The Station and Love: The Story of Sofia Central Station
He had to kill time somehow. The waiting room was almost deserted; only an elderly couple was sitting by their worn-out bags, bulging with luggage. They were holding hands and looking fearfully at the illuminated timetable across the way, as if not quite sure where to go.
The saleswoman in the kiosk for coffee, newspapers, and chocolates was bored. She tossed her black, curly hair, looked discontentedly at her chipped manicure, and sighed. Every day she hoped something good would happen to her, something different that would carry her far away from the train station, away from the disdain or flattering smiles of the customers, and away from the smell of burnt banitsas.
A young woman crossed the huge room, dragging a crying child and a small suitcase behind her. The child's father rushed after them, tried to say something, probably to stop them, then gave up and walked back. The waiting room emptied once again.
He stepped onto the platform and lit a cigarette. The sun was beating down, lifting from the rails that characteristic scent of the railway—sharp, industrial, yet evoking memories of journeys, brief encounters, long goodbyes, and the feverish excitement of setting off on a long trip.
A signal sounded, and a train slowly but unstoppably entered the station. It looked like a metal dragon possessing so much latent power that submitting to human commands seemed like some mystical miracle. It was as if an awkward giant had been tamed, yet it still inspired awe and fear.
The train stopped right in front of him, its cars opened their iron jaws and spilled out the hurried passengers. Directly opposite was the window of a compartment, clouded like the water in a swampy lake.
Suddenly a face appeared behind the glass. The girl had stood up and was trying to open the window for a breath of fresh air.
Their eyes met. She froze, with her hands raised toward the frame, then let them down and smiled.
Neither the fair hair tousled by the journey, nor the delicate skin, nor even the round green eyes mattered. Only that special feeling mattered, that right then, in that moment, life was becoming perfection. The search, the wandering along the twists and turns of love, the falls, and the unhealed wounds had remained in the past. The two of them had simply recognized each other.
He didn't know what to do. Instinctively, he took a drag from the cigarette and threw it into the train wheels. He smiled timidly and waved, then awkwardly tilted his head and stared at her.
The girl was blowing him a kiss. She lightly pursed her pink lips, kissed the air, placed her palms against the glass, and stayed that way for a while. Maybe for a second, maybe for an eternity.
A signal sounded, and the train breathed heavily, shuddered, and slowly began to pull out of the station. He took a few steps, made as if to run alongside the window, but realized the futility of the gesture. She was there, he was here.
And that is all.
He could certainly have gotten into his car and intercepted the train at the next station. Or the one after that. Somewhere. He could have rushed into the carriage, pulled open the compartment door, and found out why this fleeting encounter troubled him so much. He could also have set off on a journey with the girl, put his arm around her shoulders, and the two of them could watch stations, landscapes, setting suns, and new moons pass by beyond the window glass. Watch how his entire life would pass from then on.
He did not know how he could do that. Somewhere a child, a job, responsibilities, and problems were waiting for him—problems that paralyzed his body and kept him rooted to the platform by the heavy shackles of everyday life. It was not sensible, it was not justified, and it was hardly possible.
And somewhere out there, on a train, traveled this wonderful girl in whom he had recognized his destiny.
Central Station Sofia – the history of a capital
Sofia, like any big city, has several train stations.
When the sun-tanned Sofiotes return from the sea, they first recognize Vitosha, which appears on the left side of the railway line. The women instinctively fix their hair, the men rub their stubble grown during the trip, and the children eagerly press their little noses against the glass.
After that, white spots appear on the buildings, the air of the Sofia plain rushes in through the open windows, and somewhere to the right, the remains of the metallurgical plant stick out. Only after that does the train rush toward the first Sofia station along the way—Iskar Station.
After shaking the tracks toward Poduyane Station and only after that reaching Central Station.
The First Central Railway Station Sofia
Sofia Central Railway Station is opened on August 1, 1888. Then the capital was connected to Europe by the railway line Constantinople - Sofia - Belovo. The opening of the station is a major event for the young Bulgarian state, and the railway turns Sofia into an important part of the international route between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
Today, the opening of a railway station does not seem like a particularly significant event, but in those years it was one of the most essential steps of the young Bulgarian state in its modern development through joining the so-longed-for European industry and culture.
