Trains
Route Istanbul Halkalı to Sofia
Time 11 h, overnight
Season October
Notebook no. 19
The sleeper leaves from Halkalı, a station on the edge of Istanbul that feels like the edge of everything, and for the first hour there is nothing to see but the lights of the suburbs sliding backwards. Then the compartment settles. Someone produces cheese. The conductor, who has done this for twenty-two years, tells me which side to sit on for the Maritsa in the morning.
The border at Kapıkule is the part people warn you about and the part I like best: everyone off, passports stamped by a man in a small warm room, everyone on, the train sighing forward into Bulgaria. I slept for four hours and woke to yellow fields and a mountain. In Sofia I walked from the station to a café that opened at seven and wrote until the coffee was gone.
