Checking Out Metro Trains & Exploring Sofia’s Underground Subway

Checking Out Metro Trains & Exploring Sofia’s Underground Subway

Hello everyone and welcome to the Transit Nomad family. In this video, we’ll be checking out metro trains and exploring Sophia’s underground. Before we get started, I’d like to let you know that as an active traveler and business owner with experience, I might be able to assist you with trip planning, life coaching, and business consulting with all the details available at buymeacop.com/transitnomad or through the link in the video description below. This is where you can also find lots of exclusive content on many different cities around the world, my secrets, tips, PDF guides, and the option to request a custom video on any topic that matters to you. With that being said, let’s begin checking out Sofia’s metro system. We are currently located in Sophia, Bulgaria. It’s 2025 and we are standing right by the entrance to the subway. So, let’s go ahead and take a look and see what it feels like getting into one of the subway trains and what the station looks like and what their system looks like. Overall, this is the map of their subway lines. It looks like there are four different lines, I believe. And this is the entrance to line number two and number three. We’re gonna be taking line number two, and riding it from here, which is where we are right now, to over here, European Union Station. Only one stop because my partner needs to do her nails over there. So, that’s going to be our business today. Let’s go ahead and see what the inside looks like. We have very important business today. You can see the entrance looks very clean. At least this one and kind of new, not too busy. I’m not sure if it’s a newer station or maybe it’s just been remodeled. This is the entrance to number three. But we need to go to number two. H interesting. Maybe once we enter number three, there will be a way to transfer to number two because these signs they are pointing to outside exits and when we entered it was saying that we can also access line number two from this entrance. So, let’s take a chance. There’s nothing to lose anyway. In order to enter the system, we need to scan our card. So, my partner would go first and I would go next. Uh, let’s see. We scan it over here, I guess. Okay. As far as I know, the cost depends only on time. It’s uh about $1 American dollar for up to 30 uh for up to 60 minutes of usage. And it might go up depending on um if you transfer and you use it for more than an hour. Uh the maximum daily charge is actually only two American dollars and some change, which is very affordable. I really love using public transportation here because it’s so cheap, at least for us who are coming here from the west. It’s very affordable and we see the station looks very nice actually. Very nice and spacious and not too busy. But I still see only line number three here. So, are there any signs pointing to number two? Yes, it looks like if we go here, we might be able to reach line number two. Let’s see. It’s cool that we have the whole station to ourselves right now. Maybe if we go through the station that would allow us to transfer to number two. Yep. The signs are pointing to straight ahead with line number two listed there. But we can capture this train arriving in the meantime. Looks like one of the newer trains. I was hoping to catch an older train, but uh as far as I know, they do not run on line three, but we might be lucky and catch one on line number two. Although, it is a weekend right now, so I’m not exactly sure if it’s going to be possible. They might be saving all their trains for peak hours, but let’s see. We’ll find out soon enough. This actually reminds me a little bit of Taipei MRT system. The entrances are like this with the fans and the gate that opens up when the train is arriving. I mean, when the train doors open. Uh, the platform is rather short. I believe the train had only four cars, maybe five cars, so it was relatively short. Uh, but maybe it’s good enough for this city. It’s not a huge city. Everything looks kind of new and clean and comfortable. I don’t have any complaints. They also have benches if you want to have a seat, which is appreciated. And it looks better than some stations we saw in Brussels in Belgium. We just came from Brussels. Okay, if we want to transfer to number two, you can see the signs are translated to English here. So, this is very convenient for visitors who don’t understand the Bulgarian. They can use English signs. It’s kind of hit and miss in Sofia. Sometimes they have English signs, sometimes they don’t. But also, it’s the same thing in in um Brussels where I just came from. Most of the time they actually did not have any English signs or English translations. Everything was either in French or in Flemish, which is a dialect of um Dutch. So, I did not understand either of those and sometimes had to just kind of uh take my chances or use Google Translate, which can be very helpful in these kind of situations. The signs are pointing for us to go this way to transfer to line number two. I’m pretty sure it may have been faster if we just uh kept walking on the street until we saw the better entrance for line number two, but uh for the purpose of this video, I think it’s good that we are exploring their underground system and all the transfers and what it looks like inside the system. So, it’s good that we are capturing it this way, I think. We can see an train departing going in the opposite direction from where we need to go. That also looks