To understand the station's significance at the time, it is enough to mention that it was one of the first public buildings and long served as a symbol of modernity and technological progress. It was a symbol of Bulgaria's new place—not as part of the declining Ottoman Empire, but as a small yet independent country looking to the West, filled with a new and therefore intensely bright self-confidence.
Architects Kolar, Prosek and Markov they design a harmoniously situated building not far from the center of Sofia, crowned with the first public clock and adorned with a small garden, a fountain, and wrought-iron candelabras in front of the entrance. Thus, the claims of the state and its capital to look more or less like a Central European country seem to be asserted.
The photographs from that time suggest the atmosphere created by train travel. For most people, this was a special event, accompanied by many experiences. The anxiety of the peasants coming to Sofia about how they would manage in the big city, the marked self-confidence of the ladies traveling in first class, the excitement of wide-eyed kids tightly gripping their fathers' hands. The hooves of the waiting horse-drawn carriages clattered, porters carried heavy suitcases on their shoulders, and weeping mothers waved handkerchiefs at young Bulgarians leaving for foreign universities.
From the old train station to socialist architecture
Of course, there was no way the station could remain in that state during socialism. Not only because of the city's industrial development, heavy traffic, and growing population. Its architectural style did not correspond to the new elite's understanding of what a capital city's station in a socialist state should look like. As a result, the old building was demolished on April 15, 1974 year and the construction of the new one, conceived and implemented by, begins very quickly architect Milko Bechev and with the artistic design of the artist Ivan Kirkov.
This project does not please the eye with the harmonious proportions of the Renaissance, nor with the lavishness of the Baroque, much less with the curves and forms borrowed from nature in Art Nouveau. The building looks like a factory.
Even today, following the complete renovation in 2016, it evokes industrial associations. Perhaps that was precisely the architect's intention – an emphasized functionality. Even the crossed columns on the facade do not resemble a decorative element, but rather a combination of an industrial and a military structure. I wonder if any of the enthusiastic creators of the Bauhaus would have rejoiced at it, or would have shaken their head in wonder at where the principles of that architectural school have led.
The only thing trying to bring some spirituality is Ivan Kirkov's sculpture. Yet she is also austere, somewhat gloomy, and due to the lack of good lighting, she is rarely noticed by travelers, each one hurried and gazing somewhere else.
Mother Serdika – the symbol in front of the station
In front of the building, in the round opening of the underpass, stands a huge monument, called by its creator Velichko Minekov „Serdica – Mother“.
This is a socialist madonna, proudly embracing her son, who has raised his hand with a decidedly unchildlike gesture to greet the residents and guests of the capital. I wonder how many passersby see this figure, and if they pay attention to it, what they might think.
The mother named Serdika rules over the station square, wise and calm, instilling self-confidence and faith in the future.
Velichko Minekov He presented at the Sofia railway station an image that combines the best qualities of the Bulgarian woman.
The colorful crowd in and around the station contrasts with the sleek, functional building. People are hurrying or loitering aimlessly, carrying heavy bags or standing with their hands in their pockets in front of the illuminated board.
Sometimes a couple of lovers can be seen leaving together on their first trip together, thinking that no one notices how they inadvertently touch and their bodies are drawn to each other in the wonderful and unique dance of love.
Why train stations are places of meetings and love
Most of us do not perceive railway stations as a place that can be associated with romance. We think of them as part of the urban landscape associated with purely practical activities.
But in fact, the journey, the change, the goodbyes and hellos, the fleeting encounters, and the excitement of the upcoming clash with something new and unknown are among the most romantic experiences.
And love, of course, that sudden, shattering, and terrifying in its finality love, sung in thousands of poems, whispered hastily or dramatically experienced a whole lifetime.
Quite a journey.
The railway and romanticism
Whether by coincidence or not, the railways and romanticism appeared at the same time as two prominent phenomena in the industrial era.
However, while the railway is seen as a symbol of the technological revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, romanticism is pointed to as a reaction against industrialization and the attempt to scientifically rationalize nature and social relations.
