College Apps, Weekend Trips, Safe Travels

I'm going to refrain from writing in my typical, obnoxiously long-winded manner tonight, as I need to get to bed and I don't feel like expending the effort necessary to spin discrete, uncomplicated events into profound, breathtaking rhapsodies that have profound effects on your view of the universe.

Sorry. Habit.

At any rate, several important things that have coalesced around this weekend:

I sent my first salvo of grad school inquiries away today, thus officially beginning the process of applying for an MM. My hope is to winnow the list of applications down to something manageable (5? 6?) after receiving responses, and then to start my applications before October rolls around. If I were waxing poetic--from which, of course, I'm abstaining this auspicious night--I would say something like, "Thus begins that particular chapter of my life." But I won't.

Tomorrow, I fly to Munich to visit Laura, whom I haven't seen in 7 1/2 weeks. We have a fun couple of days planned, including, of course, plenty of time at Oktoberfest. This will represent the first mini-break I take from my research, and it is perfectly positioned. I essentially finished the first leg today, the latest part of which entailed establishing an extremely rough history of the Bulgarian people/homeland. I have a multitude of resources lined up to consult upon my return on Wednesday. So this will be a nice little hiatus - a rhythm-inducing breath before I dive into some deeper intellectual waters. 

It also represents the end of my first month living in Sofia, a small but important milestone. When I come back from this trip, I will ramp up my research, find a few more things to do to round out my daily routine, and will start to burn myself out settle into the meat of my stay here. The day after I come back also happens to be Rosh HaShanah, another marker of new beginnings. So this seems as convenient a time as any to arbitrarily close the book on Chapter 2 of this process and begin Chapter 3.

Last but certainly not least, very safe travels to Andrea, who is flying to Austria today to begin her Fulbright fellowship in Vienna.

Boy, that all lined up nicely, didn't it? 

Please accept my apologies for the coming hiatus. I'll catch you all sometime next week when I'm back in Sofia and have entirely too much to write about. Довиждане! לשנה תבה! Get lost!

On life in Sofia (Again)

O Beautiful Rainy Day -

It is the first rainy, overcast day since I've been here in Sofia, and it has actually been kind of nice. I'm not the type that craves weather like this--do you think I'm from Washington or something?--but it is nice to have one of these days every once in a while. It has been raining on and off all day, and the clouds are pretty, in their own gloomy way.

But I digress. I wrote a bit (OK, a lot) about life in Sofia a while back, and I just wanted to add some things, lest you get an incomplete picture.

First things first - my schedule. Before I tell you that I've been setting my own schedule, let me preempt your looks/cries of indignation by telling you that I have abandoned my procrastinatory ways. Maybe not completely--despite my visions for myself, they do not yet lie askew in a ditch by the side of the road--but I have been more or less disciplined about doing some work every day. Pat me on the head and give me a gold star?

But, yes, I've been setting my own schedule, and it has been nice. As a consequence, I've gotten to do a lot of things I want to/should be doing, like going out and meeting people, exercising, cleaning my apartment, and generally learning to live like a responsible, independent human being. And at the risk of giving you the impression that I haven't been driving myself crazy with work, I will say that I have actually had enough hours in the day. Perhaps that represents a step back from the resistant Type-A individual I had been forced to be in the States, but I nevertheless feel good about the progress I've been making on all fronts.

And it has been satisfying to go back to a 5-days-a-week schedule, which I haven't been on since my Junior Year of college. As of my Senior Year, my class schedule became erratic, and my first year out of school, I worked weekends, with random weekdays off. Having days off in the middle of week sucks a little bit, to be quite honest, especially when they aren't contiguous, because you can neither relax nor feel productive nor end up spending them wisely, usually. And as soon as I quit my job, I went to a do-a-little-work-seven-days-a-week schedule in preparation for my conducting recital, which probably went better because of this schedule than it would have otherwise.

The inherently satisfying thing about working 5 days a week and then resting for 2 (those 2 being the same days as everyone else) is that it gives me a sense, at the end of the week, that I've earned some time off. I've put my nose to the grindstone for 5 consecutive days, and my reward is to forget about all the work I've done that week and party/lounge around/drink an extra beer or 3. And part of the reason I've been good at getting work done 5 days a week is because I can decide what I need to do on a given day and get it done, without time constraints. I think one of the failings of a 9-to-5 job is that it either artificially limits the amount of work you can get done or it motivates you not to be productive, if you have the ability to meet your goals in less than the allotted time. I have found that being on a flexible schedule reduces the pressure for me to get things done within an arbitrary amount of time, and so leaves me free to concentrate on actually getting it done. When that thing has been research, it has given me the freedom to invest my time in what I think will be worthwhile uses of that time, whether that's reading books or online resources, going out into the field, or other things entirely. 

