An American in Bulgaria: 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.

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