Bringing the First Half to a Close

I didn't fully realize the significance of this point in the year until I began hunting around for appropriate titles for this entry, and it hit me that I'm more or less done with half of my time here.

While not technically true (I've been here for 4 months, with 6 to go), it's morally true, as my plane bound for Munich in about 11 hours signals the official arrival of Winter Break, the pivotal point about which the year turns.

There are a lot of things it would behoove me to say, then, so it's with a certain amount of regret that I should admit that it will be impossible tonight. I have to get up in 6 hours, and I have an extremely hectic 4-hour window after that in which to run all sorts of errands, in all sorts of places around town, before getting to the airport on time. So, unfortunately, this more momentous of entries must remain filled only what I had in store for it before it hit me just how important it ultimately is. But I will do this: In the next few days, when I (finally) have the time to relax and worry about far fewer things, I will deliver something reflective and insightful. Scout's Honor.

At any rate -

It has been a busy, hectic Last Week Before Vacation. I nominally finished up the first leg of my research and put together a presentation thereof to deliver to my fellow Fulbrighters and the Fulbright Commission. Despite a few technical difficulties and not really having enough time to prepare, it went off well enough. All of the Fulbrighters in Bulgaria were gathered together on Friday for the 100 Days in Bulgaria event, and I got to hear what all of them have been doing in their towns. It was quite good to hear that things are going well and most everyone is having as good of an experience as I've been having.

I also began looking at my music for potential grad school auditions in earnest. Between that, the research, the presentation, and running errands that have been crying for completion before my extended absence, it has been rather exhausting. Staring at pages of mixed meters and rapid modulations after staring at pages of Cyrillic script and fighting with your computer to make it do the things you want has a way of being so.

But with everybody in town this past weekend, we had the chance to relax and catch up, which was a nice way to transition into the break. I will admit to feeling small twinges of jealousy every time I heard about one or the other of them going back to the States for the Holidays, but the greater part of me has actually been looking forward to spending this time of year in new and exciting places. And so continues my journey.

So Happy Holidays, and may you be surrounded by those you love this year. So long for now.

A Trip to Brograde

It's been a long day at the office.

I'll admit that I'm tired from the endless hours of sitting in the library, staring alternately at unreadable Bulgarian texts and my own computer screen, but, my glut for torture has brought me to this point, to faithfully deliver to you the latest succulent narrative of a trip to an exotic, distant land.

Seeing as how I failed to fulfill my goal, last month, of visiting a new country every month for the first time, I resolved to remedy the situation by taking a trip this past weekend and crediting it to November. The destination of my intrepid compatriots and me? Belgrade, the former capital of Yugoslavia (May It Rest In Peace) and current capital of Serbia. Our host for the weekend? Keša - our old friend from FISI, law student, and party animal.

With this trip now officially in the books, I can say, without fear of retribution from the gods of Fate, Luck, Karma, or Hubris, that it went off virtually glitch-free. We ran into no problems getting our tickets, Keša booked us a cheap hostel (more on that to come), everything ran according to plan, and our travel time ending up being significantly shorter than we had expected. Though we did run into a few surprises along the way, we were able to navigate them more or less smoothly, owing to the benevolent attention from the aforementioned gods and more than a few entreating expressions.

We woke at 6 AM Friday morning and left for the bus station at 7. Our first surprise was the bus that pulled into the lot to whisk us away to our destination: Instead of the standard coach we've gotten used to in these parts, up rolled an 18-seat minibus. A mite confused, we boarded, but an hour later, we made it to the border. Not having left the Schengen Area or the EU since arriving here, we weren't sure what to expect, but the crossing went swiftly and painlessly (and, to our substantial relief, tarifflessly). Two hours later, we arrived in Niš.

My understanding of the schedule had been that we would be resting there for two hours, but upon appealing to the information desk, we were told--in Serbian, which is, fortuitously, close enough to Bulgarian that we were able to understand the general gist of what was being told to us--that we actually had to board a bus which would be departing in three minutes. The lady helping us asked for our tickets, and to our horror, ripped them out and printed us new ones. Somehow, this must have been part of what was supposed to happen, because, completely baffled by the process by this point, we presented our new tickets to the bus driver, and he welcomed us on board the bus to Belgrade. We departed, and, despite our lingering confusion, arrived in Belgrade at 2 PM.

Keša, whom Alex and I hadn't seen in 4 months, and whom Laura and Hannah had never met, was waiting for us at the station, and we went from there. Let me say this: Though I know that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, I noticed that we had a much easier time conducting ourselves around this country--of whose native language we possessed little knowledge--being accompanied by a native speaker than we had on our last trip (to Romania, a country of whose language we possessed similarly little knowledge), when we enjoyed no such company. We were successfully and easily able to reserve our return tickets, and we made our way to the hostel.

It was cheap (Costing us only 1000 Dinars per person per night, which I'm sure will sound like an astronomical sum until I tell you that it only comes out to 10 Euros), afforded us easy access to approximately 649 coffee shops, and was, all in all, a pleasant little affair. We got a room to ourselves, though we shared a (rather thin and not at all sound-muffling) doorway with a group of evil unpleasant Serbians who made a point of talking as loudly as possible as soon as 7:30 AM rolled around. After checking in, having only an hour of daylight left (Serbia apparently being a land of 3:45 sunsets this time of year), we went out for a brief foray around the city.

We passed a few of the attractions we were to see in more detail in the coming days and made our way back to hostel, where we, to our comprehensive benefit, had the opportunity to take naps of a decadent magnitude. I certainly took advantage, passing into a veritable coma for an hour, before we roused ourselves to head out to dinner.

Dinner on the first night was a cozy little affair at the "?" Restaurant. After spending the 2+ requisite hours eating and catching up on our activities of the last few months, we headed out to a bar in the old city, where we met several of Keša's friends (all law students). There, we got to spend the next few hours listening to an excellent cover band, learning about our hosts, and generally having an awesome time of it in our new, friendly, entertaining city.

After staying out later than was advisable given our lack of good rest the night before, we were roused the next morning by the probably-intentionally-disruptive susurruses of our aforementioned doormates. After heading out to a ridiculously cheap and delicious breakfast, we made our way around the Old City, spending the bulk of our morning on Knez Mihailova street, a pedestrian-only Shoppers' Paradise.

All dressed up for Xmas

This new camera is turning me into a hipster, but DOESN'T IT LOOK DELICIOUS

I just thought this was cool.

From there, we proceeded over to Belgrade Fortress, overlooking the spot where the Danube and Sava Rivers meet. Nothing I can say will really do it justice, so instead of giving you a 6000-word description, how about I just give you the equivalent in pictures?

Entering the Fortress through Stambol Gate

The meeting of the Danube (right) and Sava (left) Rivers, New Belgrade in the background

Along the Ramparts

With a layer of mist rolling in

Steeple

Despot Stefan Tower, with New Belgrade in the background

Tearing ourselves away from this Piece of Awesome, as we had other things to see, we made our way back to the center of the Old City, stopping at St. Michael's Cathedral, the seat of the Patriarch of Serbia.

The Patriarch's Palace

St. Michael's Cathedral

Detail of the Steeple

After a walking through the Belgrade Ethnographic Museum (which yielded some interesting information pertinent to my research, though I won't sully the wondrous nature of this entry by delving into it right now) and a quick dinner, we headed down to the Cathedral of St. Sava. Incredible is the only way to describe it.

There are no words

Inside

After walking past some other Extremely Cool Things (including a Beatles tribute band playing to a packed outdoor skating rink), we met up for a few hours with some of the people we had met at the bar the previous night, and headed back to our hostel.

Our final morning in Belgrade dawned damp and cold, but we managed to salvage a few more hours of sightseeing before we had to make our bus at 12:30. It was on the way back to the bus station that I saw probably the most striking thing of the entire trip - the bombed-out shell of some structure, right across the street from a seemingly-untouched, beautifully ornate government building. It was then that it hit me that this place, for all of the beautiful and wonderful things it had shown us over the course of the two previous days, had bombs dropping on it barely more than 10 years ago. 

It was a stark reminder that for all the peace and security we enjoy in the States, people in many other places live far more tenuously. Just within Belgrade, an entire generation of innocent kids--members of ordinary families that had nothing to do with any of the violence in Kosovo--grew up in an environment approximating warfare, including Keša and all the people we had met. It was a jolt, similar to the one I experienced when I visited Mt. Meron in Israel (which bore the marks of bombs that had fallen on it just the previous summer), that woke me to the fact that devastating events--that cause people to live in constant fear--take place all over the world, right in people's own back yards.

L - R: Alex, Hannah, Laura, and Keša at the head of the street. All of the following pictures were taken within 100 meters of each other. Note that, in this first picture, nothing bears any marks of damage.

50 meters down the road. Note the shells of the building on either side of the street.

The south half of the bombed-out structure, with the untouched government building across the street.

Close-up of another crumbling part of the building.

Another side of the north half of the building

It was a sobering end to our trip, but an important thing to have witnessed. It reminded me that history is always at hand in this part of the world, and the best thing we can do is to learn from it.

Our trip back to Sofia was as thankfully uneventful as our trip to Belgrade, and we made it back around 8:30 Sunday night. My three companions left for their respective cities from there. Overall, it was a terrific, and entirely too short trip. Belgrade was certainly one of the coolest cities I've been to so far, and you can be sure I'll go back when I can. Definite, unmitigated GREAT success.

Next entry - all the Fulbrighters gather in Sofia on Friday for a year-end conference. Stay tuned for a recap this weekend. Thanks to all of you for coming along for the ride.

Blogging at Midnight

I pick the best times to do things.

Let's begin in medias res. Midnight is long since past. My wake-up call is four hours hence. Tomorrow, we four intrepid explorers (Laura, Hannah, Alex, and Myself) will board a bus, hop the border, and have a weekend adventure in Serbia. We depart at 7:30 AM, stop in Niš at 11, and arrive in Belgrade at 3:30. There, we are meeting our old friend Keša (not the rapper) for a tour and starry-eyed appreciation of the city, which will spill mirthfully into Sunday.

But let's back up. You know what? Let's Tarantino this one. It's so late, I'm going to go ahead and do it. We'll do this week backwards.

Let's start with language. Last week, I began working out of a basic Bulgarian student's workbook, essentially reviewing and solidifying everything I've learned up to this point. That has meant rounding out vocabulary and verbal repetition of every exercise. And wouldn't you know? It's working. I've hit another plateau in my ability to comprehend and spit out spontaneous (or at least, not-canned) responses to the everyday things people ask me. Today, I made my first successful small talk. About the weather.

And what weather - it snowed! Real snow. We're not talking the pitiful, paltry powder that fell for a few fleeting moments back in October. We're talking accumulation and white rooftops. Alas, my pictures therof haven't been uploaded yet, or you can bet some of your more moderately-valued possessions that they would be plastered all over this screen. But be content in the knowledge that it was beautiful, and boy, did it put me in the holiday spirit.

Another consequence of my new level of understanding of this language was the mildly momentous point I reached this week when I began reading my first sources entirely in Bulgarian, without the help of a translator. It has been painfully slow going, as there are a wealth of words (verbs, in particular) whose meaning eludes me, meaning that I have to consult a dictionary every few minutes. Be that as it may, I've gotten through 17 pages of dense Cyrillic writing this week, all on the abstract nature of Shopi folk music.

Tuesday, I had a meeting with several professors at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ethnography, trying to come closer to divining the nature and origins of the Shopi. I haven't gotten any definitive answers yet, but it feels like I'm closing in on something. A frustratingly large amount of my time and energy has been devoted to questions of this nature, but I'm hoping it will, in the end, turn out to have been time and energy well spent. Next Tuesday, I have a repeat engagement with these same founts of knowledge, which will hopefully bring me closer to my goal.

Tuesday also witnessed a rather unique learning experience on my part, this one in the field of integrated circuitry. To make a rather long story somewhat palatably shorter, I was graciously offered the use of a deluxe Korg electric piano by a magnanimous fellow I met at the Thanksgiving function two weeks ago. (To expound upon this anecdote for just a bit, his name is Andrian, he got his Doctorate in Composition at Penn under George Crumb, and he is a rather generous soul.) Not five minutes after he dropped it off at my apartment, I, sleep-deprived and robbed of seemingly all my intellectual capacities, plugged it into my wall sans voltage converter. Needless to say, the piano was not happy about this.

After three days of panic (resulting from, just to drive the absurdity of this point home, possibly having fried an expensive and bulky piece of electronic equipment lent to me on complete faith by a total stranger minutes after having received it), I opened it up, and--Hallelujah!--found a blown fuse. This is where my (and now, through the sacred power of narrative, your) lesson in circuitry comes in. Fuses: Cheap and easy to replace. Circuit boards: Not.

Hoping against hope that this fuse represented the totality of the carnage wrought by my idiocy, I tried three different hardware stores, and my prayers were answered when I finally found an appropriate fuse, took it home, popped it in, and--wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles--this very expensive and bulky piece of electronics was restored to good health. This episode merits a shoutout to my friends Mark and Ed, who, to my extraordinarily good fortune, hold degrees in Electrical Engineering from prestigious universities.

My abiding panic resulting from this fiasco aside, my weekend was rather pleasant, as Greg, his sons, and I ventured up to Belogradchik on Sunday to visit the Magura Cave. The drive was wonderfully scenic, the cave was awesome, and we had--stop me if this phrase has lapsed into overuse--the extraordinarily good fortune to pop a flat tire not 100 meters from a repair shop that was, in small-town Bulgaria, miraculously open on a Sunday. A new tire, and the attendant labor, cost 30 leva. I seriously love this country. 

How about a picture or two of lovely Nature?

Open Road

Just another quiet Sunday

Wicked cool mountain

Awesome rock formation in Belogradchik

Magura Cave

30 m (!) Stalactite

This bat's just chillin'

On the way back down from Belogradchik, we stopped in Montana and got a quick tour from Marty, another Fulbrighter. All in all, a nice trip.

So it has been quite a week. Belgrade tomorrow through Sunday, one more manic week to go, and then it's off to Germany for Weihnachten. Stay tuned for stories about the Land of NATO's Wrath.

Happy (and Warm!) December

OK, so I lied about posting pictures yesterday. My schedule got a little backed up. I finished my grad school applications! I submitted the last one at 4 PM my time. Winning!

So happy December. Only 3 weeks (!) 'til Christmas! They have long since begun playing festive music in all the shops, and the lights have begun to go up. Christmas, it seems, is much the same in a lot of different places.

One of the things I was told to expect, being here in a former Eastern Bloc country on the other side of the world, was for weird things, the likes of which I wouldn't normally experience in the States, to happen. Tuesday played host to several.

I was in the library, reading through the current dissertation I'm working on, when a semi-distinguished-looking old man in a suit and scarf approached me in Bulgarian. It took me a second to work out what he was saying, so while I was hesitating, he promptly got frustrated and asked if I spoke French, to which I replied in the affirmative. He then proceeded to go off on a rapid scree in French, nearly speaking too fast for me to keep up, but I got that he was a professor of something-or-other and he wanted me to step outside with him. Deciding that he may have been someone important to my research, or at least someone I wouldn't have wanted to offend, I complied, walking up the street with him for a few blocks, he blowing through a long speech in rapid French, me still struggling to keep up, as I haven't spoken French on a regular basis in 6 years.

We got to a street corner when he turned directly to me and asked me for money. What? He said something about having left some important documents in his apartment, along with his phone and wallet, and asked me again for money for a taxi, not bothering to tell me how he got to be so far from his apartment that he needed a taxi in the first place. The situation having decidedly taken a turn for the bizarre, I pretended not to understand, but he repeated himself several more times until there could be no more pretending that I hadn't gotten the message. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of leva, offering him 3, at which he tsk'ed disapprovingly, snatched said leva out of my hand, and took off up the street, never to be seen again (or so I presume). I have been asked for change by the homeless before (I am from Los Angeles, after all), but never before have I been asked by bilingual professors of something-or-other who somehow found their way into a secured library.

Upon returning, still in a daze from the experience, I idly began chatting with one of the women who work at the library. After a few pleasantries and discussions of books I was reading, she stopped and asked me where I was from. When I replied that I was from the States, she gasped and proceeded to tell me that she thought I was Bulgarian. Now, I'll admit to having improved my Bulgarian, and to being momentarily flattered that someone would be so confused, but this was quite patently an exaggeration. The chances that anyone on the street would confuse me with a native speaker after any sort of substantial conversation lie somewhere between laughable and nonexistent. Nevertheless, she then gave a speech to several of the other women about how I was an American, and how uproariously funny it was that she thought I was a Bulgarian. There may, quite possibly, have been alcohol involved at some point. (Not on my part, for once)

This collection of events, having enveloped me in quick succession, left me with a most peculiar feeling the rest of the day. But, as I am growing increasingly fond of saying - This is Bulgaria.

Today was inexplicably warm. So much so, in fact, that I got hungry around lunchtime and went up the street for some pizza sans jacket. It was one of those warm days after a string of cold ones that makes one's heart, if one is sufficiently susceptible to the weather, fill up and makes one want to be silly. So today was silly. But it was nice. My money is on this being the last day it gets into the 50's for several months.

...

OK, so I did promise that I would post some pictures taken with my new camera. Feast on what follows:

My favorite sculptures in the city - The lions in front of the Supreme Court building

Laura in front of shops on Vitosha. Note that I hadn't figured out shutter speed at this point.

If I were a hipster, I would call this one 'Neon.'

I am artsy as hell.

My favorite piece of graffiti in the city

The changing of the guard at the Presidental Residence

Vitosha St., Mt. Vitosha in the background

The delicious lentil soup I made (I am domestic as hell?)

The following are experiments with shutter speed and aperture.

Back to Work

Dissertations. Emails. Articles. Festivals. Bolging. Bulgarian. Working out. College apps. Rakia.

May the dark tone this blog has assumed in the past few entries be forever banished. Every one of the above (and many more) had been coming to a violent and bitter head before my Birthday/Thanksgiving break, but now, refreshed and ready to face the next onslaught, I'm back down to work as of today. My game plan for the next three weeks looks something like this:

Finish up first college apps. Obtain piano and start practicing for auditions. Apply for financial aid. Apply to second wave of schools. Read Tim Rice's dissertation. Read a half-dozen smaller sources (на Български). Meet with an ethnographer I've gotten in contact with. Prepare a presentation to the Fulbright Committee on my findings so far. Get back in shape before Christmas, when I am sure to re-regain the 5 pounds I lost earlier this month.

The break I just indulged in was as welcome as it was pleasant. Laura flew in on Tuesday, straight from a wedding in LA, and we celebrated my birthday in jet-lagged fashion. I received gifts of an altogether-much-too-high quality (including my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D3100, so expect the quality of the pictures posted here to improve by quite a bit), and generally had a nice day. It's strange to think that I'm 24 - the mid-20's have always seemed to me like an abstraction, and it's just weird to actually be here. 

Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving, and many of the other Fulbrighters and I celebrated by going to a reception at the house of one of the employees of the Embassy. I met an interesting assortment of people over hors d'oeuvres and even met a guy who had studied composition at Penn with George Crumb. The Fulbrighters and I (and a few others) came back to my apartment for the afterparty, after which, exhausted from a long day, I was done.

Friday played host to an assortment of interesting things such as shopping on Vitosha, buying my first scarf ever (Don't laugh - it's COLD here), Chinese food of a quality comparable to that of any of a number of small-town-Pennsylvania dives, the best gelato probably anywhere outside of Italy, and a rare early-to-bed night, as I was starting to come down with some sort of nefarious disease. 

Saturday was full of the same sorts of things, including a big test-run of my new camera and partying with some of the Fellows of the American Research Center. Also, homemade lentil soup AND Funfetti Cake Mix pancakes. Nom? Nom. Sunday I had to take Laura back to the airport, and I spent the rest of the day wallowing in self-pity, laundry, and taking some experimental photos (some of which will follow soon, Scout's Honor).

It was a nice few days, and I needed it. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but the timing of these breaks (not just this year, but when I was in school, as well) has always seemed to coincide with overwhelming amounts of work. Now, having rested a bit, I have three more weeks to do my Duty to the World, and then comes Christmas, with all its attendant festivities, lights, and fatty, sugary foods. Hence, my window to shed a couple of pounds begins now and ends with the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

One more thing: When I said it has been cold here, I meant it has been cold here. Today was warmer (I believe it got into the 40's), but woe has betided me every time in the last few weeks I've ventured out after dark. And lest you think the temperature has been the only source of unpleasantness, let me tell you that it has been coupled with a not-entirely-unhellish wind.

And it's only November. It's going to be a long, cold, lonely winter.

Obligatory philosophical paragraph(s): Sofia has come to be moderately familiar to me now. Within the parts of it I've traveled on a regular basis (those parts being, more or less, the eastern half of the Center from the National Palace of Culture up to the Central Station, and over to Madrid St.), I more or less know what is where and how to get around. I feel as though I've gotten lazy, though, and become complacent in my erstwhile knowledge of this, my home for the year. I started thinking about this when we took the bus down to the Boyana section on Thursday, and realized I had never really been west of Vitosha.

One of the things I have been trying to be conscious of has been seeing as many things here as I can. After all, that's more or less the whole point of my time here - to have as many experiences and absorb as much culture as possible. I have been moderately successful in doing this on an international scale--having already visited Germany and Romania, with travels to many more countries planned (including somewhere else before Christmas)--but I have grown familiar with but one part of this city in which I'm living. It will be on me to keep working, this entire year, towards expanding my knowledge of this still-exotic society amidst which I find myself.

/End philosophical paragraph(s)

I'll post the first pictures taken with my spiffy new camera on Wednesday. Some of them are cool. Some of them are lame. Some of them are weird and experimental. But you get to see them anyway. Lucky you!

A Long Time Coming

There are no words to express the deep regret with which I address you today. I have failed you. I have failed in my mission. I have failed America.

The length of time since I last posted is inexcusable. It shall forever besmirch the record of My Life, and I shall carry it, hunched over in shame, for the remaining length of my days.

But it is my birthday, so I'm cutting myself a little slack. And, luckily enough, the entirety of my activity over the course of the past two weeks can be described in a very few paragraphs (not something I had hoped would ever come to pass).

Upon returning from Romania, the calendar had flipped to the month of November, which meant a host of things, the most pertinent to the present topic of discussion among them was that my grad school applications were due a month hence. I diligently got down to work, and a good thing, too, because there was a lot more to do than I had hoped.

The first week went something like this: Applications, research, working out, hanging out with some of the non-Americans I've met here. No big deal, low key, time for everything. My normal routine existed, intact, albeit a little additionally burdened.

The second week brought revelations of mistaken deadlines, meaning that I was, form that point forward, behind the proverbial 8-ball. I proceeded to hole myself up in my apartment for the next two weeks, working day and night, filling out biographical information, writing and editing personal statements, and my favorite of these scourges tasks, watching videos, quite self-consciously, of myself conducting, searching among the inimitable rubble for a precious rare tidbit that would impress a screening committee.