Anyway, both are part of a new perception of the world as a place of unlimited possibilities.
The old, religious view of man's earthly life is, generally speaking, pessimistic. According to religions, we are sinners by definition and depend on the mercy of God, and our full realization is in the afterlife, in the dreamed-of paradise.
Adam and Eve are called to live a difficult life in order to redeem their disobedience to God's commandments. They taste the forbidden fruit of knowledge and are banished from the garden of eternal bliss. From then on, their life is subordinated to survival and reproduction, to the struggle with nature, and to labor to earn their daily bread. And Eve will bear her children in pain because she was the first to reach for the apple, and all her generations will live in obedience to God so that one day they can return to the state of innocence and peace only after their death. Perhaps.
The new, modern world is much more optimistic. The individual is freed from the idea of original sin and can rely on their own qualities, desires, and aspirations. In this sense, the possibility of physical travel through space corresponds to the belief that strong emotions, intuition, and inspiration are that spiritual freedom which defines the life of man, the sole creator of his own destiny.
Travel and love, the eternal temptations of modern man.
Travel and romantic love
It is not for nothing that so many romantic works have been conceived and realized during travel. Nor is it for nothing that trains, with their velvet-covered compartments, railway waiting rooms, and surrounding teahouses, often become the setting for the beginning of that special feeling called romantic love. It is enough to mention „Anna Karenina“.
It is claimed that romantic love is a cultural invention of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is a redefinition of human relationships that leaves its mark on the understanding and feeling of love to this day.
Many researchers claim that before the development of the romantic notion of love, the issue of happiness in marriage was not raised at all. For centuries, young people came together as a result of arrangements between families.
Of course, physical attraction was not underestimated. In Bulgarian traditions, for example, there are many customs that allowed young people to get to know and like each other – horo dances, gathering bees, Lazaruvane, Koleduvane, and many others.
Intimate relationship, marriage, and parental interests were perceived as a single entity, with an emphasis on material relationships and ensuring the successful existence of the young family.
The union of two young people was based, if not entirely on mutual benefit, at least on logical and entirely sensible reasons. Romanticism, however, slowly but definitively changes the idea of love and marriage.
How romantic love is born
Today we live in the era of the romantic understanding of the relationship between two partners. We cannot list the novels, poems, songs, paintings, and films that are an integral part of our culture.
From classical works to the clichés of mass art, from sonnets and fairy tales to romantic comedies, from music to Tchaikovsky's „Swan Lake“ To any modern song, we perceive and create love within the framework of romantic culture. We are all romantic lovers.
Nevertheless, we rarely try to define and understand the essence of this attitude toward love. We take its existence for granted, even if we are alone, even if we live in some unsatisfying relationship.
What is romantic love really?
The soulmate and the moment of recognition
First, we believe that there is one person in the world who is our soulmate. Sometimes we search for them unsuccessfully our whole life, make wrong choices, suffer, and despair, but we still continue to walk the difficult path of hope. In other cases, we are convinced that we have found them and dedicate our whole lives to them.
One way or another, we evaluate our life's success or failure in light of whether we have discovered this person, or have managed to keep them and build a fulfilling relationship with them.
It is not without reason that many works of art end at the very moment when the characters finally meet their spiritual half, their great love, that one and only among billions.
The long journey is over, we have found our entrance to the Garden of Eden, the anticipation and tension have subsided.
End of the story.
Furthermore, romantic love is based on the idea that there is a single moment of enlightenment in which we recognize the right person for us.
Often this happens under unforeseen circumstances. Chance meetings, exchanged glances, gestures and scents, trains, airports, cafes, or even something more dramatic. A young man saves a girl from a car crash. A maiden kisses a frog that turns into a prince, or a prince touches a swan to watch in amazement as it becomes a beautiful young woman.
This moment is actually a manifestation of something truly remarkable – our instincts. They are much more complex than simple sexual attraction.
Most often it is not about the most attractive partner, or at least not the only attractive one. The psychological nature of instinct, and not only regarding falling in love, is extremely complex and still not fully explored.
Instinct, choice, and love
One of the theories, developed for decades now, is related to the Freudian interpretation of childhood. According to it, we instinctively like what is familiar to us from our early years and is imprinted in our psyche as a subconscious, yet immutable way of thinking and behavior.