But planning is key. Would that we all had a specific plan and a flexible schedule. Were this the case, I have a feeling that so much of the time the average worker wastes in any given day (be it on Facebook or any other time-waster) would cease to function as a block to getting things done.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to devolve into a discourse on productivity and how we spend our time. The upshot of this discussion vis-a-vis how it applies to me:

I am relaxed here. I have so far enjoyed my research; it has yielded a great deal of information and even more questions than I had to begin with. I have a long road ahead of me in completing my four basic tasks - defining who the Shopi are, defining their origins, tracing them through the ages and comparing them at all points to who they are now, and pinpointing the locations and reasons for any discrepancies. But the work has not, so far, been too much for me to handle, and I have done a good job of compartmentalizing my workday from my leisure time. And so, I feel more relaxed here than most times in my life. I am away from a lot of mental blocks I had in the States, I have found people to share my time with here, and I have spent my time wisely and enjoyed doing so. Like I said, I have had time to do a lot of the things I want and I have felt like I've had enough hours in the day to get all of them done. And so, not worried about potentially impossible tasks or rushed obligations, I am relaxed.

An integral part of my adaptation here has been the expansion of my knowledge of the city. I have recently begun to explore the southern quadrant of the Center through my thrice-weekly runs, replete with such attractions as the National Palace of Culture and Малките Пет Кьошите (Literally, The Little Five Corners, where five streets come together). As I have expanded my knowledge of the city and consolidated my understanding of its layout, I have discovered more and more to do and to see. Along with this, I have begun to get a feel for how streets run and where they lead to and which neighborhoods are where in relation to each other, which has made the city begin to take on a character of its own before my eyes. I feel like I'm really beginning to understand it.

On Saturday, I pushed my boundaries a little farther and made an attempt to observe the Sofia's Day Festival in Ботунец (Botunetz), about 15 km east of Sofia. Lo and behold, when I got there, it turned out that budget cuts had forced the city to eliminate the live entertainment, leaving me disappointed, but with renewed interest in seeing Shopi music performed live. And opportunities abound: There is another festival this coming Saturday that I will be attending in search of this music.

Nor has folk music been my only White Whale. Last night, I went with Melissa (another Fulbrighter that I haven't seen since FISI) and her mentor-teacher to see Noa and Mira Awad in concert at the National Palace of Culture. The concert did not disappoint. It was a wonderful show and a great chance to hang with a couple of great people. It was, I say  perhaps gratuitously, a horizon-expanding and intrinsically enjoyable experience.

One more entry will be forthcoming before Saturday, when I go to Germany for a few days. If you've stuck with me so far, I appreciate it. Until then...

Problems of Research and Personal Stuff

Today is the Feast of St. Sofia, which meant that the streets were filled today with revelers and citizens of this namesake city.

Today also marks the end of my first "business" week - of research, learning, and establishing myself here. It has been a success, more or less, but it hasn't been 100% vanilla. My research is off to a good start but I may have to revise my methodology and tweak my hypotheses.

Not previously knowing much about this field, I had assumed that it would be as easy as establishing its history, examining records, comparing them with what we know now, and drawing conclusions therefrom. I've realized it's not going to be as simple as that.

The first problem is that there are no written records establishing a history of the Shopi before a certain (very recent, historically speaking) point. This is Big Problem Number 1. All of the history of this people had, until that recent point, been handed down orally, which introduced some problems that go along with exclusively-oral traditions. Thus, there is probably no way of knowing the origins of the Shopi (Are they Bulgars? Thracians? Slavs? Something else entirely?) or their diaphonic singing or certain important specific pieces of information, such as when Christianity was introduced to them.

Perhaps a more daunting problem, which I only encountered yesterday, lies in the fact that nobody can actually seem to define who the Shopi are. By that, I don't mean the question of their origins (see above), but the rather more essential question of exactly who this group encompasses. There is no consensus definition for who is and isn't a Shop, and there seems to be a lack of definitive markers--cultural and ethnic alike--that define the extent of this people. This is Big Problem Number 2.

I have, however, uncovered quite a lot of valuable and essential information. One of my most important discoveries so far has been the connection between religion, custom/ritual, and song. Fairly obvious/self-evident, no? But, of course, it takes me a while to put things together sometimes.

Prof. Naidenova writes about this connection in her book, so it was gratifying for me to see another source discuss, expand upon it, and give examples. The source in question is Martha Forsyth's book, which I have spent the better part of the week examining, about Bistritsa, a small village south of Sofia. In the book, she explains that during the Socialist era, when religious practices were suppressed, the customs that went along with these practices were suspended, and the singing of many songs along with them. When religious freedom was reinstated in 1990 (coinciding with the fall of Socialism), certain practices were resumed, but since many of the songs hadn't been committed to writing, there was often widespread disagreement over words and melodies. (This particular anecdote also seems to substantiate the claim that, out of all the forces at work in Bulgaria over the centuries, Socialism had the biggest effect.)

So, how to go about attacking the questions I laid out in my research proposal? It was clear I had to find different methods. After thinking about it, I came up with this: 

With the knowledge that different villages within the Shopluk have slightly different musical repertoires, comparative analysis seems like a good way to go.  So I now have a tentative plan to compare the bodies of music sung in villages from different regions. Once I establish a history for each of these regions, the influences should become fairly obvious, and voilà - I will hopefully have established a backdoor method for answering my questions.

One thing you should know about me: I love Linguistics. I'm fascinated it. Thus, I had an idea that draws on principles from the field. One of these principles (which I heard many, many times during my course at USC) states that "People who talk to each other tend to talk like each other." (The credit for this accurate and succinct summation of one of the very basic tenets of Linguistics belongs to Prof. Ed Finegan of USC - smart, smart man.) It therefore stands to reason that the same mechanism that drives this linguistic phenomenon should do exactly the same thing on a musical level: Where the region divides into linguistic areas, I would bet nearly anything that it divides into musical areas (based on the conventions in this type of singing) along the exact same lines.

And, though this may constitute a trial of my luck, I could possibly go one step further. Many, if not most, songs are common to several villages within the region, and I would bet that some of the details of these songs have diverged from each other in their separate versions over time, much like daughter languages from a parent language. Perhaps--though I have not yet done any research that would bear this out--it may be possible to reconstruct the "parent" versions of these songs, compare them to the "daughter" versions, and glean even more information that way.

This coming week, I will begin this line of attack, and should the need arise, I will modify my methodology and hypotheses again, following the Scientific Method that they taught us all the way back in 8th grade.

/End research-talk

Other highlights of the week include: My Phillies clinching their fifth straight playoff berth (I will probably do an entire post devoted to the Great Franchise and their Season in the next week or so), continuing Bulgarian lessons with Dr. Angelov, and last night, a FISI reunion party, which was, to be quite painfully honest, a tremendous amount of fun.

L - R: Greg, Xristo, Irena, Atanas

How cute

L - R: Greg, Fred, Dimitra

Greg knows something you don't know

L - R: Xristo, Irena, the Author, Greg, Sanya

One sobering thing - 

My great-great-uncle Morty passed away this week,  just shy of his 99th birthday. He was the last surviving sibling of my great-grandfather Harry, and the only reason we ever found Harry's grave, 80 years after he died. Morty was a veteran of World War II, and got his ear shot off in Italy. He was the toughest guy, refusing care to the very end, always insisting that nobody go out of their way for him, or help him at all. And though he didn't want to be honored or even memorialized in any way, I can't help but give him this tiny tribute. I only met him twice, and he wasn't particularly close to any branch of the family that I'm familiar with, but he was truly a great man. May his memory be a blessing.

Next entry: More on life in Sofia.

Beginnings: Social, Academic, Bulgarian

Another beautiful day in Sofia. Warm air, breeze, good beer (and cheap!). Much nicer than Munich at the moment.

Most everything (i.e., the Principal Reasons Why I'm Here) has kicked off in earnest this week. After meeting with my adviser last week, she sent me a list of resources and other things to help me get started. I visited the BAN (Български Академия на Науките, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) Central Library on Monday and introduced myself to the director; he gave me a few things to look at. Yesterday, Dr. Naidenova led me over to the library for the Institute of Art Studies. There, I met several helpful women who pulled a stack of books for me that I had on a bibliography.

Felicitously, two of these books are in English; this is where I will start. And start I did, as yesterday represented my first day of hard research. It was a success, inasmuch as a day of reading books and taking notes can be a success. Most of the trepidation I had about actually sitting down and poring through mountainous, indecipherable volumes vanished as I actually sat down and did it - the books I'm starting out with are fairly easy reads. The hard part will come when I get around to the ones in Bulgarian.

To that end, I had my first tutoring session today with Dr. Angel Angelov, of Sofia University. Angel was our Bulgarian teacher the first week at FISI, as well as a guitarist and professor of linguistics - I am fairly sure we'll work well together. Today, we worked for an hour and a half, covering some dictation and some other things. My goal is to become fluent in Bulgarian by the end of the year, passing a strong conversational level by New Year's. This will be essential to my research, as well as to integrating myself into the culture here, which is the sine qua non of the spirit of the Fulbright Fellowship.

That's not to say it will be easy. The Slavic language family is only distantly related to the Romantic and Germanic families that are the most familiar to natives of the Western Hemisphere. In the few months since I undertook to learn this language, I have mostly been teaching myself, with an occasional brief conversation and a multitude of embarrassing moments to supplement my study. This is a hard way to learn, and I think having private, twice-weekly sessions will be quite helpful.

There is also the issue of the register of Bulgarian that I learn. This tutoring will hopefully bring me up to a strong conversational level (and beyond), but the prime reason why I'm over here in the first place is to do research, and to do it, at least partially, in Bulgarian. Luckily, a rather large part of the academic lexicon here consists of loanwords from other academic languages--French and English, in particular--so my knowledge of these languages will certainly be a huge help in that respect. But the fact remains that a lot of my learning will, by necessity, take place in a much less academic register of vocabulary than might be ideal for a researcher - so I have a lot of work to do on my own.

Bulgarian, in the abstract, is not nearly as hard--I should say, has not been nearly as hard for me--as some other languages that are out there. Many, if not most, of the concepts at which it diverges from English have parallels in other languages that I've learned, chiefly French. Why this is, and whether this is coincidence, providence, or influence, I couldn't say, at least at this juncture, but it has proven to be a fortuitous feature of the language. The hardest parts about it for me so far have been mastering the different functions of its prepositions and understanding its case/declension system. English, by evolution, has only two (I think?) declensions, whereas Bulgarian has four. And so on. Syntax and grammar are not particularly hard in this language. 

But moving on: The third leg of the Holy Triangle of My Week Of New Beginnings is social. 

I have had plenty of chances to do things since being here - aside from the two weeks of FISI, I have been seeing some of my fellow Fulbrighters in the 3 1/2 weeks I've been in Sofia. One of my goals, though, was to put myself out there, make friends with people who weren't from the same part of the world as I am, and--at the risk of quickly running this platitude into the ground--integrate myself into another culture.

To that end, I joined CouchSurfers a few weeks ago (For those of you who aren't familiar with the organization, it's an online community that connects people around the world who are traveling. It also has a service whereby you can contact someone to lodge you for a few nights while you're passing through a particular city. Membership currently stands at around 3 million), and last night, I went to my first event - a huge gathering in Orlov Most Square. It was really a lot of fun, and I met some cool people from all different places - Bulgaria, mostly, but a few Germans, an Austrian, a Hungarian, and even a guy from Lancaster, Pennsylvania who taught the same DCI corps--the Crossmen--that my brother played in a few years before.

It was a great chance for me to practice meeting and talking to people--world travelers, at that--and while we mostly ended up speaking English (I told you my Bulgarian wasn't quite up to conversational yet), the rapport was very friendly. Tonight, I'm heading down to Xambara for a smaller gathering with a similar group of people. It's only a start, but I'm hoping that it will lead to an entirely new, robust social circle for me to be a part of while I'm here. The only way that will happen is if I continue to put myself out there, but so far, so good.

It has truly been a nice day, but now it is dark. That fall feeling I got a few days ago has receded, and Sofia has plunged back into Indian Summer. I wonder how long it can hold out before it starts getting cooler for good, but it so far shows no signs of letting up. Now I'm off to finish my studying and meet some more people. До скоро...

Feelings and an Academic Discussion

The light is changing.

I stepped out of my apartment yesterday afternoon and it hit me. This happens to me every Fall. There is a singular feeling, impossible to describe, that I get on a certain day in September every year when Fall makes the first hints of its presence felt. I used not to be able to figure out what triggered it, but I felt it nonetheless.

There's a certain intangible smell in the air that reminds me of apple cider and brown leaves and wind. There's the subtle suggestion of a chill - the air remains warm, but there is the tiniest wisp of something hiding behind it, something that makes the air feel impalpably heavier. Overnight, there's a change in the light of the late afternoon. It is somehow older, feebler; it slants in a way that the light of summer just doesn't.

I sensed all of these yesterday, and, I'll admit, it surprised me. I should have expected it; the climate here (which I would presume is responsible for all these overnight changes) is not all that different from that of Pennsylvania, and, albeit less similarly, LA. I don't know why they took me by such surprise. Perhaps because they take me by surprise every year - nine intervening months can make you forget the feeling of a season, even though you experience it year after year.

I recall having a similar collection of feelings and reactions on That Day the first year I went away to college, in the Fall of 2006. It startled me that year, because I had assumed--and who could blame me? LA had, up to that point, been a summer-at-the-beach-like pseudo-paradise--that I had left the milieu of what I had come to think of as "Autumn in the Country" behind me when I left the East Coast. But the same feelings took hold of me That Day in 2006--only much more forcefully--as the ones that did so yesterday.

And so I'm forced to conclude that this feeling that has gone along with the changing of the seasons may come back, year after perpetually surprising year, no matter where in the world I find myself. In a way, the change is comforting, but, to a greater extent, it's inexplicably disquieting. It raises a certain feeling within me that, as you can probably tell by the difficulty I'm having in describing it, is not so clear-cut. It isn't overtly positive or negative, and it doesn't really have a name. I suppose it isn't quite homesickness, though the feeling does remind me of home; homesickness presupposes loneliness.

But I don't feel lonely here, nor did I by the time That Day came around my first year in college, or in any subsequent year. But the feeling came around all the same. I really don't know quite what to call it. Perhaps the most suitable option is that amorphous, ill-defined boondoggle of a word, nostalgia.

Leaving that for now:

I had my first meeting with my adviser, Dr. Goritza Naidenova, on Thursday, and it gave me a wealth of ideas about how to start my research. If you're interested in the academic summary that follows, read on. If not, feel free to skip the last paragraph.

