April 2024. Sofia.
We seem to have left our first trip to Bulgaria till nearly last of all the European countries (still need Albania, the 3 micro nations, Moldova and Belarus, the last of which I guess is a bit inadvisable at the moment).
If you’re as young as me you may know Bulgaria chiefly for this moment from USA ’94;
(Yanks will only remember the Diana Ross penalty miss).
And of course the country’s best known musician was a key remember of a group with eight (8) Top 40 hits.
But I couldn’t have told you much more about it, bar its Balkan location, a post-war Communist legacy and a steady beach holiday trade that seemed to peak in the mid-90s after that World Cup quarter-final.
And now here we were, trying to get to grips with a new country in just 4 nights. Duncan managed it in two posts in 2022 (here and here); I may take a little longer. But I do have handpumps.
We dumped the bags in Hotel Sofia Place (£44), the first of four excellent Mrs RM picks, and promptly lost the key card but avoided a telling-off. Bulgarians seemed relaxed and efficient rather than effusive; I felt a little ashamed at our complete lack of prep on the language front, a deficiency that would be cruelly exposed if I asked for a particular flavour of crisps.
Not only was Sofia Place bang next to one of Duncan’s craft bar recommendations, it was perfect for pretty much everything.
Our early take was that Sofia was well down the European city league table, the highlight a view down Vitosha Boulevard to the snow-capped mountain beyond.
You could be in any modern city on that pedestrianised strip of pizza, ribs and coffee joints, so we headed straight back to the past at the Red Flat, a community-era flat left (apparently) untouched since the mid-80s.
The flat is dead central, minutes from the cathedrals and craft bars and private investigators, though its rear views aren’t the selling point.
Inside you get a communist version of Mr Straw’s house in Worksop, just a bit more hands-on.
So you get to cuddle the children’s teddies,
read their homework, drink their home-made liquor,
and play the actual family vinyl.
Press PLAY now and guess that tune;
Worth a half hour of your time, but you can have too much history. Time for a pub.
retiredmartin 
The nearest English equivalent to the Communist flat I can think of is Bevin Court in Clerkenwell, which was originally going to be named after Lenin and is near where he edited the Russian socialist newspaper Iskra when he was in exile in London in the early twentieth century: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246687
There is also Engels House, a tower block in Eccles, which is in the Eastern Bloc architectural style, although the people living there seem unaware of the local factory owner it’s named after: https://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=457
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Thanks for that, Matthew. Fascinating history.
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Matthew,
We mustn’t confuse Bevin and Bevan, whose wife I met when she was my MP.
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I may still have that Led Zeppelin album!
Dick
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I certainly have !
There must be millions of them about.
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