An American in Bulgaria

Istanbul, not Constantinople

2012-01-26T12:16:00.002+02:00

This time with apologies to They Might Be Giants.

It seems that not-even-remotely-current chronicles of my life are becoming the New Normal around these parts. While I'd like to apologize (I do) and say it has been unavoidable due to the increasingly hectic and stressful nature of the way my separate endeavors are bearing down on me (I will), let me also, before we go any further, disavow myself of the responsibility to write about my life here more than actually living it (I have). My days have been jam-packed since I returned to Bulgaria, and next entry, I'll spin a yarn that will have excuses jumping right off the erstwhile electronic page. But for now:

It boggles my mind that with as much as I've had to do, I've kept my goal of visiting another country every month in some part of my mind other than the deepest, darkest recesses thereof, let alone intact. But when my friend from LA, Carrie, swung through this part of the world on her way south from Poland, I couldn't resist the chance to come along for the ride, considering the ultimate destination of her travels was Istanbul, a town I've heard so very much about and has been highly recommended by nearly everyone in the universe. So we went.

Carrie got into Sofia one cold, bright Saturday morning (last Saturday morning, in fact), and I belatedly picked her up from the train station. After a few small business items back at my apartment, we set out so I could give her the tour, one I've given numerous times by now, of my city for the nonce. After we returned, chilled and snowed on (but extravagantly culturally enriched!), we took the opportunity to rest up, engage in various frivolities, and prepare to head out to dinner.

Dining out has generally been a genial and pleasant experience here in Sofia, and this would prove to be no exception. The act of getting to the given arena of consumption has likewise typically proven to be of minimal tsuris, but on this fateful night, all sorts of precedents would be broken, this last one first and foremost among them.

We saw the restaurant on the map, got verbal directions, and despite the gnawing pit of uncertainty in my stomach telling me to be extra sure of where we were going--since I had never been in the neighborhood--we left amid much fanfare and hailed a cab. 15 minutes later, it dumped us out on an unmarked street, the two of us having good company in failing to know where the hell we were going. So we walked. And walked. Eventually, I tried asking some passing souls for directions, receiving as many different answers as questions asked. Phone calls to the rest of our party proved to be minimally fruitful. After having a protracted conversation in German with a more-or-less kindly old gentleman, we walked some more, had more conversations with the now-frantic other members of our party, and generally grew colder and hungrier out there in the night wind, nary a sign of civilization about.

To cut an abjectly long remainder of a story short, we ended up finding a second cab, had my friend Alberto tell the driver where the restaurant was three times, and eventually found ourselves in what appeared to be Nebraska, replete with rolling fields, barns, and still no sign of civilization. Assured by our driver that the restaurant we sought lay behind the nearest of said barns, we uncertainly trudged down the long, icy driveway, and an hour after we set out, were greeted by the blast of warmth and noise one typically finds in a restaurant on a Saturday night.

Dinner passed comparatively uneventfully, save for the kitchen forgetting my order, a spate of karaoke as we were all beginning to settle into the thought of leaving, and the heretofore unanticipated charge for same. Carrie and I, exhausted from our day, elected not to join everyone else at the club when the time for leaving truly was upon us, and we instead headed for home.

The next day dawned much too early for either of our tastes, but we weathered it the best we could by concocting an overlarge batch of pancakes that somehow, to our exultant surprise, turned into crèpes in the pan. Aside from taking care of some more business (including the almost-overlooked task of going to the bus station and buying our tickets ahead of time), we spent much of the day at my apartment in preparation for traveling, also venturing out to secure some banitsa, which Carrie had never before encountered. When the appointed hour rolled around, we were ready, and at 9 PM, we set off for Istanbul.

I struggled to sleep on the bus, and when we got to the border crossing, I was awakened from my fitful slumber to the most absurd border crossing I have ever experienced. For those of you who are not familiar with intra-European travel: It is easy, fast, low-key, and, best of all, free for those traveling within the EU and countries friendly thereto. But no matter how hard I set my mind to it, I simply cannot find any way to justify using such adjectives to describe this particular crossing. At 2 AM, we filed out of the bus, showed our passports to the Bulgarian exit officers, and were more or less quickly on our way. To make it as stark as I possibly can, I'll simply state that crossing into Turkey took our busload of 5 people an hour and a half in the middle of the night.

The Turkish government, wise to the value of the desirability of their largest city, have levied a €15 entrance tax, disguised as a visa, on visiting tourists. Before you get the wrong idea, this is not a visa that you go through any trouble (that is, any official trouble) to obtain. Told that we needed such visas to cross the border, Carrie and I walked a tenth of a kilometer in the freezing cold over to what looked like a border post. Told that the office we actually needed was another few meters past this one, we set off again directly for it, all the while afraid that our bus might somehow leave without us. When we got to appropriate office, we were greeted by a large, surly man, demanding our money for what turned out to be a sticker--direct from a ream of hundreds of other such stickers--that he placed on the last page of our passports. Background checks? Nope. Picture ID's? Please. Feeling stranger about the experience with every passing minute, Carrie and I raced back to our bus, which was thankfully right where we had left it, got on, and waited another hour for the geologically slow machinations of Turkish border security to deem us fit to enter their country.

After a few more hours, I was awakened yet again and told that we were in Istanbul. The time was 5:20 AM. Disembarking, we found ourselves in a seemingly-abandoned Central Bus Station and contemplated committing the cardinal tourist sin of waving down a cab, but we decided to stick it out and try our luck with the Istanbul metro.

In attempting to buy metro tokens from a machine that was completely devoid of any English whatsoever, we encountered the first instance of a phenomenon that would prove to be ubiquitous in our stay here: People being insistently friendly and helpful. Not that I've never experienced friendliness from locals before, but over the course of the next two days, we would be treated to myriad displays of kindness from complete strangers on a scale I have never before witnessed.

The destination of this particular anecdote is that we bought our tokens and took the light rail system (akin to Germany's S-bahn) to our changeover. As we stepped out of the station, the sky was just beginning to lighten in the east, and a startling call rang out from the mosque to our immediate left. The muezzins called the city to prayer as we spent the next half hour trying to find out where exactly where we were supposed to catch the tram that would take us to our hostel. We eventually found the station by dint of pure dumb luck, and after walking onto the wrong side of the platform, the security guard indicated that he would look the other way while we crossed the tracks to the correct side.

After a short ride to Sultanahmet Square, we debarked and again tried to find our way with limited knowledge of our surroundings. There was a moment, as the sun rose over the Blue Mosque, when I wondered if I was in a dream. But I was roused from my reverie by yet another friendly, helpful stranger who walked us to our hostel, and making a quick executive decision to try to catch a little bit of sleep while it was still possibly justifiable to be abed, I passed out in our room until 9 AM.