Essentially, what I learned boils down to this:

The origins of the diaphonic chant of the Shopi, the type of music I will be studying, are untraceable; we simply have no way of uncovering them. This type of music is very likely hundreds of years old, dating back to the early Ottoman Period (1396-1878), or even before. As with all folk music, it serves a purpose and has a function as a part of the Shop culture. The original purpose of it remains unclear. 

The Ottomans, when compared to all of the other influences wrought upon Bulgarian culture, probably had the least influence upon it.

However this music came into being, it was unwritten, at first. A few lyrics were recorded at certain points, but up until the 19th century, there was no practical or established system for recording its pitches and rhythms. During the Bulgarian Revival (1762-1878), folk music took on enhanced meaning as one of the symbols of an independent culture and a renewed national identity. But as Bulgaria urbanized, and the emphasis in cultural life shifted to the city, the purpose and function of folk music changed as village culture did overall.

The 1850's saw the first attempts at transcribing folk music, but there were significant obstacles to this. Many of the common rhythmic gambits were nearly impossible to render accurately, and to make matters worse, scholars could not agree on the best way notate it. Some favored modern Western notation, whereas some favored a system of neumes similar to that used to notate chant in the Orthodox Church. After the Liberation in 1878, modern Western notation was used exclusively, and transcriptions started to become more accurate.

In the 1930's and -40's, several factors that would lead to the decline in the practice and preservation of this music began to coalesce. The Shopi, who, while never fully isolated from Bulgarian society at large, fiercely maintained their own separate culture, began to integrate more fully into that society. After World War II, Bulgaria became a Socialist Republic, which drastically altered folk traditions and the attitudes thereto. However, many of the best and most accurate transcriptions and recordings of Bulgarian folk music come from this era.

Today, the diaphonic chant of the Shopi is nearly extinct as it has traditionally existed in the villages of Bulgaria, surviving primarily through the curation and performance of professional folk groups. The specific techniques used to perform this type of chant are no longer widely taught, so the younger generation lacks the skills to sing it. It can still be heard upon occasion, but it is now heard very infrequently in informal contexts.

On the role of the Church:

The scales ("intonations" or "tones") used in this music are similar to those heard in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but there is little, if any, connection between the two. There is little evidence of influence in either direction - any similarities are coincidental. Traditional Bulgarian folk music took shape in pagan societies prior to their adoption of Christianity. As Christianity was introduced to these cultures, it changed them, and their folk music--along with its purposes and functions--as well.

The Church in Bulgaria did not, unlike the contemporary Catholic Church in Western Europe, keep extensive records and histories through its culture's periods of mass illiteracy. Thus, most histories of Bulgaria's antiquity were actually written by outside observers, Romans and Greeks foremost among them. This leaves our understanding of Bulgarian history clouded by outsiders' biases without the benefit of a cohesive insiders' narrative to which to compare them.

On cultural homogeneity:

Bulgarians, as an ethnic group, have a long established history as a cohesive, if not homogeneous, culture. The citizens of the First Bulgarian Empire, founded in 681 AD, are universally accepted as the common ancestors of the modern Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's situation is therefore unlike those of Spain, Germany, Italy, and other countries that were founded as federations of tribes who all had their own separate languages and cultural identities. Bulgaria, vis-a-vis the other nations of the world, has a comparitavely unified culture.

There are regional variations, however. A propos to this discussion - the folk music of any given village in Bulgaria differs from that of its neighbors, sometimes subtly, sometimes wildly. It may, therefore, be necessary to design comparative analyses between villages. And, as I mentioned before, the Shopi, though never fully isolated from the rest of Bulgarian society, deliberately maintained a culture more or less distinct from that society, at least prior to 1930. This cultural isolation has almost certainly contributed to variation within the Shopi's culture.

/End academic discussion

So things continue to go well. More sentimentality will most likely be forthcoming in subsequent posts. Until next time...

It's a Holiday in Bulgaria

With apologies to the Dead Kennedys. Today is Yesterday was Ден на Съединението, Unification Day.  (Note: I actually meant for this to be done by yesterday. Sorry about that.)

September 6, 1885: Bulgarian forces arrive in Plovdiv--to that point the capital of the Ottoman vassal state of Eastern Rumelia (which was itself a part of historical Bulgaria)--and surround the palace, proclaiming a coup that is to unite Eastern Rumelia with the new Principality of Bulgaria. Ethnic Bulgarians rejoice and prepare for war with the Ottoman Empire, through which they would successfully defend their newly unified state.

Great things have been afoot the last few days. After Sunday, my Typical Lazy Housekeeping Day, I made the first small, informal overtures towards beginning my research on Monday. I met with a few friends of my good friend Neda and discussed how to begin researching the music of the Shopi. We bandied many Good Ideas about, talked Bulgaria, went for a lovely stroll, bandied some more Ideas, talked choral music, and generally had a nice time of it. (More on the Good Ideas in a moment.)

