Sofia

Capital of Bulgaria, below Mount Vitosha.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Neither Here Nor There	Bill Bryson	subject	The TSUM department store, then and now, as the measure of Bulgaria’s shortages in 1990.

Sub-places

• Sofia Central Station
• TSUM (Sofia)
• Vitosha Boulevard

Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson (1991)

Source: Readwise highlight

Sofia had a dark and enormous department store called TSUM, at least as big as Selfridge’s in London, spread over five floors

• Role: subject
• In the book: Chapter 21. Bryson remembers the store from 1973 with Katz: five floors of goods that looked made before 1938, with families crowding round a television as if in a museum. Back in 1990 he finds the departments stripped bare. He stays at the hard-currency Sheraton on Lenin Square and feels guilty eating better than nine million Bulgarians.
• Why it matters: TSUM is the chapter’s central symbol of the shortage economy. With Vitosha Boulevard, it carries his picture of a country where people now have money and nothing to buy.