Never has a cold shower been more refreshing than the one I took upon waking up for the last time that day. After venturing upstairs (for this hostel, we were told, featured a rooftop restaurant), I sat--completely and utterly flabbergasted, my utterly delicious complimentary breakfast spread before me--overlooking the Sea of Marmara, wondering for the second time that day if I was in a dream and I would wake up to a life in which I would not be refreshed, fed, warm, and in a place with a sea beneath me, the towers of a mosque to my left, and another continent to my right.

Needless to say, our stay had gotten off on the right foot. From there, it was all just a matter of sightseeing.

Istanbul, straddling two continents, is essentially divided into three halves. Though we didn't get to cross to the Asian side (more on that later), we spent the two days that I was able to stay exploring almost the entirety of the European side, which is bisected into two parts by the Golden Horn. Our first day, we ventured around the Old City, in the southern half of the European side.

Our first stop was the Blue Mosque, which is, in my novice opinion, the second coolest mosque in the city.

It's blue inside.

In the immediate vicinity thereof are the Hagia Sofia,

Right next door.

the Egyptian obelisk,

That's just the top third of it.

and the Basilica Cistern, a creepy-cool underground cistern that used to be a church.

Seriously.

After drinking in these sights, we headed up the hill to the area of the Grand Bazaar, a massive indoor marketplace (The Ottomans invented malls. Who knew?). It was there that we experienced, in full force, the juggernaut that is a Turkish sales pitch. Yelled at from every angle with "special deals" and greetings that would make the person with the lowest self-esteem in the world feel valued, we made our way through, around, and between a maze of shops selling anything and everything imaginable.

Mall.

Finally making our way out of this delightfully treacherous labyrinth of merchandise, we found ourselves again on the street, and hungry. Stopping for a lunch of the most delicious döner kebab I have ever had (though it is ubiquitous and quite delicious here in Sofia, the döner in Istanbul was just the best thing ever) at a streetside truck, we then made our way to one of my favorite things on this trip, Süleyman's Mosque.

Built for Süleyman the Magnificent and finished in 1558, it was meant to be the grandest thing in the city, and I have a hard time believing it wasn't, if it isn't still. The architecture is ridiculous, ornate on a monumental scale, and the whole thing has been incredibly well-maintained. The grounds house several smaller domes, which serve as mausolea for Süleyman, his wife, and the architect that designed the mosque. Check it:

Just exquisite

And beautiful

From the courtyard

Our last sightseeing stop for the day was the Spice Bazaar back down the hill. While it bore more than a passing resemblance to the Grand Bazaar, it was entirely dedicated to food, and, of course, spices. It smelled delicious.

Really delicious.

When we emerged, it began to flurry, and then to out-and-out snow, so we decided to head back to the hostel to warm up, rest up, clean up, and get some dinner, after which we retired, having been joined in the dorm by a couple of ERASMUS students from France and Romania.

The Blue Mosque in the snow

That night, I slept hard, having pieced together barely more than five hours of sleep the previous night and topped it off with kilometers and kilometers of walking the previous day. When I awoke, awash in sunshine, the dorm was deserted, but I once again ventured upstairs and found Carrie at a table, and we proceeded to repeat the delicious morning festivities.

That taken care of, we planned our day, I checked out of the hostel (for I was to be returning that night), and we ventured out. After securing my ticket home, we decided to spend the day on the European side north of the Golden Horn, the New District. Stopping to appreciate some of the sights we had missed the first day, we made our way to the Galata Bridge and crossed over the water.

Our closest and most trusted companion on this trip was Rick Steves' guide to Istanbul. I had never been exposed to the magic that this series of travel guides represents, but I quickly became a believer. After crossing the water, we decided to travel--backwards--one of the routes he recommends. So to get there, we made our way through narrow alleyways and up tiny streets, past Italian-built (!?) towers, little synagogues nested into the rows of houses, and an inexplicable number of music shops, to Istiklal Caddesi.

Seriously. The Genoans built a tower right in the middle of Istanbul.

The most inconspicuous synagogue ever

We spent the next hour or so moseying on down this shoppers' paradise, swarmed even at the midday hour, pausing only to try some new Turkish food. We eventually emerged, unrelieved of any money save for that we had spent on lunch, and went ahead with what had been our plan all along - to head to the bridge across the Bosphorus and cross into Asia.

Though it was not incredibly far to go, the walk still took us the better part of two hours as we lacked any definite idea on how to get there and what to do, other than to walk towards it and then walk across it.

At least, it didn't look far away

We eventually found ourselves in the shadow of the bridge, but discovered that we would have to climb away from the water for quite a way to catch the beginning of it. So, again haphazardly, we followed small side streets towards what we imagined was the entrance to the bridge. Eventually finding ourselves at the top of a Long and Winding Road with the motorway close to us but no entrance in sight, ~~I browbeat Carrie~~ we decided to climb the steep, snowy hill up to the roadway.

Emerging onto the shoulder of the highway, our goal was in sight, and with about 15 minutes of daylight remaining, we decided to go for it. Alas, 10 seconds into our jaunt onto what turned out to be a maintenance-access walkway--and not, as we had thought, a pedestrian sidewalk--we were halted by frantic whistle blasts issuing from a police car. Our desire for completing our goal being outweighed by our desire not to get thrown into prison in a country whose language we spoke not one word of, we turned back, and settled for some picturesque, though disappointing, photos of the Bridge to the Other Side.

Below the bridge

Looking across

Steeling ourselves for the long return walk, we headed back down into town, stopping for some baklava along the way, and caught a bus back to Istiklal Caddesi. Walking back down the way we came, we found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we got a three-course meal for 5 lira (coming out to US $2.50). We then headed back into the Old City, where we finished our day at a hookah restaurant, relaxing and getting a private show from a Turkish folk band who serenaded us until they figured out that we weren't lying when we told them we had literally no money left to tip them.

With that, though Carrie stayed for another few days, my stay in Istanbul was over. I headed back to the bus station, barely making my bus in time, and once we were past the border crossing, I was down for the count, waking up in my seat as the bus crawled through a whited-out Sofia.

What an awesome trip. I have seen some very cool places in my time here so far, but Istanbul is definitely at or near the top. It was an overwhelmingly positive experience in almost every way, and I am going to try to go back one more time before I have to leave this wild continent.

