Lovely beer and cheap women.

Everyone has preconceptions about places. Sofia - and Bulgaria - are no exception. Talk to anyone who hasn't been there and they will immediately tell you it's full of amazingly beautiful ladies and ridiculously-priced beer. And not much else. As is the case with a good deal preconceptions about places, they are right to an extent, but don't tell the whole story. There is a lot more to Sofia than jaw-droppingly gorgeous bee-hatches (apologies to any feminites reading) and beer that is so cheap you feel like you're being toyed with by wily foreign bar-people. No, there are buildings too, and trees and roads and cars and trams and lots of other things. Women and beer are very nice in their own ways, but one could tire of nothing but these two objects of desire to look at and drink. Well, some of us could.

Sofia is, for want of a better cliché, a place of contrasts. I know that a lot of places are, and I said the same about Dubai, but here, it is a different set of contrasts. I suppose it's more shades than contrasts. The contrasts aren't as marked as in the Middle East; things blend together to tell a story of a country with a turbulent political history and a recent transition from a stony-faced but stoic communist regime to a slightly inebriated merriness under a more democratic and Westernised rulership. I mean inebriated in the good, mellow and happy sense rather the lager-lout, aggressive sense.

A walk around the city centre on a sunny summer's day is a real treat for the senses. Wide, tree-lined boulevards stretch for miles towards the main political and cultural centres. Trams jingle along these roads, stopping regularly to pick up or drop off passengers. Pristine, intricately-architectured theatres, galleries and museums painted in bold colours stand proudly on corners or at the entrance to lush gardens. Ornate Orthodox churches scatter the sun's rays on their high, golden domes. Street cafés crowd the pavements with tables and parasols. Music floats to your ears from the various buskers dotted around; sometimes a guitar, sometimes a trumpet or a violin.

As you walk, you notice the people around you: from the afore-mentioned stunning women in expensive-looking clothes, to the long-haired male lovers of Rock, to the old, almost doubled-over ladies with little walking sticks, inching their way along the street, like Yoda with a shopping bag. Here and there you notice the slightly darker countenance of Romany gypsies; some begging from the passing throng, some picking through bins.

As you turn the corner and walk away from the main boulevards, you come into much narrower streets and alleys, often pocked with pot-holes the size of small cars. Many still have trees, but they don't do a good job of hiding the state of the buildings. On the side streets, away from the main thoroughfares, they are almost all of the same yellowy-brown hue, like the colour of ceiling tiles in a Northern working men's club. Graffiti seems to cover every spare inch up to about head height, and the pavements are often in a shocking state, with random collections of oddly-shaped paving slabs jutting up at all angles, as if Godzilla had recently jogged down the street with his i-pod on shuffle. You wouldn't get away with it in the UK. There would be a hundred people lying on the ground clutching sprained ankles and muttering about there being no such thing as an accident.

As well as contending with the assault-course-standard pavements, you have to weave between and around cars that seem to have been parked with the aid of a crowbar and some vaseline. Not a scrap of space is left between them, and spaces are at a premium. Again, you notice the shades - the contrast; gleaming new BMWs and Audis parked next to rusting Ladas and matt-coloured Trabants. I don't think they come in metallic, for some reason, which is a shame.

There are smaller shops and bars along these streets, and here and there you notice little kiosks built into the basements of the buildings, with a serving window that comes up to your knee. If you want something you have to crouch down to carry out the transaction, unless of course, you have a well-trained dog.

Further along the street, where it sometimes widens out a touch, the extra footpath is taken up by market stalls. So far, I have only seen books and vegetables for sale, but not on the same stall. That would be a turnip for the books. Shoot me now for having that thought. Anyway, the vegetable stalls are quite a sight. One street I walked down had almost a hundred yards of uninterrupted stalls, all selling the most colourful range of fruit and veg I have ever seen, ranging from plump, purple aubergines to fiery-skinned nectarines, all filling the evening air with their deep, sweet aromas, compelling you to reach out and grab one.

Outside the centre it is different. The main roads widen to carry buses and trolley-buses as well as trams and cars. The residential areas immediately around the centre look dilapidated and in need of refurbishment if not knocking down, and the legacy of the communist era is all-too-apparent. But further out, where the city has kept growing in recent years, you start to find more modern apartment buildings and shops, and more being built. The outskirts are teeming with building sites and cranes, although not quite as many as in Dubai. Shopping malls have taken hold here, with two reasonably large ones already doing well, and at least two even bigger ones in the pipeline. I am here essentially to work on one of these malls, which at the moment is all on paper or in computers. There's not even a hole in the ground yet, just a large scrap of wasteland behind the train station. It looks very nice, of course, but these architects always do nice concept drawings, or "pretties", as we like to call them in the trade. I've also heard that the economic growth and development is going on in other towns and cities, like the ski resort of Bansko and the Black Sea coast towns of Varna and Borgas. It's an up-and-coming place, that's for sure.

So that's Sofia. It's an intriguing place. It can tell the visitor a lot about the people and the country, and especially the history. I am certain there is more to be found, though. This is just one city, and tries to present a bright, modern, progressive face to the outside world. There is vibrant culture and night-life, and a definite cosmopolitan/continental vibe. It feels like a European capital, but with a little catching up to do. The transition following the lifting of the Iron Curtain is still ongoing, with some people of the opinion that the progress here has been delayed as a result the wars in neighbouring Balkan countries. Still, quite a few people have done well out of the new order, and that is evident in the cars you see driving around and the boutique shops that line the boulevards. But you also sense that there are many left behind, who you don't see a great deal of in the capital. I've heard the poverty is more visible and more marked in the rural areas.

Still, I definitely want to see more of the country. There are mountain ranges to climb and beaches to sit on. There are little old towns and villages scattered here and there. It is steeped in ancient history and culture. I look forward to seeing and learning more.