After that, it was time for my thrice-weekly run (I have had the motivation and, most happily, the time, to devolve back into a whirling hurricane of limbs three times a week in my never-ending quest for studliness), which took me on a lovely tour of the Boris Garden and Studentskigrad (Студентскиград, literally "Student City," the section of Sofia in which most University students live - generally a party unto itself), dinner, and Skyping.

Tuesday was Unification Day, and to celebrate, Greg, Kalin, his brother, Kyril, and I went on an abbreviated, yet, nonetheless, challenging, hike of Mt. Vitosha. Despite the forecast that called for potentially heavy rain, we decided to brave the elements, in a completely macho show of bravado.

Before we set out on our hike in earnest, though, we made a stop by the Church of St. Nicholas, a tiny Orthodox church dating from the 11th (!) century. No longer a functioning church, but a museum, it contains frescoes from the 12th and 13th centuries, which were pretty cool to see. An observation: The old Orthodox churches here, when compared to the contemporary structures of Western Europe, are SMALL (I know, the irony of choosing to emphasize such a word with capital letters). This was, by far, the smallest, but it served to reinforce the point that there seems to have been a very real architectural divide (both formal and aesthetic) between the ecclesiastic designs of the Catholic and Orthodox worlds. Nearly all of the pre-Revival churches (those built before 1762) here are quite small and extremely ornately decorated. Compare these with the Gothic churches that took Western Europe by storm toward the end of the Medieval Period.

Leaving an architectural dissertation for another day and an audience that actually wants to hear it - Mt. Vitosha, while relatively unimposing when compared to your typical Appalachian mountain, is still a mountain. It is steep. And when we finally got to our destination--a rather picturesque waterfall--after a spirited hike of an hour and a half, we were glad to have a rest. Luckily, we couldn't have been in a nicer spot (The word in Bulgarian is най-хубаво, a word that combines the meanings of "the nicest" and "the prettiest").

The Author under the falls

L - R: Greg, the Author, and Kyril in totally-not-posed positions under the falls

A snatch of Sofia through the trees

On the way back down the mountainside, the heavens opened up and the rains came. Well, we thought, we were heading home anyway. We made it down more or less uneventfully, and I even managed to get this kind-of-cool-looking shot on the way:

By far, the most Beliakov-ian picture I have ever taken

Being thoroughly tuckered out from this journey, I didn't have much energy left, but did manage to drag myself out to dinner with Greg and Colin, who had just returned from a trip to Georgia (Asia, not North America), at a nice place called The Mayor's.

Today, I trekked to the Hadji Dimitur neighborhood of Sofia to pay a visit to the American Research Center, one of the many Good Ideas thrown my way on Monday. The director, Denver Graninger, was extremely gracious in showing me around after I dropped in unannounced, shortly before closing. He answered a few of my questions and primed me with information on what the Center has to offer. It seems as though I have one more resource to draw upon.

Afterwards, I met up with Michael, the last of the Fulbrighters to arrive, who just flew in today. We chatted, had dinner, and saw a bit of Sofia before he had to go back to his hotel in anticipation of an 8 AM train out of town. Another pleasant, touristy night in the books.

So my research is begun. My plane of experiences is expanding. I'm on my way. The extreme lateness of the hour is calling me away to my bed, so I'll wish a Merry Wednesday to all, and to all a good night.

Cultural Learnings of Sofia for make Benefit Glorious Nation of US and A

My first full week of living in Sofia has drawn to a close, and I feel like I can begin to talk about some of my impressions of this place.

For starters, Sofia is a lot smaller, geographically speaking, than most American cities, at least most that I've been to. It is, for organizational purposes, divided into the "Center" and a belt of city--the "not-Center"--that wraps around the Center, in a perfect model of concentric city planning. My apartment is located in the eastern quadrant of the Center, in a neighborhood known as Oborishte (Оборище), named for one of the streets that bisects the neighborhood. 80% of the important destinations in the city are a 20-minute-or-less walk from my apartment, so my location is pretty close to perfect. It is a 15-minute walk to the exact center of the city (everything converges around a couple of government buildings), so it has thus far been easy to get around.

I have braved the subway several times, and yesterday, I made my first major trip using the bus system. What's cool is that every trip you take on any public transportation vehicle costs a flat rate of 1 lev, so you can use the system pretty cheaply (keep in mind that a lev is about 70¢ US). Once I figure my way around a little bit better, I'm sure I will come to rely heavily on public transportation, for the first time in my life, as I 1) Live without a car for a year and 2) Live in a city where there is an adequate public system, two things which have never occurred simultaneously before.

Several things about my apartment that I didn't go into a few entries ago: It is small, but plenty big enough for one person to live in comfortably; two could squeeze into it if they had no need of personal space. It is, I have reasoned, a recently furbished attic, made suitable to live in because, I suspect, the owners of the building felt there was more money to be made in converting the storage space into an apartment. To be sure, it has been quite pleasant to live in so far, but it has a few quirks. 