I will get us all caught up next time (finally!), and there is a lot to tell. So until then -

Back to Bulgaria

2012-01-18T23:32:00.001+02:00

All good things must come to an end, especially vacations, which seem designed, when their last moments are slipping through your fingers, specifically for the purpose of breaking your heart. And though I had two glorious weeks to squander on things that weren't really obligations as much as experiences, the time still seemed far too short.

On a blisteringly cold Münchner day, bags in tow, Laura and I headed to the airport, said our goodbyes, and I, for the (how many times has it been this year?) time, hopped the country. Stepping off the plane into a blisteringly cold Sofiiski night, I caught a bus and eventually made my way back to my desolate, lonely, abandoned apartment, pining away for somebody to live in it after standing empty for two weeks.

I made the executive decision to spend the rest of the week getting my business back in order, and it's a good thing I did, because there was plenty of it. While in Munich, I heard back from the first of the grad schools I applied to. Things on that front didn't get off to such a hot start; the first email I received (six years after my last applications to institutions of high learning, six years after receiving packet after bulky packet in the mail, these processes have finally been digitized, truly bringing Academia into the 21st century) was my rejection letter from Michigan.

Good news was on the way, though - a few days later, I got the enormously relief-bearing email that I was in at USC,--my alma mater--no audition necessary. So I was going to Grad School.

I'm going to Grad School.

I could, at this point, delve into a theatrical account of all the anticipation and emotional ups-and-downs to which I've been subjected as the very nature of my future has changed and hung in the balance, but I won't; that would be silly and obnoxious. Or maybe I just did.

To make what would otherwise be short, insubstantial stories even shorter, I have, as of this writing, auditions at Westminster Choir College and, to my tremendous and happy surprise, Yale. I have yet to hear back from UNT, but all things in due time, I suppose.

What has ensued as a result of these pieces of news has been a mad scramble to prepare. I'm in a moderately precarious position - not currently engaged in choral activities, the music I need difficult to obtain in this corner of the Balkans, primitive piano skills more or less laying dormant, efforts to revive them sure to be a struggle. As I see it, I'm at several disadvantages relative to all the other applicants eying the same openings I am, and the only way I can possibly compete with them is to work harder than all of them.

So I will.

Anyway:

January 3rd was the day I dove, for the first time in my life, into the unrewarding, chaotic primordial swamp of tax returns - qualifying for Federal Aid means filling out the FAFSA, and filling out the FAFSA means doing your taxes, and as close to January 1st as possible. Seven (!) hours later, I emerged, mostly triumphant, having filled out the first 1040 (and Schedule C, and Schedule SE) of my life. And though it put me in the mood to unleash my accumulated wrath by devouring something unsuitable for being devoured (someone's head not being entirely outside the realm of possibility), it was another uplifting--for lack of a better word, as this subject has caused my adjectival vocabulary to fail me--sign of my impending Independence and Adulthood (Complete).

A few more days into the New Year, I had to bid farewell to fellow Fulbrighter Greg and his family, his grant being only a half-year affair, terminating on January 5th. We had one last ukulele-guitar-trumpet-clarinet session in the Sofia Metro, had dinner, and with that, that particular chapter of our collective stay came to a close. Come Monday morning, I was back on the research horse.

The New Year marked a slight shift in how I'll be carrying out my research. For the past four months, I've been living in the library several hours a day, studying books of venerable age and unsatisfactory readability, some in archaic Bulgarian. Now, my intention--being armed with a ~~thoroughly basic~~ basically thorough knowledge of my subject--is to actually get out into the field and watch Shopski Folklore being made by real people, a turning point as momentous, I suppose, as any academic shift can be. I have my attendance at several festivals lined up in the next few weeks, and perhaps a few personal interviews as well, if I can swing it. It could turn out to be, perhaps, both a good time and a good story.

So my time, it now appears, is at a premium. My days, for the past week and a half, have gone something like this: Wake up, eat breakfast, shower, go to the library, head out for a coffee and some studying, come home, answer emails, go to the gym, come home again, take a shower, work on audition repertoire, fin, repeat. This is a positive development, if viewed the right way. I'm certainly not bored--not that I ever really have been this year-- and I've found more than enough things to fill up the whole of my day.

The flip side of this coin is the stress that comes with it. The Westminster and Yale auditions are--and will continue to be, right up to the moment they're over--big, important, nerve-wracking affairs, and I will never forgive myself if I fail to prepare to the fullest extent I can. Life Goal Mode has most certainly been engaged, Life Goals demand a lot of time.

What has been mildly astonishing to me is that I haven't felt bad about being so busy. There was a time in my life when I would curse the Universe, the Establishment, or any other Power for dumping so much on me and keeping me so busy. But now, while I may not be enjoying having so much to do...I don't mind it so much. It's kept my mind off of petty things and given me little time to engage in some of the unhealthier habits in my life, Facebook being first and foremost among them. I am engaged and absorbed, to use affirmative, uplifting language, which, of course, we don't absolutely need to do. It's rewarding, not necessarily in an Utterly Fulfilling sort of way, but in a step-back-and-look-at-what-you're-doing sort of way. I am breaking the mental chains of my own laziness - out of necessity, yes, not quickly or efficiently, no, but it's happening all the same.

But before I devolve too much further into self-aggrandizing back-patting (which has been a regrettably common occurrence around these parts, and for that, I apologize), let me just say that there is no shortage of things I'm shooting for right now, and it feels, at once, both good and stressful.

Thus has been the substance of the weeks subsequent to my German Adventures.

Next post: The tale of my spontaneous trip to yet another wicked cool city of Europe. Keep reading! (Please?)

Christmahanukwanzika, Part 3: Munich-Salzburg-NYE

2012-01-13T19:42:00.004+02:00

Seeing as how I may be the only Jew in the history of the world to go on a road trip specifically to go to church, I promptly inoculated myself against apostasy, upon our return to Munich, by setting out the menorah and lighting the candles for the seventh night of Hanukkah. Only after that were we able to move on to other things.

The week between Christmas and New Year's was an interesting one for the city of Munich. There was an element of anarchy to the whole thing that is generally lacking in the States, and I kind of liked it. So while Laura and I repeated in our endeavors of the first week, this time with different destinations and attractions, the city slowly disintegrated into chaos around us. Like I said, interesting.

The day after we got back, we went to see the Munich Camerata perform a concert of music for chamber orchestra--Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, and the like--courtesy of Laura's host family, the tickets being their Christmas present to her. It was a nice affair, the music was good, and we were, of course, dressed to kill. Spurning the Hofbräuhaus for dinner, we settled on a small, hole-in-the-wall indigenous restaurant, and there we began to hatch our plans for the coming week.