The past week has been particularly rough, as I have worked up to this day of my self-imposed deadline - in the last eight days, I have left my apartment six times. Quite pathetic. But, I am happy to report, I am nearly done: All that remains between me and utter freedom is the final revision of three statements, which I am waiting to get back from my gracious editors. With the coming of the Blessed Day of their submission, I will sink, blissful and utterly clear-headed, into a nice long break, over which I plan to have a pleasant birthday AND Thanksgiving.

Last night, I finished reading the last of the dissertation I've been working on for the past month, and when I come back from my self-imposed rest, I will have a few more research-related things to do before Christmas. But before I get ahead of myself, let me just pause and be thankful, in these days leading up to the Best Holiday of the Year, for all that I have and all that I will (hopefully quite soon) put behind me. Christmas can wait; it is time to bask and revel in the glow of a bounty of company, food, drink, and football. Or so I plan.

But it is my birthday, and I feel...old. I turn 24 today, launching that phase of my life where I can no longer hold onto the already tenuous connection between me and college. It is profoundly sad, in a way, but it is also a chance to appreciate that I am now in a position to move on to Points Forward. This year might not be so bad. (Please knock on some wood for me, wherever you happen to be sitting.)

Now I must go to pick Laura up from the airport, the best birthday present I will receive today. So until the next criminally distant date in the future upon which I deign to grace this digital page - Stay warm, stay safe, stay thankful.

Keeping up with the Kirilovs

Since returning from Romania on Tuesday last, I have been thrown headlong back into my vicious schedule of researching, working on grad school applications, and other minor annoyances tasks of great import. Tuesday began the one-month countdown to the biggest share of my application deadlines, so I have, unfortunately, been forced to prioritize this most unsavory part of my life.

It wouldn't be quite so bad were I applying to a normal program, like Geology or Classics or Rocket Science. To apply to these kinds of programs, you fill in your information, write a statement or two, send your transcripts, and voilà: Four months later you get your rejection letter, and that's that. But applying to seven different Choral Conducting programs requires writing thirteen personal statements, uploading four different versions of your résumé, lists of works conducted, and lists of works studied, submitting videos of yourself conducting (cut to seven different lengths), and sending a bottle of expensive wine to seven different admissions offices to ensure they don't lose any or all of these items. Woof.

Be that as it may, I have no choice. All of these things I must do in the next two weeks or be forever ridden with guilt that I never gave myself a chance. 

Why two weeks? Glad you asked. Because, it is now confirmed, I will be happily incapacitated the last week of the month. The 22nd marks my unofficial transition to Old Age with my ascendance to mid-20's-dom, and Laura is flying in (most assuredly road-weary and hung over, fresh from a wedding in Los Angeles) for the week. The 24th is Thanksgiving, (see this post for my overly exuberant treatment of Thanksgiving), and there have been talks of a Belgrade trip the 25th-26th. It will be a good week.

But, as seems to be the case with any plans for mini-vacations, there is much to be done before they can happen. Grad school applications aside, I have a lot of research to do before I can take a holiday even remotely unencumbered by guilt or nagging worries. The good news is that I finished Tim Rice's book May it Fill Your Soul on Friday, and I have since been focusing Maria Denkova's dissertation, which I will need to finish by this prospective holiday. If I can get a few other short pieces of literature read and analyzed by then, I should be in satisfactory shape and will consider myself deserving of a decadent break.

...

Go-go-gadget non-sequitur: 

This past weekend was fairly interesting. Thursday night I went to Locàl, a bar close to my apartment that plays host to an "International Night" every Thursday. This was my second trip there, and I'm thinking I may go quite a bit more often, as it has so far afforded me the opportunity to meet interesting people from Spain, Italy, Denmark, Korea, and, of course, Bulgaria. Thursday night, I met my friend Agi (whom I had, in fact, met at International Night a few weeks ago) there, as well as two of her friends who were in town for the weekend from Denmark. I would see them all again Saturday night, and meet a couple of others, all of which were very cool, to boot.

Saturday night, incidentally, Greg, his family, and I had dinner at Чевермето, a supposedly "authentic" Bulgarian folk restaurant, replete with music and dancing, at the National Palace of Culture. As it happened, it wasn't terribly authentic, but was nevertheless a good time, even when the dancers made me get up and join them. No pictures of this heinous insult to Bulgarian culture (and by that I mean my dancing, not the restaurant) will be forthcoming.

This week will feature more of our featured material: Research, grad school apps, and, on Friday, snow. Stay tuned.