One is its lack of level surfaces or right angles. Not that that's a huge bother, but one gets used to things fitting snugly in corners or against walls, and not walking downhill from one's living room to one's kitchen. The ceilings here range in height from about 7 to 10 feet; luckily, I have topped out at 5'10" and doubt I have any more growing to do. Unfortunately for someone of my average height, however, there is also a massive wooden crossbeam suspended 3 feet below the ceiling in my kitchen, against which I smacked my head--rather hard, I might add--4 times in the first couple of days, but which I have since learned to duck rather deftly, even when completely asleep in the middle of the night. I have a washing machine, thank the Powers Above, but no dryer, so laundry day always produces the sight of a 20-something American boy performing a rather Old World task in hanging his clothes out on the balcony to dry by the power of the sun and wind. The bathroom is also quite small, and features no tub or interior walls; rather, the shower is on top of the toilet is on top of the towel rack is on top of the sink. And though there is no showerhead--only a handheld module--I feel as though I've adjusted quite well, and have learned the art of aiming the water stream in directions that will not soak the entire room.

My refrigerator is quite small, but that hasn't been too much of a problem, so far. People shop here multiple times a week, and don't refrigerate the majority of their food, unlike us in the States. I have learned, through lack of a choice, the virtues of fresh foods, bought and eaten within a few days. And don't make the mistake of thinking that everything here is preservative-laced; I was quite surprised to open my pantry one day this week and find the bread and the fruit that I had bought 3 days before covered in--how do I put this delicately?--a less-than-benevolent-looking strain of mold.

As mentioned before, supermarkets do exist here, and by all accounts, they are doing quite well, but they are a vast departure from the ones to which we're accustomed in the Good Ole USA. They are smaller, feature a narrower selection of brands, and--imagine my surprise--charge you for bags. (This is actually a terrific idea - it incentivizes the reuse of plastic bags, vastly reducing waste. Think about this: I have gone shopping five times since I've been here, and used only the two plastic bags I bought the first time. Through this system, I've saved Bulgaria's landfills 8 plastic bags, and counting, in a week and a half. Multiply that by the 4 million citizens who do the food shopping in this country alone, and you get the idea.) I've also learned the virtues of getting to the market early to get my pick of the produce - going at night leaves the shopper with a sad-looking selection from which to choose.

I told you that food was the thing that made the biggest impression on me, didn't I? (He says to start his third paragraph on the subject) The thing I have been the happiest about, gastronomically speaking, has been the quality of the dairy here. The milk is delicious--even the skim milk tastes creamy--the yogurt is the best ever, and the cheese is, to put it in the words of Sacha Baron Cohen, NICE. There is, however, a black lining within the cloud of win that is the culinary situation in this culture: It is impossible to get real orange juice here. Or so I thought. After searching unsuccessfully through three stores, I was ready to give up, but, in what could, perhaps, be the biggest game-changer of the century, I spotted, in a tucked-away corner of my local market, a bottle of--could it be?--fresh squeezed orange juice, made on the premises. I was hesitant, of course - could it be a trick? But I made a leap of faith, bought the bottle, took it home, and was rewarded with the delicious taste of actual, real orange juice, rife with pulp. A crisis deliciously averted.

The best part about the food shopping here? The ludicrosity of its cheapness. One large, heavy bag of groceries, complete with milk, bread, produce, cheese, soup, and household items cost me 15 leva - $11 US. Unbelievable.

Having lingered on the subject of food for quite long enough, let's talk about kids. Bulgarians, it seems to me--based on my limited observations--are all about their kids. I don't mean that they fawn over them or spoil them rotten, although it's possible they do in private. It just seems that everyone here loves their kid to death. I have seen a great deal more 1 - 4-year-olds in public here than I ever did in the States, and not once have I witnessed a parent yelling at them or cajoling them into doing something. It's quite possibly a cultural thing that the child-parent relationship here is just more pleasant and loving, all the time. Or it could be that public strife is just not accepted in the way it is in the US. We'll have to talk about that some more if I ever delve deeper into the subject.

In fact, there is a far more pervasive sense here of public community overall than I have seen anywhere else. My apartment is located by a park--not a large one, but big enough--and every time I walk through this park between 2 and 8 PM, it is filled to the brim, mostly with kids and supervising adults, but also with socializers of every age. The afternoon here is, universally, a time to come out and talk to people. You can also see this by examining the sidewalk cafés. Every evening at around 6, they start to fill up with people coming out for a beer and a smoke. (Nearly everyone here smokes, too, though apparently, the habit is being curbed, just as it is in the States.)

These phenomena may be, partially, a function of the gorgeous weather we've been having (and it has been gorgeous for 2 straight weeks), but they obviously can't happen without an impulse for public social interaction that, it seems, is much stronger than in the US. It is the idea of what I always envisioned a small town could, and should, be like, except, as I need to keep reminding myself, we're in the middle of a big city (there are, after all, 2 million people who live here).

And that is the big takeaway I've had so far - that even though we are in a busy city, this place feels like a small town - community, local markets, narrow, cobblestone streets, a lack of big buildings for the most part, etc., ad infinitum. It has made for a really nice time so far, and I'm excited to see what comes next.