The Peterskirche in Munich has the cool distinction of having a balcony at the top of the church to, affording spectacular views of the city and beyond, to which you can climb. So one cold, overcast winter day, after visiting the Viktualienmarkt (a large, outdoor, year-round food market the likes of which you would not believe - exotic and quotidian food both exerting their inimitable power over helpless passersby), we each paid our euro and climbed the long, long staircase to the top, pausing only to allow the odd gaggle of rude American tourists to shove past us, and, occasionally, to photograph some of the best graffiti therein. When we got to the top, we were rewarded for our efforts:

Big City

The Frauenkirche and Rathaus, looking north

That scenic experience behind us, and thwarted in our attempt to secure a steak dinner (a long and harrowing tale that is still too raw upon my heart to relive), we headed over to the North Gate of the city.

Not pictured: The Korean tourists standing directly behind me, taking the exact same picture

This particular week, in truth, turned out to be a bit less productive and a tad more lazy than the previous one. While we did see some cool things in addition to the ones you see above, and we did eat at some places I would not have expected (including a ridiculously good Mexican restaurant that, to my utter delight, uses real jack cheese on their burritos, something that is apparently rare here in Europe), the memory thereof is now so hazy with its distance in the past that I can't quite remember specifics. What is essential to the tale is that we spent the week having cultural experiences and planning our New Year's. So when the weekend rolled around, we were prepared.

One of the better impulse decisions we made on this trip (and one of the better ones I have ever made in my life) was to take a day trip to Salzburg the day before New Year's Eve. It was a confluence of circumstances that made this possible: It's only a two-hour train ride from Munich, it is right across the border from Germany, and Bavarian Transit offers a round-trip, multi-person ticket for €29. Why not go? we asked. No reason, we replied. So let's go, we resolved. We went.

The train ride was comfortable enough (train travel in Germany is, I can say without fear of reprisal, far superior to its counterpart in Bulgaria. Ah, the wonders of a high-income economy), but when we got to Salzburg, it was cold, with a capital COLD. Braving the elements--including hail-like snow--like the determined tourists we were, we set out and saw a great many wonders of the city:

The scenic views,

Apparently, Anonymous is in Salzburg, too

the 961349 monuments to Mozart,


Handsome fellow.

and a museum of classical art that we inadvertently snuck into, not realizing that admission was €6.

Having absorbed all these wonders, we ventured up the hill to the Salzburg Fortress; basically, your standard castle on top of a mountain. But oh, is it scenic.

Seriously

The mountain to which we sung excerpts from Mozart's Requiem. That's right, I brought my score.

Did I mention it was cold? Well, let me mention it again, because we were eventually forced to take refuge in a Chinese restaurant and subsequently forced to order dinner while waiting for the hour to come when we could catch our train. Salzburg, for all its visual virtue, is not a very big town, and we were sufficiently cold to decide that we didn't really need to see too much more of it. So we passed our time in the marginally-warmer-than-the-elements restaurant, caught the train, and returned to whence we came.

The story of New Year's Eve:

In the course of our down time of the previous week, we had entertained many possibilities for how to spend our New Year's, including our original plan of going to Vienna (nixed for lack of money), outdoor concerts (nixed for lack of clothing warm enough to withstand several hours of intense cold), and a Goth Club (nixed for lack of eyeshadow and tight jeans). We eventually settled on a run-around-in-the-streets, make-it-up-as-you-go plan. We began our evening innocently enough with a big, cozy pasta dinner, and for comedic effect, I'll simply fast-forward to the part where we stood outside in the rain, fireworks going off six feet behind us (and in front of us, and on either side of us), pyrotechnics bouncing off windows in the Marienplatz, yelling at--and being yelled back at by--a group of drunk Italians, asking strangers to take our picture, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other people. And thus we spent the first minutes of 2012.

We would, in the course of our evening, make quite a few friends (including, but not limited to, a young couple from Hof, a 26-year-old Cheshire lad who was leading a pack of girls from North Carolina, and several odd Frenchmen), be paid into a club by two of them at 2:30 AM, leave at 3:00, join the innumerable, inebriated, incoherent crowd on the subway at 4:00, and be forced take a cab back home after the subway dumped us off with nary a bus in sight. But all in all, a satisfying way to spend New Year's Eve in Europe.

New Year's Day 2012 dawned warm and overcast, and as it was my last day in Germany, we decided--along with half the city of Munich, since there is apparently nothing else to do on January 1--to take an easy walk around the city, which gave us the chance to see a few more things that we had theretofore missed. We finally got around to see the Landtag building, as well as another Gothic-y church that I had been wanting to see up close. The word(s) of the day was (were) taking it easy, and this we did, not having the energy to do much else.

Palatial

Flying High

The Boulevard from above

At the waning of the light

Idyllic

Exhausted, we headed for home, and the next day, I was back to Sofia.

It was a rather nice trip, and a monumentally satisfying two-week hiatus from all the stress I had been accumulating. I was glad to have the time and the experiences. All of them.

The last two weeks' tale will be forthcoming tomorrow, or perhaps Sunday. Thanks for sticking with me, so far, and adios.

Christmahanukwanzika, Part 2: Leipzig

2012-01-12T00:11:00.001+02:00

I love Bach. Bach-y Bach Bach.

It hasn't always been that way. But in college, once I was exposed to more of his music, I grew to like it. And then love it. The man was undeniably a genius, contending with some of the other giants of our Western Classical idiom for the completely arbitrary and subjective title of Greatest Composer Ever.

He knew how to put some notes together.

Which is why, whilst in Germany, Laura and I unhesitatingly took the chance to travel to pay our tribute to The Man. After a six-year tenure in Köthen, Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723, directing the choirs at, and composing for, several of the city's numerous churches. His home base, the Thomaskirche, still regularly programs his music, and since 1950 has housed his remains. Of course we were going to go. And what better occasion than Weihnacht?

Waking up altogether earlier than we had grown accustomed to, burdened with bags of food to be consumed over the course of the weekend, we made our way to the Munich central station on Christmas Eve morning. Our train travel went off without a hitch, and six hours later, we made it to Leipzig.

Upon leaving the Leipzig central station, we found the appropriate tram and took it over to the stop that should, in theory, have been right next to our hostel. After getting lost down some questionable alleyways in a desolate, not-exactly-well-lit, abandoned part of town, we began to feel a little nervous, but we eventually found the appropriate door. Exhausted from the double ordeals of traveling and feeling nearly certain we were about to be mugged, we paused to catch our breath, Skype our families, and get settled in. We finally ventured out at 9 PM and headed over to the Thomaskirche for a service that would, disappointingly, turn out to be nothing more than a Christmas play, although hearing the whole story in German was not an uninteresting experience.