Thus we recognize something familiar, something cozy, which attracts us and makes us feel good. Consequently, in the romantic choice of a partner, we are guided by the model experienced through our parents and filtered through our childhood perception. Most likely, in this case, we will prefer someone who is not suitable for us ourselves, but rather the one who most successfully corresponds to this model.
It is probably no delusion that childhood-familiar relationships instill a sense of security. If a young man resembles our brother or father in some way, if a young woman reminds us of the girl from the neighboring yard, we feel at ease in the new relationship and expect to experience those positive emotions that have held sway over us for years.
On the other hand, this could also be a disaster. Not every childhood is happy, not all parents are loving and responsible, not all mothers are angels, and not all fathers are well-intentioned patriarchs.
According to Freudian researchers, if we choose partners through signals from our childhood, it is very possible to repeat the same complexes, mistakes, and cause the same tragedies that we experienced at an early age.
Logic dictates that we should not be guided by dark, confused, and dramatic Oedipal complexes. We ought to consciously choose someone of a similar age, social environment, interests, and behavioral patterns—precisely the kind of person a loving and sensible parent would like for us.
Probably the centuries-old practice of a marriage of convenience, by contract, according to well-weighed reasons, whatever we may call it, is more favorable for the stability and success of the future couple.
In Bulgarian society, for instance, still marked by patriarchal traditions, the subordination of instinct to reason is practically a norm of behavior. After all, whenever we open our grandmothers' old chests, we always find a folk costume, an embroidered apron, or a hand-stitched kerchief. That is why many of us fall in love driven by an irresistible attraction to someone, experience our romantic feelings intensely, but when it comes to commitment, we mentally don the headscarves of our virtuous, hardworking, and intensely realistic great-grandmothers and begin making lists of the pros and cons of each candidate for our hearts.
However, trusting one's feelings could also have decisive advantages.
If we accept arranged marriage as an old and established tradition, from a general historical perspective it may not turn out to be all that ancient. It likely arose with the emergence of property, i.e., no more than 10,000 years ago, which is a relatively short period in the overall history of mankind.
Long before that, over the course of at least a hundred thousand years and more, our ancestors managed to reproduce their generations in such a successful way that they populated all continents. Could romantic love actually be the rediscovery of something very ancient, coming from our most distant ancestors and gifted to us by evolution to ensure the flourishing of the human race?
Furthermore, modern neurology and psychology have a different view from Freudianism regarding what we call instinctive thinking. It turns out that this is a special kind of brain center operation through which they manage to act extremely effectively, albeit unconsciously. In fractions of a second, solutions to problems, answers to questions, and strategies for action in complex situations are found.
Instinct, or the sixth sense, is an evolutionary mechanism that extremely successfully complements and even surpasses conscious, logical thinking.
If this is true for many everyday activities as well as countless scientific discoveries and creative achievements, why shouldn't it be true for something as important as choosing a life partner?
Perhaps that romantic flash of feelings, sudden and final, is precisely the expression of the powerful instinct for self-preservation and reproduction that helps us make the rightest decisions.
Perhaps romantic love is not a modern invention by poets, artists, and philosophers, but an old and reliable practice dating back to the beginning, to the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve. And perhaps it is most sensible not to be all that sensible and to trust it.
Reason or emotion?
In the seventies in European cinema, there was a trend for films to end without a definite conclusion. It was assumed that viewers would enjoy inventing it themselves, after having evaluated the storylines, made sense of the characters' personalities, and felt the atmosphere. Consequently, to devise their own ending.
Let's do the same here. We will not answer the question of when a relationship is more successful and fulfilling – when it is based on rational and logical conclusions from the circumstances, or when it is entirely influenced by feelings, intuition, and romance.
The end remains for you.
Let us not forget, however, that the man who fell in love with the girl on the train in five minutes never forgot that moment for the rest of his life.
The series contains: Sofia Crossroads
Next The streets „Moscow“ and „G.S. Rakovskiy“
If you missed it: Down along Vasil Levski Blvd.„
See more about the author Darina Vankova here
