Why Sofia needs a local guide
Sofia has been continuously settled for 7,000 years and every era left something behind. The Serdica metro station has a glass floor over 2nd-century Roman ruins. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral fits 5,000 people. Mount Vitosha is 30 minutes from the center and locals ski there after work.
Sofia remains one of Europe's least visited capitals, pulling around 1.5 million international visitors a year compared to 8 million for Prague. Most travelers skip it entirely on the way to the Bulgarian coast or the Rila Monastery. Those who stop discover a city where you can walk from Roman ruins to an Ottoman mosque to a Soviet monument to a third-wave coffee shop in 20 minutes. The Serdica metro station was built around 2nd-century Roman walls because they could not tear them down, so they put a glass floor over them instead. That sums up Sofia perfectly. To become a tour guide in Sofia is to connect eras that most cities would keep in separate museums. You fill a bottle at the free mineral spring behind the Banya Bashi Mosque, water that has been flowing warm since Roman times, and explain that the mosque and the synagogue and the Orthodox cathedral all sit within 200 meters of each other. If you want to become a tour guide in Sofia, you should know the Zhenski Pazar market before 8am when the banitsa is fresh, the flea market behind Alexander Nevsky where Soviet relics sell for a few leva, and the trail up Vitosha that locals take after work. Becoming a tour guide in Sofia means showing people that Europe's most overlooked capital has been quietly accumulating 7,000 years of stories and nobody thought to charge admission.