Knowing that there would be a Midnight Mass (one that actually took place at midnight, something I've never witnessed in the States), we stayed after the play was over, which was definitely worth it - we were rewarded with a manageably short (given the lateness of the hour) all-chant service featuring the Thomanerchor, the boys' choir that Bach himself directed nearly 300 years ago.

Though the night was freezing, and we again found ourselves having to walk for a bit longer than was comfortable through what proved to be another scary section of town, we made it back to the hostel alive and in one piece, slept for all of six hours, and got up early to get to the Christmas morning service (again, something I've never experienced in the US) back at the church.

On the program for Christmas morning? Cantata #1 from Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorium. And it was good.

Being churched out for the moment, we went out to see Leipzig and to try to have some semblance of a normal Christmas. We made friends with some rather large Christmas trees,

It was bigger than it looks

saw Leipzig's enormous City Hall,

Also bigger than it looks

the Gewandhaus,

Nice.

and opera.

Majestic

Our Christmas dinner? Indian food, if you can believe it, at a nice-ish place in the middle of town. Full of this unconventional Christmas dinner, we went home, Skyped our families some more ('tis the season, you know), and went to bed.

Our last day in Leipzig once again dawned a bit earlier than was preferable, and we manically packed to check out of the hostel, culminating in Laura's throwing the remainder of our payment, in cash, through the retractable window of the hostel's office's door. Waving our arms like maniacs in front of the oncoming tram in an effort to get it ~~not to run us over~~ to stop and let us in, fortune, and the tram's driver, smiled on us, so we were able to get to the Thomaskirche on time for the service. This morning's music was Cantata #2 from the Weihnachts-Oratorium. After it was over, the church silent, and the people gone, I finally got the chance to (metaphorically) kneel before The Man.

There he is

The rest of the church was cool, too.

My homage paid, we set off into Leipzig to see a few more things before it was time for us to leave. Cool, serious things included the Mendelssohn-Haus,

Who knew he lived in a mansion?

the rebuilt Paulinerkirche (an interesting note about the Paulinerkirche: It was originally constructed in the 1400's, survived World War II--not something many buildings in Germany can claim--and was then tragically demolished by the Communist government of East Germany in 1968. Who would do that? A replica of it--what you'll see below--began to be constructed three years ago, except that this incarnation of it is completely fronted by glass, top to bottom. Ridiculous),

How cool is this?

and a museum documenting the history of East Germany from the end of the war up through reunification, which was fascinating, chilling, and insightful, all at the same time.

Slightly wackier things that we saw included an abstract monument to philosophy

Yes, those are naked dudes holding power tools

and an office building that looked unsettlingly like a face, right down to its beady little eyes, doubling as windows.

A little creepy

At four o'clock, our driver--as we had booked a rideshare--came and picked us up, whisked us down the autobahn at 180 kmh (!), and dropped us off safely back in Munich, all for the low, low price of €20. And so ended our Christmas Getaway.

It was, by far, the most unusual Christmas I've ever had (not that I make a habit of observing it, though my life has somehow conspired to always put me in the position to do so), but a fun and satisfying one. The one thing I had really wanted to do, I did, and though neither of us could be with our families for it, Laura and I got to spend it together. All in all, a good trip.

Tomorrow we'll conclude our whirlwind tour of my vacation, glossing over many important details, as has been, and must continue to be, my custom herein. Thanks for reading, and I hope to continue not to completely disappoint you. Until then -

Christmahanukwanzika, Part 1: Munich

2012-01-11T01:42:00.003+02:00

That's probably enough of a break, now.

Despite my best intentions, and promises that a dark, troubled corner of my mind knew it probably wasn't going to keep, I have once again failed to bring you the bolging you thirst for and deserve.

My bad.

The nature of my "breaks" (read: slovenly vacations) has been such that I haven't had the ~~inclination~~ time to write while they're happening for reasons including, but not limited to, having too much fun, relaxing, refusing to think about anything remotely of import, willful irresponsibility, and gross negligence. But, here I am, back in Sofia for over a week, and I've continued to leave you hungry. But here, come in out of the cold, have something to drink, and lose yourself in the latest of my yarns:

I flew to Munich on the 19th, where I was greeted by subzero (Celsius) temperatures and a blanketing of snow. As it happened, Laura and I would continue to be snowed on almost continuously for the next two weeks.

The first part of my visit will best be described as the misshapen hybrid between a week of pure vegging, pre-Christmas festivities, and a cultural walking tour of Munich. In light of the fact that descriptions of my lazy-day activities would probably not make for very gripping storytelling, let's skip right to the second item on that list.

One of the primary draws for me to come to Germany for Christmas (besides the presence of my beautiful girlfriend) was simply how the Germans do Christmas. A bunch of the holiday traditions we have in the States either come from the Germans or have been completely outdone by them, and they even have a few that we can't even touch. I present into evidence as Exhibit A the phenomenon of Christmas Markets:

Even the Rathaus was dressed up for Christmas

These markets, which, in some instances, can take up 1/10 of a square kilometer, are vast expanses of tents selling all kinds of food, toys, souvenirs, kitsch, and the ubiquitous glühwein, which essentially amounts to hot Manischewitz with spices and fruit. But it is delicious. And warm. And wine.

And it comes in real mugs, which you can steal!

We spent a disconcerting amount of time hanging around these markets, paying exorbitant prices for food and drinks, partly because of the atmosphere, partly because of the crowds, and partly because of the ridiculous nature of some of the larger ones such as Tollwood:

Multicolored tents as far as the eye could see

Nice to meet you

However, on my third day there, instead of hanging out in the freezing cold for hours at a time, we decided to make comfort foods in honor of the season:

NOM

And, after I fried latkes, handcrafted a menorah out of tinfoil, and read Maccabees, we celebrated Hanukkah, as well.

Happy Hanukkah, y'all

But when the fun and games were over, we got down to some ~~srs bsns~~ cultural activities. We made a list, checked it twice, and decided there were 23487645986 things we needed to see in Munich while I was there. We decided to start at the Münchner Residenz, former home of the rulers of Bavaria. It is large.

Incredibly, the only shot I got, the gazebo in the Hofgarten

Across the Odeonsplatz from the Residenz is the ridiculously intricate Theatinerkirche. Almost completely destroyed in the war, it has been rebuilt to be more or less an exact replica of how it once was. And boy, it once was.

Also large.

