Bulgaria

Sofia hit me differently from other European capitals. The city layers its whole timeline right on the surface — Roman walls poking through the pavement downtown, a mosque minaret framed by office blocks, an Orthodox cathedral the size of a small mountain sitting in the middle of a square. I kept stopping every few steps because something old and something new kept colliding in front of me.

I spent most of my time on foot, just moving from one landmark to the next. The Russian Church with those green-and-gold onion domes genuinely made me stop and stare for a while — the tilework on the entrance arch, the way the gold caught the morning light. Alexander Nevsky was the other pole of the city, this enormous cream-coloured cathedral with copper-green domes that you can see from blocks away. The cobblestones in front of it were warm underfoot, and the sky was impossibly blue both days I was there.

The smaller things stuck with me too. A candy shop on Vitosha Boulevard done up like a fairy-tale set, complete with a witch statue at the door. A white carriage-limousine parked in traffic like it was completely normal. And then dinner — Shopska salad with fresh tomato, cucumber, and a snowdrift of white sirene cheese on top. Simple, cold, perfect after a long day of walking under the Bulgarian summer sun.