That's it for me, for now. I begin my research next week, so stay tuned.

To the Black and Back: A long weekend in Burgas

Having settled in in Sofia, it was time to go exploring. Bulgaria is not all that large (almost exactly the same size and shape as Pennsylvania), but within that small area lies a lot of varying terrain. Sofia is essentially located where Pittsburgh is in Pennsylvania, except that it's at the meeting place of two mountain ranges, rather than three rivers.

Burgas, by contrast, lies on the Black Sea, on the other side of the country, in exactly the same place as Easton does on the Delaware River (The Pennsylvania metaphors end here). In between the two run the Стара Планина (Stara Planina, meaning Old Mountains) range and the Thracian plane. To get there, you essentially have two options: The bus or the train. We did both.

Waking up not-horrendously early on Wednesday morning, I got my things together and headed to Greg's apartment, which, I discovered, is not a long walk from my own (more on getting around in Sofia in my next post). After collecting Fred, we caught what we thought was a legitimate taxi to the bus station. Upon dropping us off, the driver handed us a ticket with a mysterious 7 лев charge on it, and we knew we had been--illegally--cheated. We handed him 3 leva, the actual charge for a ride of that length, and as we were walking away, he ran up behind me and gave me a swift kick in the butt before he stormed off, cursing. Welcome to Europe.

Following this, we went and bought our tickets to Burgas. Travel within Bulgaria, compared with travel within the US, is extremely cheap, and our tickets to the other side of the country ended up costing about $18 US a piece. After a bit of waiting around, we boarded and left, and 6 hours and 3 horrifically bad American movies (Though the sound was off, I managed to scan through the Bulgarian subtitles and figured out that the movies were She's out of my League, Made of Honor, and what I think was There's Something About Mary, none of which I've ever seen and, having now partially seen them, never intend to) later, we arrived in Burgas, where Momchil met us and led us to his family's house. We had an incredibly pleasant dinner, after which I headed off to Amy's apartment, where she had agreed to let me sleep on the couch for the duration of my stay (Amy is another of the Fulbrighters teaching English here, and was assigned to the beautiful seaside town).

Waking up on Thursday morning, I was treated to this rather nice view from the balcony:

Residential Burgas with the (not-so) Black Sea in the background

After taking care of some business, Amy and I headed to the beach. I can't say it was a radically different experience from the beaches in the states, but it had a Mediterranean feel to it, right down to the topless bathers and alcohol consumption on the beach white sand and warm water. It was a really pleasant afternoon, and we headed back to meet Alex, another Fulbrighter who was in from Shumen.

Nice place.

After getting some dinner and resting up, we headed back out for the nightlife in Burgas, mostly centered on the beach. We hit a couple of the beachside clubs and then headed back to Amy's apartment, exhausted.

The next day, Fred, Greg, and I went to Nesebur, about 45 minutes up the coast. Nesebur is one of the most interesting towns on the Black Sea; it was founded by the ancient Thracians and has passed through the hands of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Turks over the course of the last 3000 years. The town is notable for the amount of ancient ruins still extant. To get there, we took a bus from Burgas up the coast and got off where we thought was appropriate. We had lunch at a little cafe and then went into the old section of the city. Behold:

The coast

More of the coast

City across the sound

Greek (!) ruins

After perusing the ruins for a bit, we toured the museum, whence I derive all my facts here. The sheer volume of historical artifacts that have been uncovered in this town was astounding. Nesebur, because of its strategic location (the leading city on a peninsula in the middle of the largest port on the Black Sea) has been an important city for thousands of years, and the museum houses coins from three different civilizations, pottery, statues, and perhaps most beautifully, Byzantine ikons, some as many as 500 years old. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures, but suffice it to say it was a lot to take in.

When we emerged, we decided to have a look at the more mundane parts of Nesebur. We got ice cream, window-shopped a bit, stopped by the Pop and Rock Festival that was going on there, and went down to the beach. We also saw some of the old Byzantine churches there, which struck me as quite small. After an afternoon of all this, though, it was time to head back to Burgas, where I had dinner with Momchil's family again (Fred and Greg, along with Kathy, another of the Fulbright Senior Scholars, went out to a Thai restaurant). Too tired to do anything more, I called it a night, and the next day was on the train back to Sofia.

The train ride back was fairly uneventful, and actually quite pleasant, in and of itself. It cost me even less than the bus ride did (about $13 US), and it was kind of nice not being confined to a cramped bus seat for 6 hours. The train ride did take a little longer (almost 7 hours), but I got some studying done, took some nice pictures of the countryside, and maintained one of the most awkward conversations of my life (because of the still-shameful nature of my Bulgarian) for an hour and a half. I will say, though, that it was a mind- and ear-stretcher, and probably good for me. 

Greg and Fred stayed behind for an extra day, so I traveled alone, but I was ready to get back. So Burgas weekend came and went, and it was mostly fun. Next post: Life in Sofia.