So much detail

Keeping the church theme going, we also visited the Michaelskirche, this one, interestingly enough, a Jesuit church (What's that?). And also quite magnificent. The interior of the church looked familiar, as it bore a striking resemblance to another St. Michael's - the Serbian Orthodox church we visited in Belgrade. And upon leaving, we found a sign asking us to shut the door - in Serbian. While there is obviously a connection, I have nary a clue as to what it could be.

If you squint hard enough, you can see on the altar a portrait of St. Michael slaying the evil that is Protestantism.

The inexplicable aforementioned sign in Serbian

As the Michaelskirche happened to be a (rather liberal definition of a) short walk from Munich's sole synagogue, and as it happened to be the second night of Hanukkah, we took the stroll, detouring only briefly into the German equivalent of REI. To our disappointment, the entrance is barred to non-Jews. This is something that I can begin to understand in a place with a history such as Germany's, but something I found a little distasteful nonetheless. Judaism is supposed to be welcoming. It's supposed to be inclusive. I've never encountered a congregation that didn't welcome Gentiles among it, so long as they respected its traditions and beliefs.

Though that got to me, I couldn't help but admire the synagogue anyway.

Impressive

The next day, armed with a combined 20 years out of practice, Laura and I headed over to the Karlsplatz to go ice skating. And I only fell once. Bam.

When those 2 1/2 hours (!) of frivolity had ended, we set off to see one more thing in the waning light, BMW Welt. BMW standing for Bavarian Motor Works, and Munich being the capital of Bavaria, where else would it be? It was pretty cool, with exhibitions of new and concept cars, interesting little diagrams, and even interactive demonstrations. Before I begin to sound like a walking advertisement for it, I'll stop. But here! Pictures!

All futuristic and stuff

Really kind of cool

That will bring an end to my first yarn about how I got to Munich and spent the first four days running around doing all sorts of cool things in an effort to justify my presence there.

Give me a day or so to catch my breath after all this heavy typing and I'll spin you another one about how we made a pilgrimage to Leipzig for Christmas weekend to pay our tribute to Bach and hear all sorts of his music. Read fast.

Bringing the First Half to a Close

2011-12-19T02:03:00.001+02:00

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

2011-12-14T00:44:00.003+02:00

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

2011-12-09T01:49:00.002+02:00

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

2011-12-01T20:48:00.002+02:00

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

2011-11-28T18:48:00.004+02:00

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

2011-11-22T12:45:00.000+02:00

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

2011-11-07T20:00:00.001+02:00

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

2011-11-03T02:34:00.013+02:00

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.

Let's Get Spooky: A Mercifully Shorter Post

2011-10-27T13:46:00.000+03:00

It has, for a time, been Fall here, but now we're coming up against Halloweekend.

I like Halloween. It's always been a fun holiday (Candy + Ragers + Costumes = Obviously fun), but I don't go crazy for it like some people, for whom it is the ideal time to let their Inner Child burst forth with the sheer exuberance of someone who loves sugar highs and dressing up. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy this holiday, but there are better ones on the horizon.

Like Thanksgiving. Halloween always makes me smile because its arrival means that Thanksgiving is only 3 weeks away. And for those of you who don't know me, I LOVE THANKSGIVING. Take the best food served at any point in the year, add it to family, a four-day weekend, and my impending birthday, and it is, quite simply my favorite couple of days of the year.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm content with merely teetering on the edge of a full-blown Post-Hijacking Tangent. Let's get back to this weekend.

Being in the Balkans, I am in the midst of the mind-blowingly cool opportunity to travel to some incredibly interesting places with little trouble, so a couple other Fulbrighters and I are going to have a Vampire Weekend. That's right, y'all, we're going to Transylvania for Halloween.

Adding to the coolness of such a trip was the revelation yesterday of my great-grandmother Dotty's hometown - Frumuşica, Romania. While not really on the way to our destinations (Bucharest on Friday, Braşov and Sibiu Saturday and Sunday), this may be a good opportunity to scout out the country for a possible return trip to try to find my great-grandmother's remaining family.

But there have been a few things to take care of before I leave. On the research front, I've been continuing with the two sources I mentioned last time, and they've taken the courtesy to converge, so I'm now at a point in both of them where they are discussing the same customs. I can, therefore, follow along concurrently as they corroborate or contradict each other. This is nice and it makes my job easier.

I've also resumed moving forward with my grad school applications. I've winnowed the field, finalized a few things, and begun filling out the mountain of electronic paperwork endemic to this process. I have a little over a month to finish everything, so, for the moment, I'm in good shape vis-a-vis the relevant deadlines.

Tuesday night was a lecture at the American Research Center on the Balkans during the Ottoman period, which gave me a lot of valuable information that will serve as background to my research. Afterwards, a few of us, including a couple of the ARCS fellows, went out to dinner, which turned out to be, as they might say in the UK, a rollicking good time, and I got to meet some more cool people who are doing similar things. Last night, Michael stopped through on his way to the airport, and we headed out for another delicious dinner at yet another hole-in-the-wall Bulgarian restaurant, which I'm slowly beginning to realize are ubiquitous in this part of the city.

The items on the docket for today: Bulgarian lesson, sending emails, finding lodging for the weekend, buying a train ticket, cleaning my apartment, research, packing, gym, and finally, after all that, hitting the road.

So now, away. If you never hear from me again, it's because I've become one of the undead. Don't bother looking for me.

Winning

2011-10-25T15:07:00.002+03:00

Not this kind of winning.

This kind.

Sorry for that. I can't help but take a brief step back to take a look at how things have been panning out so far, having just passed the 2-month mark in my stay here.

As I alluded to in previous posts, I came here for a variety of purposes beyond simply doing research. I've already discussed my purposes related to Making The World A Better Place, but, as some of you know, I've also had personal reasons for embarking on this venture. /Sharing Moment Alert (To skip this Sharing Moment, scroll down to the paragraph fourth from the bottom):

I applied for this scholarship when I was in a phase of my life where things didn't make very much sense. I had just graduated from college, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I had no obvious opportunities staring me in the face, I was facing my first year of independence, etc. The time of year was at hand for applying to grad school, but I repeated my decision of the previous year not to apply, as I wasn't 100% committed to a specific path. A very wise ex-professor of mine had suggested going abroad and doing something, anything, not only for the fantastic cultural opportunities it would afford me, but also for the opportunity to get my proverbial excrement together.

And, if we're being honest with each other--for which I see no reason not to be at this juncture with you, my loyal readership--I needed to get it together. With the conspicuous exeunt from my life of college and all the trappings thereof, I had lost quite a few of the things that had kept me going and working and progressing: Externally-imposed structures and the goals that came with them. Easy social opportunities. A regular schedule. Motivation.

