in general. BUYING TICKETS Buying a through ticket from London to Sofia is unnecessarily complicated. British Rail's International Rail Centre (see facing page) can only sell tickets as far as Budapest. For tickets to Bucharest, Sofia and beyond they refer you to the British Rail Voyager section, which specializes in long-distance travel. Unfortunately Voyager do not receive personal or telephone callers, and take an age to respond to letters or faxes requesting information. It's far easier to travel to Budapest and buy tickets for the onward journey once you're there. A standard second-class return from London to Budapest (changing at Paris) weighs in at £308. If you're under 26 you'll pay £275, so might do better to opt for an InterRail pass, which allows the holder free travel on most European rail lines, including Bulgaria's. A zone system operates, allowing you to pay £229 for a three-zone pass which would cover your journey from the Channel ports to Bulgaria and back again. There's also a pass that covers Eastern Europe alone. Under-26s are also eligible for discounted BIJ tickets from Eurotrain or Wasteels. These can be booked for journeys from any station in Britain to any major station in Europe; they remain valid for two months and allow as many stopovers as you want along a pre-specified route. However, at £275 for a return ticket from London to Sofia, this will only save you money if you plan to be in Bulgaria for more than a month. Travellers over 26 can buy a more limited InterRail 26 (plus) ticket, for £209 for fifteen days, or £269 for a month; this only covers nineteen countries from the Netherlands eastwards to Turkey, although add-on tickets are available from London via Belgium. If you're moving on from Bulgaria to another country, remember that international tickets purchased in Bulgaria can be very expensive; another argument for opting for either InterRail or BIJ passes. For more on getting around Bulgaria by train. North Americans and Australasians travelling to Bulgaria from Britain or elsewhere in Europe can use a number of discount passes. BY BUS There are no direct buses from Britain to Bulgaria, and services to cities in neighbouring Turkey, Greece and the former Yugoslavia have been disrupted by instability in the latter. However, it's worth contacting Britain's main international bus operators Eurolines to see whether services are running to Balkan destinations, or scanning local pages and listings magazines for news of what other companies are offering. Currently, the nearest you can get to Bulgaria by direct bus is Budapest: the Eurolines service departs on Monday and Friday mornings and takes just over 24 hours to arrive. A return ticket costs £119. Alternatively, you can travel with Eurolines to Paris, Brussels or Cologne and pick up direct services to Sofia from there. The Paris route is the cheapest, costing £200 return, but there's just one connection per week (currently on Mon), and you'll be travelling for the best part of three days. APPROACHING FROM TURKEY Travellers approaching Bulgaria from Turkey will find that several Turkish bus operators run regular services from Istanbul to Plovdiv, Sofia, Varna, Burgas and elsewhere. Prices on the Istanbul-Sofia route hover around $10-15 each way. Numerous travel agents in the central. Sultanahmet district of town will reserve seats; otherwise head for west Istanbul's main bus station at Topkapi, where most of the bus operators have offices. Bear in mind, however, that Bulgarian-Turkish border crossings are usually clogged up with East European bus parties travelling to or from the Bosphorus, and long queues at the frontier (a wait of 5-8 hrs for buses is not uncommon) ensure that this option can be long, tedious, anr1 difficult to timetable. TRAIN AND BUS ENQUIRIES International Rail Centre, Victoria Station, London SW1 (0171/8342345). : British Rail Voyager, International Rail Centre, Victoria Station, London SW1 (fax 0171 6306998). Eurolines, National Express (alt enquiries 0990/808080). Eurostar, EPS House, Waterloo Station, London SE1 8SE (reservations (01233/617575). Eurotrain, 52 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0AG (0171/730 3402) Wasteels. Victoria Station (by platform 2), London SW1V 1JY (0171/834 7066) DRIVING AND HITCHING Driving to Bulgaria is not an easy option. The most direct way is through the former Yugoslavia, following the E5 from Belgrade down to the Dimitrovgrad/Kalotina border crossing. However, until the internal conflict is finally resolved, this is most definitely not an advisable route to follow. Most travellers instead opt to drive through Austria/Hungary/Romania, heading for the two main frontier crossings at Calafat-Vidin and Giurgiu-Ruse. The E5 runs from the Belgian coast to Budapest, passing through Brussels, Koln and Vienna on the way. From here, the road crossing into Romania at Nadlac and continuing to Arad, Timisoara and Dobreta-Tumu Severin is probably the quickest way of getting to the Bulgarian frontier. Be warned, however, that the trip can be a gruelling experience. East of Budapest, road conditions deteriorate markedly, and the vast increase in transit traffic crossing Romania in order to avoid the former Yugoslavia has rendered traditionally overloaded border crossings even more nightmarish. If you are planning to drive, the AA(01256/ 20123) and the RAC (0345/333222) give comprehensive service offering general advice on all facets of driving to Bulgaria. They'll provide addresses of useful contact organizations, and advise you of the best route to follow. Remember that you'll need an international driving licence, available from the motoring organizations in your home country for a small fee, together with an international Green Card from your insurance company. Both documents are obligatory in Hungary and recommended in the other countries you'll be driving through. HITCHING TO BULGARIA Quite apart from the obvious, and very real dangers involved, hitching to Bulgaria is not simple. Even when fully traversable the road down through the former Yugoslavia was notoriously awful for hitching, and the long route through Hungary and Romania is, if anything, worse. However, approaching from Turkey or Greece is feasible. Otherwise, the best idea seems to be to hitch as far as you can on the Western European highway network, heading through Germany and Austria as far as the Hungarian border and making for Budapest, from where you can complete the journey reasonably cheaply by public transport. |
Property in Bulgaria - Info on Bulgaria - Getting there from Britain
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