December 2019 Bulgaria Yambol to Sofia: Cold ice covered foggy morning arriving at Yambol train station ready to retrace my journey on the 827 am 1990s-style ex-DB German railways train for the 5 hour journey across to the country’s capital Sofia at the foot of domed Vitosha mountain.  Old style, and generally rather slow modern railway comforts – like air conditioning or restaurant cars – was very seldom my tickets purchased online and presented on my iPhone to the guard, unlike my first trip tickets bought with cash at the departure station on the day of travel.  I still needed to bring my own loo roll, soap and water – for the toliet’s travelling on a shoestring budget is still possible at 20 lev’s and 50 stotinka’s first class ( 10 pounds at December 2019 exchange rate). Bulgaria became a one state party socialist state and part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc in 1946 and this is still visable as you travel through the countryside with a mix of new station building and the old style bloc cafes and waiting areas to run down buildings and diverse terrain. Capturing my images through the window now fixed not like my first December journey 15 years early when you could feel the ice wind in your hair as you photographed through an open window. Now picture taking is through the window place my Nikon against the glass to capture  trackside landscape, graffiti art, the people waiting on the platform. Shooting in colour then working in black and white to add the feel of communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria ending in 1989. Clifford Norton Alamy