Vampire Weekend: Halloween in Transylvania

We did it. Not completely according to plan, and with more than a few bumps along the way, but we did it, and it was awesome. Let's cut right to the chase:

Thursday night: I went to meet Caitlin at the bus station in Sofia. She came in from Haskovo at 9, and we proceeded to buy our tickets for the 12:30 AM bus to Bucharest. We headed back to my apartment, where I did my last-minute packing for the trip, and we set off again. Once on the bus, it didn't take long for rather large, undeodorized Bulgarian man sitting next to/marginally on top of me to begin to reek of BO, so as a defensive measure, I went promptly to sleep. I would be periodically awakened by our bus swerving to avoid guardrails, our driver jamming on the brakes, a protracted stop at the border, and the flatulence of said very (very) large man. But, somehow someway, I scraped together five hours of sleep by the time we arrived in a very chilly Bucharest at 8 AM on Friday morning.

Once there, we proceeded to get very lost, though not without some serendipitous discoveries. After walking down a hill without knowing which direction we were headed, making a few turns, and walking back up a long, winding pathway, we stumbled onto the Patriarchal Cathedral, which was mobbed, as the relics of St. Andrew were being displayed there for the week. Working our way back down the hill on the other side, we found ourselves still lost, and proceeded to try to find our way for the next two hours, finally making it to the hotel where the third member of our party, Laura, was staying.

This mercifully afforded me the opportunity to take a shower, and after doing so, the three of us went on a walking tour of Bucharest. It is a beautiful city, to be sure, and we took lots of pictures (somehow, most of them ended up being of churches), like these:

Beautiful Orthodox church next to the Academy of Medicine

Another beautiful Orthodox church

Of note in the city: Sex shops (as abundant as the churches) and bad drivers (more abundant than the churches). Interesting to me was the mixture of Orthodox and Catholic churches, some of them right next to each other. After a long day of walking around and seeing other interesting things like this,

Fountains in Piaţa Unirii

 this,

Parliamentary Palace

and this,

Bucharest Opera

we had some dinner at a rather nice, not-too-pricey German restaurant and headed back to the hotel. I threw my things together and headed down to Piaţa Unirii to meet my host for the night, Dor, a fellow CouchSurfer. We met, and he whisked me away to an underground (not just in the sense that is was alternative; it was actually underground) metal bar where the Romanian Death Metal band Truda was playing. Keeping in mind the absurdity of the situation, I actually enjoyed myself quite thoroughly.

So much metal

I have a strict 2-hour limit when it comes to Romanian Death Metal, though, so we headed back to his tiny apartment, every inch of the free space of which was taken up by the air mattress he had prepared for my arrival. Tremendously grateful for a place to sleep, I slept.

Waking up entirely too early for a Saturday morning, I got back to Piaţa Romana to meet Caitlin and Laura at 9. After eating perhaps the most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life, we took the metro to a desolate corner of town we thought was by the airport, where we were supposed to pick up our rental car. Upon closer inspection of the map, though, we realized that we weren't really anywhere close to where we were supposed to be, so after a bit of quick thinking, we got back on the metro, transferred lines, and took it as far as it would go in the right direction. Upon reaching the surface outside of the stop, and with only the glimmer of a clue as to where we should go, I, without much choice (and commanding not a single word of Romanian) approached a man who looked like he was waiting at the bus stop. 

Christian, as it turned out, was fluent in German. Lobet den Herrn! Though mine was rusty, I managed to get directions to the airport, and our friend was nice enough to accompany us on the bus and tell us where to get off. Here our troubles began.

We had rented a car from Dollar Rental, and let me tell you, it could not have been a bigger mistake. After thinking we had gotten something wrong, we walked around Baneasa Airport for an hour trying to find the Dollar office. Finally, a nice gentleman from a competing agency told us that their nearest office was in Bucharest's other airport. Never mind that we had made the reservation for this airport. 

Luckily, the other airport was in the same direction and only 10 km further outside of the city. Taking a taxi there, we explored the area and still couldn't find where we were supposed to pick up the car. Finally, heading to the arrivals terminal, we found their counter, where we were informed that not only were we supposed to have been at the meeting place at 5 AM (not what we reserved), the car was gone, and so was our money. Having no other choice (though I have been in contact with "authorities"), we rented a car on the spot from Avis. Finally, three hours and €190 later, we were on the road.

Our first stop was Snagov Monestary, reputed home of the tomb of Dracula. But in order to get there, we had to find it, first. Which proved a rather difficult task (sensing a pattern?). Our crucial mistake lay in the assumption that Snagov Monastery was in the town of Snagov. As it was actually in the neighboring town of Silistea, we drove around, lost again, for a full two hours before finding our way with the aid of a magical GPS that arbitrarily decided to start and stop working at points unanticipated and the worried aid of my dad, whom I raised by phone from the other side of the world to get him to help us using Google Maps (Thanks, Google Maps! And Dad!) The experience wasn't totally awful, though - we saw some of the most gorgeous scenery ever, hidden in rural (think farming village rural) Romania.