They think they do a good job of preparing you for the Real World in college--and give all sorts of flowery speeches to this end--but the one gargantuan thing they forgot to tell me, at least, is that all of the things I just mentioned must suddenly begin to come from one's own person. You blink, you're a graduate, and from that day forth you must be, 100%, the steward of your own life. One day, you're in an environment where you're guided as much as you want to be, and the next, you're out into the open ocean of the Necessity of Self-Direction.

Suddenly finding myself in this ocean, while I took the steps necessary to ensure my survival (I found a job, an apartment, etc.), beyond that minimum threshold, I floundered in a lot of ways. Without anything definite to work toward (aside from the obligations of my unfulfilling, clearly non-career-launching job), I wasted a lot of time not doing much of anything. And so, without, really, anything else to turn or look forward to, I decided to take the not-so-hazardous leap of applying for a scholarship abroad, to see if it would lead me anywhere that might encourage me to get that aforementioned excrement together.

Fast forward exactly a year, and I'm living on my own in a studio apartment in a former Eastern Bloc country whose language I still command rudimentarily, pursuing a completely self-directed program of study. And, though I know this is in direct violation of every principle I've ever had inculcated within me (those being humility, discouragement of self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence, jinxing oneself, and, perhaps most importantly, committing any of these in a public space such as this one), I want to say it: So far, in the new sense of the word that Charlie Sheen has introduced to our lexicon, I'm winning.

Perhaps my biggest flaw that was up for correction was my lack of self-discipline. But I feel myself--albeit slowly and inconsistently--turning into a more disciplined person. I have begun getting into a routine - putting in 8 hours of work a day, just like a real adult, heading to the gym afterwards, using my new language every day in a focused context, using the weekends as a time to relax and meet people and improve my social being. I have made stop-and-start progress, but I have actually set myself a productive, healthy, fulfilling schedule to which I have sometimes managed to adhere.

In college, there wasn't much of a choice--I had to go to class on a schedule that was more or less set for me, and they gave us so much work that I was forced to be productive or else I would have sunk--but here and now, in what will most likely be the most independent setting of my life, I have had to make all of these things happen for myself. And I'm actually starting to do it, with more and more regularity. I'm getting that proverbial excrement together. This is me starting to win. I have a long way to go, still, but I can feel tangible progress.

Now, to put that all of that self-indulgence masquerading as an uplifting personal anecdote aside, let's talk about the last week. On the business end of things, I have basically spent my research time reading two items. The first is a book by American ethnomusicologist Tim Rice on Bulgarian folk practices. Especially valuable within this volume is the wealth of ethnographic commentary it contains on Bulgarian society from antiquity up through the age of Communism. The second is a just-published dissertation by Galina Denkova on Shopi folk practices, which, of course, is precisely the kind of thing I've been looking for. So I've had a lot to do at the library.

Wednesday was the feast of St. Ivan Rilski, the patron saint of Pernik (via a semi-humorous connection - Pernik is a mining town, and Св. Иван was known for having hidden out in caves for a long portion of his life in order to escape persecution), so my new friend Stefani and I went there for the town festival, which featured about an hour of folk dancing and singing. Pernik is just about at the center of the Shopluk, within the subregion of Graovo, so it was a fine opportunity to witness music that is representative of that area. We got an impromptu tour of their ethnographic museum from a woman who hit the ceiling when she heard I was an American doing research on the Shopi. (Her enthusiasm was kind of astounding. It was nice to be specially accommodated, to be sure, but she was so eager to show us everything that the museum contained. Not that it wasn't appreciated.)

Thursday I was back to the library, had some extraordinarily strong coffee (that it was noteworthy enough to merit inclusion in this blog should tell you just how strong this coffee was), and began cleaning my apartment (a process which lasted until early Friday afternoon) because Laura came on Friday. We went out to a nice dinner Friday night, and Saturday we made a grand tour of Sofia, including, among other things, all of the important buildings and monuments in the eastern half of the Center, качамак from a little soup place that is quickly becoming my favorite, cappuccino at the National Palace of Culture, ridiculous hot chocolate on Цар Освободител, and many other pleasant things to do on a cold day. Sunday we went and had delicious Indian food, the likes of which we hadn't had since a hot July day in Los Angeles, and we gathered a few people for drinks on Sunday night. I had to take her back to the airport early Monday morning, and it has been right back to work for me since.

I am currently in the middle of another busy week that will once again be only four days long, but there will be another post coming Thursday before I leave for the long weekend. To find out where (and it will be cool), read on, dear reader, read on...

Heat!

2011-10-18T02:03:00.002+03:00

Things have taken several turns for the awesome over the past few days, but before I talk about the ones that don't involve me being warm, I just need to express my gratitude for perhaps the best thing that has happened to me since I got here.

Heat! I has it!

My landlady, messenger of the Almighty that she is, snagged me as I was coming up the stairs from a long, tired day on Friday, and asked if she could come into my apartment to turn my radiators on. You, of course, know what I said. And just in time, because:

Snow fell on Sofia yesterday. Improbably, beautifully, poetically, the snow was falling when I woke up late Sunday morning, and it pretty much made my day twice as nice. It didn't stick, but I loved it anyway; I love what snow does to the world. Winter is, admittedly, not my favorite season, as I've come to prefer almost anything to the cold. But when it snows, I can overlook the miserable temperatures outside. Snow reminds me of the Christmas season descending upon my old home on the East Coast--don't worry about that fact that it's mid-October--and it means the time for lights and festivity is coming. I hate winter; I love the Holidays.

It wasn't actually snowing that hard, but man, does this picture look epic.

I'm dreaming of a white Halloween.

So, staring out my window for a few minutes while the first flakes of Winter fell--don't worry about the fact that it just turned into Fall three weeks ago--I got all warm and fuzzy inside. It really put me in the mood for cupcakes.

So, I went and got some. And while I was out, the ~~foolish~~ novel idea struck me to make soup. From scratch. Have I ever done that before? No. But the snow really put me in the mood for that, too.

And so, while my laundry hung out to dry in the bedroom, I spent two hours committing culinary acts that would make Paula Dean cry in the pursuit of one lousy batch of tomato soup. I won't post a picture because, to be fair, it didn't look appetizing in the least, but it tasted much better than it looked, so while the snow fell, I dined on homemade soup and crackers. Let it never be said that my domesticity won't elevate me to top-notch marriage material someday.

