българия (Bulgaria)

If I ever do end up becoming a travel writer, it probably won't be for a newspaper. You know those "36 Hours in ..." features that the New York Times travel section does? Well, if I wrote one, it would break down into major components of trying to find your hostel, sleeping, finding toilets you don't have to pay for and warming up at a cafe. I think the NYT likes you to focus more on cathedrals and strip clubs. Basically, if you want to know where I was that first afternoon in Sofya, take a map of the city and superimpose the latest installment of Family Circus where Billy runs all over the neighborhood. Then read the last 20 comics featuring "Grandma's Pearls of Wisdom" or whatever they are called to get an idea of the pain from the cold and weight of my backpack.

The coolest part about arriving in Sofya and walking around trying to find Hostel Mostel (worth the walking, more on this below), was trying to decipher the street signs in Bulgarian, because it uses the Cyrillic alphabet, and our guidebook map had the transliterated street names in English. Luckily, Meredith printed off a couple copies of the Cyrillic alphabet before we went, so we had something to go by. It was actually fun to see a sign and then mentally rearrange the sounds in my mind to figure out what it should look like in English and then try to find it on the map. For example, "Tsar" in a street name was common and looks like this: цар. I still can't speak any Bulgarian besides "please" - "моля" (molja) and "thank-you"- " благодаря", but it's fun to know that I can decipher things phonetically in a language with only 5 letters that have the same sound in English and Bulgarian. It was a true pleasure to try and learn something and then put it into such critical use right away, just the way learning should happen ideally. I will post thoughts on this with regards to learning Turkish in the near future.

Hostel Mostel was awesome because they had free tea and coffee all day, free pasta and beer in the evenings, and the guy running it while we were there, Todd, was really enthusiastic and helpful, and had a good sense of humor. Meredith and I both agreed that we wanted to be him and find jobs at hostels in America. The private apartment rooms were actually about four blocks up the street from the hostel, so we walked up to those with Todd and got settled in after the first round of tea and coffee. The room we got was nice and big, but the down side of that was that it was very difficult to keep warm. Meredith ended up napping with her head right next to the radiator the first afternoon for warmth. It was cute.

That evening we strolled on one of the streets south of the hostel apartment because it had festive snowflakes and candles in bright lights over the boulevard (do you still get these in America now with the war on Christmas?). We stopped at a classy chain coffeehouse called "Lavazza" for tea and coffee. The street also featured a school and a church; it was rather charming. The city as a whole could not rightly be described as charming, except maybe by someone on a bad acid trip who needed escape bright colors, but neither was it repulsively depressing. We'll settle for somewhere in between. I do know that I plan never to live there unless the lingerie models in the windows come to life and start doing the can-can in the streets (there were many of these).

Friday was nicer, because we got to walk around without the backpacks, the sun was out, and we could take time to admire the magnificent churches without Jack Frost chomping at our everythings. Unlike the mosques in Istanbul, the churches were still primarily places of worship for locals, not tourist attractions, so it was very nice to be there next to people who were lighting holiday candles for their loved ones while we admired the frescoes and golden altars. They were pretty picky about folks taking pictures in these suckers, so just imagine all the medieval saints you ever saw and thrown them on the walls with a bunch of gold at the front. At the Bania Boshi mosque, they made Meredith put on a green, hooded cloak. More cuteness. I was ready to don one in solidarity, but I wasn't sure if that would be taken the wrong way.

The archaeological museum was another highlight of the afternoon. The archaeo museums in this part of the world tend to be pretty stellar because it is so- relatively- easy to assemble artifacts from the major periods of civilizational development. It was thorough, well-organized, and WARM. That's all I ask. Then we had lunch at a terrific Indian restaurant, which was joyful enough because I haven't had Indian food since this summer, but it really was a quality set-up to boot. The waitress said "bless you" under her breath every time she served something, and it seemed pretty genuine, so that's always a plus. MORE of a plus however was the panir masala that I got. Almost worth the trip by itself. Worth walking across the city for at least.

Saturday morning we went to Rila Monastery, in the mountains to the south of the city. It felt great to finally escape an urban environment, and this was a pretty ideal way to do it. The ride out reminded me so much of Maine that I got deja vu from trips to Sugarloaf a couple times. The frosted pine trees on the sides of the mountains were an instant cure for whatever cynacism I had been starting to feel towards the country. The whole hour and a half that it took to get there after we left the city was beautiful. The monastery itself couldn't have been in a better spot for living a contemplative life, set in a valley high up in the mountains with streams and springs coming down from all directions. I enjoyed just walking around its courtyard and peeling an orange with the sun in my face. The frescoes in the church were very beautiful as well, and there was a monk outside breaking up the ice where water had melted off the roof and frozen on the steps, which gave a feeling of authenticity. After exploring the courtyard and the church, we walked up a path onto the hillside. We came to an uncrossable stream in about a half hour, but I took a nice swim at least before we went back. The water was slightly colder than at Winslow Park in April (note: if Meredith's blog reflects a different set of events at the stream, it's probably because she couldn't believe the cajoneness I displayed).

Highlights from the trip home:
-They couldn't sell us two train tickets at Sofya to Istanbul, so we took the train to Plovidv and got on the same train there. Gotta love public transport in Eastern Europe. I believe Mr. Magoo was just appointed to another three-year term as transport minister of Bulgaria.
-The sleeping car conductor hadn't slept in four days and started ranting about America when I tried to apologize for asking about the sleeper-car prices. I'm reporting him to Mr. Magoo.
-We stopped at Svalingrad (maybe the best name for a border town I have ever crossed at) at 3am for passport control. With a little foresight and hustle, Mery and I were second in line for people from the train to get inspected, meaning another 45 minutes in bed on the train, as opposed to in line wondering the last time the office's potpourri was replaced was.
-We had about 12 hours in Istanbul between when our train arrived and our bus left, so we went to the nice, modern Beyoglu region of the city, and cruised the upscale Istiklal Caddesi. It was a very nice way to spend the afternoon, because we were in Starbucks for a while and I got to read Patrick O'Brian. On the way back to the train station we stopped and watched a Galatasaray futbol match at a hookah bar in their part of town. Good baklava, but a scoreless game.
-It has never felt that good to come "home", when "home" was in a foreign country, because after 36 hours on the road I was really wiped. Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones :)