Capital | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Leith Street purgatory.

The traffic in Edinburgh is a sadistic abomination, something that would drive Michael Douglas out his car à la Falling Down (1993). Every fucking day there is a jam of jams, caused and compounded by traffic lights with a five-second gap between green and red, omniscient roadworks, never-ending tram extensions, a 20 mph speed limit, tourist questions to the bus driver as if he were a tourist information office, and Edinburgh’s much-vaunted position as the prime location for filming chav fodder (Fast & Furious, Avengers) in, which brings about all manner of diversions. The city is a conurbation of the slow.

Whose doing is this? I don’t know but I can tell you that Edinburgh Council are, in the words of John McEnroe, “The absolute pits of the world.” So I blame them whether it’s their fault or not.

Further reading:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-35812226

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17682291.edinburgh-named-as-worst-uk-city-for-traffic-jams/

Rambling around Sofia.

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It’s always the same at a hostel. Why they insist on giving you a 20-minute monologue about the city I will never know. Pointless chat. Just hand me the keys to the room. Minging.

I don’t see a single person in the hostel building (for private rooms). I christen it the ‘Overlook Hotel’ and bash the bathroom door in with my e-cig. The hovel was dangerous, the Vertigo (1958) staircase a neck-breaking scenario waiting to happen. Thankfully I didn’t die, but I was terrified every time I went up or down the fucker.

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Like all post-communist countries, it’s backward. Street urchins are everywhere, Bugsy Malone (1976) rejects wandering the alleyways in search of shrapnel and fags. Bar staff are just awful. They scowl and grimace – pure hatred in their eyes. And they do this to all tavern visitors. Taxi drivers are scam artists. It’s the usual let’s-drive-around-in-circles nonsense. Scum.

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There were some highlights: I like the trams because they appear to be sent via DeLorean from the GDR in the ’70s. Also, the supermarket selection is eclectic. The Lidl was once again the crème de la crème. It was located slap-bang in the middle of a social realist nightmare of a housing estate, dirty-as-fuck matchbox apartments out of the age of Stalin.

The booze is cheap. The city is ugly. It’s cold. And that’s Sofia.

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Wanderings and … wonderings.

Tag Archives: Capital

Edinburgh congestion is torture.

Rambling around Sofia.