like one of the newer trains. Does not look like an older train. The station also looks nice and clean. I’m actually pretty impressed by the station. How about you? Certainly looks very nice and clean and a little bit shiny. Actually, I like it a lot. I like their decorations here. I’m not sure what this is, but it looks kind of kind of cool. My partner is an expert when it comes to art. So, can you explain it for us? And can you explain what is this? Any meaning or But it looks better than graffiti. That’s all I know. If anybody knows what this is or what it means, feel free to share a comment below so that um we can get a little bit more better educated. But this platform definitely looks longer than the platform on line number three. It’s very spacious. Um I do like the interior. Also, there is a lot of areas for seating. There are a lot of areas for seating. They have signs in both Bulgarian and English. They also have this handy map of um public transportation and some of the rapid transit lines here. Pretty impressive. It looks way cleaner than some of the subway systems I’ve seen in the West, like Los Angeles Metro or New York subway. This feels a lot nicer, a lot cleaner. Let’s take a look at this map over here. There’s a a map of the area map. There’s also a wider map of covering basically the whole city. And uh there is information about frequencies. Uh it looks like most of the day, most of the time it’s about 6 to 8 minutes, but in the evenings, at night, it can be up to 14 minutes, which is still very good. um especially if you compare it with frequencies in the United States. I think 6 minutes is is great. So, we are currently heading over here and we are at this station. We only need to ride one stop on the blue line. I’m hoping that we can get lucky and catch an older Soviet train, but uh there are only a couple of them left operating. So, um the chances of that happening are not very high. I’ve been um doing a little bit of research and there’s a specific station where different lines intersect where the chances of catching that might be higher but I’m I’m I would be doing that on a weekday instead of a weekend because uh right now the frequencies are not as high. So you have to wait longer for each train to arrive. You can see how long the station platform is. It is really long and uh as we are waiting for the train, it feels like kind of a cool place to hang out. It doesn’t feel like you want to get out of here as soon as possible. It feels rather nice. This gives us the local time, I believe. And in my hometown in K, this um information display also tells you when was uh the last uh train that departed and it helps drivers keeping track of it to keep track of it. And if it’s like a couple of uh minutes, then there’s another train coming or something like that. But in this case, it only gives us the local time, I believe. I also see they have like a TV with something playing some advertising. again, information science in English, which is very helpful. I really appreciate that. And considering how cheap the cost is to ride this, which is uh less than a dollar per ride or uh $2 and some change for unlimited rides for the day, I think this is a very good experience so far. Let’s see what the other station looks like. I’m usually not a huge fan of subway trains because you don’t get to see the view outside. I like to explore the views and feel what the city is like. But in this case, if all the stations are unique and they look different and kind of cool like this, I wouldn’t mind riding it more. Actually, uh, as far as the currency exchange rates, Bulgaria is currently transitioning from Bulgarian Lav to euro. So, right now everything is displayed in both Bulgarian Lev and Euro. Not everything, but a lot of things are displayed in both prices. And um basically one American dollar is uh um about 60 Bulgarian cents or something like this. Uh 0.6 Bulgarian level is equal to one American dollar. And um also at this time in uh 2025 one American dollar is equal to $1.2 I believe or something like that. So, um you can see that uh the pricing is very very cheap here in Bulgaria. And uh I might be making another video talking about it a little bit more. Why is it so so much cheaper in Bulgaria or and in Eastern Europe in general. I’ve been doing a little bit of research on this topic and basically the main reason has to do with communist history. Uh because it was influenced by the Soviet Union. There was no freedom. you could not open your own business and it was uh harder to grow to develop a healthy economy and because of that um prices in Eastern Europe are still cheaper and it’s considered to be less developed although again uh it’s very very controversial when I say less developed because if you are at a subway station like this and you feel comfortable uh I you feel more comfortable than you would feel at a subway station in Paris. Even though Paris is more developed, uh the reality is that you feel more comfortable hanging out here. Uh and maybe it’s also safer here. I did a little a little bit of research about safety and Sophia seems to be one of the safest cities in Europe. Um safer than Paris, safer than London, safer than Brussels, where I just came from. So um developed not developed um maybe uh it’s kind of hard to uh judge uh based on that one word because when you actually are in the city when you’re experiencing it um I had a similar feeling in Thailand people said Thailand is a developing country. Well I felt like Thailand’s shopping malls were way better than American malls. Um, and their public transportation was very impressive, too. And lots of things were super developed and super comfortable. Let’s see what this train is. Looks like a newer train as expected. I hope my partner can see. Next European Union. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. That’s big. Heat. Heat. This station also looks kind of Cool. Totally different from the other station. Um, it looks like they took the time and effort to design each station in a different way. So, I’m definitely going to be exploring their metro a lot more because it’s pretty interesting to compare different stations. And we just saw only two or three of them. But, uh, guess what? Maybe some of the stations are even more beautiful than these ones. Who knows? You can see that the next train is going to depart in 5 minutes. They have these information signs. You can also see this kind of art. It says that something in Bulgarian. It was built between 2009 and 2012. And maybe uh this is the sign for the European Union. Oh, okay. They have it in English here. All the information line two. Uh the metro in Sofia was built between 2009 and 2012 with financial contribution by the European Regional Development Fund. Okay, that makes sense. All right, that’s great. So, let’s go upstairs and see what it looks like upstairs. Uh we’re going to take this exit right there. Um a couple of thoughts about the train. It was very clean. Uh air conditioning was working very well. Uh even too well. It was a little bit cold. Uh there were still seats available. It wasn’t packed and uh um overall good lighting and pretty comfortable environment. Again, feels clean, feels safe. The only thing the speed was a little bit slow, but I think it’s maybe just um in this part of the uh of the line. Maybe they are doing some maintenance or maybe the stations are so close together. It felt like the stations were pretty close together. We are in the city center. Um so I assume at other um other parts of the line the the speed might be higher. It felt like maybe the train was going maybe 30 maybe 40 km per hour something like that. And the ride was pretty short. Okay, this looks like the exit. And we don’t need to scan anything when we are exiting. We just walk through and that’s it. You have to My partner went to the wrong machine. That’s part of exploring because uh in some countries you have to you can use the same machine but here you can use only the separate ones. They have one for entering and another one for exiting. So the ones where you don’t see any fair scanners, those are the ones for exiting. Okay, as you can see, they don’t have elevators everywhere. Maybe some parts, some parts of the stations uh might have elevators, but not everywhere. So uh this is kind of a thing that is common in the whole Europe, not just Eastern Europe. Um because everything is older, they don’t have elevators everywhere. Wouldn’t make sense to destroy everything just because there are no elevators. So if you have heavy bags, it might take a while to find one. And this looks like a big shopping mall. Yeah. Park Center Sofia and some authentic music going on. It definitely feels like we are in Bulgaria. I love it. So, with that being said, I would like to remind you that I’m in Sophia for a couple of weeks. And at the end of this trip, I’ll be recording my final verdict video comparing Sophia with other cities to help you decide if you should visit, while also saving you lots of time and money with practical tips on how to get the most out of your trip. This will be an exclusive video, but you can easily gain access to it by subscribing or donating any amount on buy me a coffee.com/transit or through the link in the video description below. Thank you everyone for watching, commenting, liking, and subscribing. I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Bye-bye.

In this video, we will be checking out metro trains & exploring Sofia’s underground subway system. The Sofia Metro is one of the cleanest and most affordable metros in Europe, connecting key parts of the city with nicely designed stations, air-conditioned trains and convenient transfers. We’ll explore the stations and go for a ride in real time to get a good look at how well-designed and efficient the network is in 2025.

I’m in Sofia for a couple of weeks, and at the end of this trip, I’ll be recording my final verdict video, comparing Sofia with other cities to help you decide if you should visit while also saving you time and money with practical tips on how to get the most out of your trip. This will be an exclusive video, but you can easily gain access to it by subscribing or donating any amount on https://BuyMeACoffee.com/TransitNomad

As an active traveler and business owner with experience, I might be able to assist you with trip planning, life coaching and business consulting with more details at https://BuyMeACoffee.com/TransitNomad/membership. This is where you’ll also find lots of exclusive content on different cities across the globe, my secret tips, PDF guides and the option to request a custom video on any topic that matters to you.

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I’m Transit Nomad, a world traveler, business owner, music composer, filmmaker and life coach on a mission to explore cities through the lens of public transportation. With every single donation or subscription, you’re not only making it possible for me to create new videos but are also gaining access to a private community with like-minded people and exclusive content.

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