But we finally arrived. And it was cool. Have a few pictures to see what I mean:

Island in the middle of Lake Snagov

The Monastery

Getting closer

Behold the tomb of Dracula

Having spent the lion's share of our day lost and confused, we had to rethink our schedule a bit, so we decided to head right to Braşov and see our intended stops along the way later. The drive was, like so many of our other scenic experiences, gorgeous, and we did make one stop, right before sundown, at a most incredible looking cemetery nestled high in the mountains.

After spending a few minutes in this little place, we finally made it Braşov, and after spending a little more time being lost, we finally found the guest house that Laura and Caitlin had reserved, and had agreed to let me stay at, my own host never having materialized. We got settled in, headed out to a late dinner, and came home, ready to put the day, and ourselves, to bed.

Sunday was a day made for sightseeing, despite the fact that my camera died upon taking the first picture of the day, and I subsequently had to rely on my phone's camera (pardon, therefore, the poor quality). So sightsee we did. After a delicious breakfast cooked by our hostess (seriously, she made us scrambled eggs and toast), we headed out into the brisk air. Our first destination was the Braşov Citadel, an old Renaissance fortress sitting atop the highest hill/mountain in the city.

Looking east

Looking south

After that, we headed down the hill to the center of the Old City, where we walked past some beautiful churches, street peddlers, McDonald's (even here, in one of the most picturesque cities I've ever seen, there was no escape from the Hideous Monstrosity), and fantastically cosmopolitan coffee shops to the Schwarzekirche, the Black Church - so named I don't know why, but super cool nonetheless.

One side

The other

After briefly heading back to the guest house, we again hit the road. Our first stop was Bran Castle, which was not Dracula's castle, but still cool, and packed with tourists (Irony!). After spending some time there, we stopped at Râşnov Citadel, which, to my mind, was even cooler.

Bran Castle

Râşnov Citadel

That's cool

So is that

After the length of this day, we were fairly tired, so we headed back to Braşov, had dinner at another German restaurant (where saw traditional Transylvanian folk dancing!), and headed back to the guest house to get to bed early.

No lederhosen, I'm afraid

It was a good thing we did, because 7 AM = wakin' up in the mornin'. We hit the road at 8, and at 9:30, after another half hour of searching, we found the utterly unmarked, hidden, and unadvertised Peleş Castle. As it was, we didn't have time to go inside, though we did get some super cool shots of the place. Like this, for example:

Peleş Castle

And so, having accomplished everything we had wanted to, we headed back to Bucharest satisfied, returned the car five minutes before it was due, and caught a taxi to the bus station with three hours to go before our bus left for Sofia. Perfect, you say? Hardly.

What no one told us was that Bucharest actually has six bus stations (Apparently, the idea of centralization hasn't swept Romania just yet). And so, we spent the next three hours walking and illegally riding the trams, weeping asking person after person if they knew where we were supposed to catch the bus to Sofia. No one did. Finally, defeated, we headed to the train station to see when we could catch a train. Not until midnight, apparently, and for 120 lei (about $40). Nearly at the end of our rope, we did the unthinkable and patronized a McDonald's, which, it just so happened, had Wi-Fi. Around 4:15, I stumbled across a website with the information on where to catch the bus to Sofia.

That boat having sailed (That bus having left?), we camped out in that McDonald's, wallowing in our sorrow and self-pity (or that could have just been me). Finally, we decided to head out to dinner to try to salvage a bit of pleasantry from the evening. I had a bottle of wine with me that had been intended as a gift for the host that never materialized, so I brought it, but was informed that we couldn't drink it in the restaurant. Rough day.

After heading back to the train station, we camped out some more until our train arrived, and at midnight on Tuesday morning, we boarded. I escaped our scorchingly warm car and made for the next one, which was thankfully empty, and fell asleep. When I woke up, we were at the border, and when I woke up again, it was morning in Bulgaria.

When we pulled into the station, I was again surrounded by Bulgarian, and what struck me was how comforted I was by it after a weekend of hearing a language (Romanian) of which I didn't understand one word (not that I didn't pretend otherwise). Strange as this may sound, it was my first "Bulgaria-as-home" moment. In my absence from it, I found myself wanting to return to it. It was cool.

There are two more things I want to consider here. The first: Though we spent a lot of time on this trip lost, that time was actually, once we got over the uneasiness of not knowing where we were going, a lot of fun. After all, we were exploring an utterly unknown place. And we saw some of the most incredible things as a result.

The second: As tongue-in-cheek as Douglas Adams intended his advice on hitchhiking, and by extension, traveling, to be, there is actually quite a lot of real-world value to it. That advice? Rule #1: Don't panic. Rule #2: Always know where your towel is. These things saved me, to greater and lesser extents, throughout this trip.

Halloween in Transylvania? Check. Here's to many more harrowing, delightful, scenic, trying, rewarding experiences like this one.