24|24

This weekend, I was in Sofia for pretty much 24 hours and it was my 24th visit in this city.  Yes, I almost could not believe this number myself, but I painstakingly went through my archive, aka e-Mail inbox to search for all my booking confirmations for flights to Sofia. Somehow, a year without a visit to Sofia feels incomplete and that's why I decided to "cash in" some of my frequent flier miles for a free flight to the Bulgarian capital. As I also used miles to pay for taxes, it really cost me zero Euros and that's why it didn't feel quite so crazy and extravagant to fly out on Saturday afternoon and departing on Sunday evening. I did't splurge on the usual 5* hotel of my business travelling days but tried a very nice, very central 4* hotel, that ended up being a good choice. Was this flying visit worth it? Definitely! It hit the spot of business-trip (at least by plane) deprived me and took me back to my favourite Eastern European city (currently proudly in charge of the EU presidency, by the way) where each walk is an adventure and exercise in not breaking your neck tripping over a loose part of the pavement, where most restaurants in the city have smaller aquarium-like satellite buildings for smokers who smoke while they eat, where security guards stalk you as you practice your Cyrillic reading skills on pots of face cream in DM and where Starbucks (and most other drinks and food) is pretty much half of what you would pay in Vienna and you can get from the airport to the city centre with a metro ticket for 1,60 BGN (approx 0.8 EUR). Attractive price-points aside, I have given up of trying to discover just why I like it so much, but I do and I am looking forward to my 25th visit...possibly later this year.