Working backwards: Saturday was another mostly lazy day, though the night was fantastic. I went out to dinner with some interns at the Danish, Norwegian, French, and Belgian Embassies at one of the nicer Greek restaurants in town. Aside from my love of Greek food, it was a great time getting to know still more cool people, and was made the more notable for the fact that the waiters didn't speak Bulgarian; rather, they were Greek, but, thankfully, completely fluent in English. After the restaurant, we headed to a rock and roll bar, where I heard more hard rock in three hours than I had in the past five years. So after an extremely enjoyable night of dancing to Metallica--yes, it can be done--I headed home to my warm (!) apartment.

It was a good weekend. This week will see me do more research, reach out to some people with knowledge on the Shopi, go to Pernik on Wednesday for the folk festival in honor of Sv. Ivan Rilski's Day, clean my apartment, and on Friday, Laura comes to visit for the weekend. Let's get it done. Честит първи сняг!

On Cultural Integration

2011-10-14T03:08:00.001+03:00

I came to Bulgaria two months ago for several complimentary purposes. The more visible of my two primary ones has been my research. But maybe, just maybe, the more important one is the one I fulfill just by living here. I say "fulfill" as if it's already a fait accompli. It's not, of course. Not by a long shot. I'm talking about cultural integration; the process of submerging myself within an alien society and adapting to it to the point where I can hide any obvious markers of my identity as an outsider.

Having only been here for two months, it hasn't happened yet. Nor did I expect it to have by now: These things take a long time, and perhaps one of the providential reasons that my stay is for an entire year is to give me the time to make it happen. It's not as though the Fulbright Educational Exchange was designed for the purpose of carrying out research and nothing else; the promotion of "cross-cultural understanding" was one of the expressly stated goals of the program right from its inception.

If you're not careful, it almost seems self-evident: You drop someone into a culture for a long enough period of time, and they will adapt to their surroundings and be transformed automatically through subconscious processes they are not even programmed to notice. Except that it's not that simple. Surely, given enough time, one can make these changes. But there's no guarantee it will happen. Motivation plays a huge role.

The discovery of the principle that motivation is a key component of language acquisition was a big triumph for the field of psycholinguistics. As the theory goes, instrumental motivation--present in people who acquire a language for a specific purpose, usually business or education--is a far inferior driver of acquisition than integrative motivation, which can typically only happen when one lives in a society that speaks a different language. Having lived this theory for a few months, I can attest to its verity. But the principle extends far beyond the realm of language.

It is evident in the customs, habits, and lifestyle one adopts upon taking up residence in a place far removed from one's home. The degree to which they pick up these things--which, among others, form the basis of culture--depends, to a great extent, upon their desire to integrate into that culture. These are the things that enable them to interact more freely and openly with the people around them, and they are some of the same markers of identity I mentioned earlier.

So how does one go about integrating into another culture? How does someone graft a new identity into themself? Forgive my linguistocentric bent here, but I'd like to start back, if I may, with language. Although I have learned to avoid superlatives, I will dare to say that learning and internalizing a society's language is probably the most important step in the process. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is to be believed, the language that a society uses actually determines how that society views the world, and thus, how its people act. Gaining fluent use of its language is obviously a tremendously important step, then.

There are, however, other things to consider. How much time one spends interacting with people. The kinds of things they do when they're alone. The cultural inputs they receive. All of these contribute to the integration of a person into a strange society.

I had a moment, a few nights ago, when I went to my local gym and signed up for a membership. I went upstairs to the weight room and began my routine. (Never mind that it had been many moons since the last time) And as I worked, I noticed other people around me, all presumably Bulgarian, doing the same things I was, paying me no attention. Without any obvious markers of my identity on display, I was, to them, just another guy from this part of Sofia, at the gym on a Tuesday night, just as all of them were. It was cool.

And it was a moment of feeling a very small amount of accomplishment of my purpose here. Yes, I am here to study. I could do that in a whole host of places, including my native country. But I am here, 10 time zones ahead of my home, in a place that was, until 20 years ago, an important member of the Eastern Bloc, because I have other purposes besides this one.

This purpose has not yet been fulfilled, and living here has not always been easy; for all that I've tried to do, I remain an outsider. Since I've been here, I have, at times, felt lost, embarrassed, awkward, scrutinized, and even, once or twice, mistreated. A large share of the experiences that caused these feelings have been due to my as-yet incomplete command of the language here, and others have been due to other things having to do with who I am and where I come from. But the only thing I can do is to try to live among this culture every day, interacting with its people as much and as conscientiously as possible. And yes, learning the language will be a big step in making this happen.

My friend Mark was here for two days, and we had a great time. I showed him around the city, we went out to a couple of nice restaurants, we drank some local beer, and I gathered a few people on his last night in town. The multiculturalism of the group was, if not astounding, then some less intense adjective expressing the same seniment - we had four native languages between us (those being English, German, Serbian, and Bulgarian). But we spent our time, with a few exceptions, speaking English, simply because it was the only language we all had in common.

This night was an exception, though. When I've been in a group setting here, it has typically been with Bulgarians or with a mix of Bulgarians and other Americans. And what I've envisioned as the ultimate marker of accomplishment of my purpose is being in these settings and speaking Bulgarian. To me, that would be the tell that I'd successfully integrated into this foreign culture.

I've found myself thinking about this scenario and wanting it quite a lot. And so, my task is clear for the next eight months. It's time to start making it happen.

Praise Zoroaster for the Gift of Central Heating

2011-10-10T00:14:00.000+03:00

...so that he may deign to bestow it upon me. The weather has turned cold. Cold. (Which is colder than cold) And yesterday, on an already dreary Yom Kippur day, it began to rain.

The elements don't typically bother me much so long as I have a warm, dry house/apartment/cardboard box to return to when I finish my business with the Outside World. I will say this: My loft (I've decided not to call it an attic anymore. Who wants to live in an attic? Loft sounds nicer. And more expensive) is dry. But it is not warm. That's because Sofia, desperately hanging onto one of their last relics from the Soviet era, still operates on a system of Central Heating - that is, control of the radiator in my apartment is outside my jurisdiction; the superintendent has to decide that it's gotten cold enough to merit turning on the unit that supplies heat to the whole building. I'll let you do the math.

So, it is cold, but, for the moment, dry. (Praise the Pantocrator for half-victories) I can only hope, pray, and make supplications to Buddha that the superintendent will relent someday (and may the day be very soon!) and have mercy upon the Cold, Ravaged, Collective Soul of the residents of my building.

I'm sorry for all the snarkiness, sarcasm, pessimism, and the mockeries of religion contained herein. I don't mean any of it (Well, most of it). The dreary weather aside, it is a rather lovely-looking, overcast, quiet Fall Sunday here.

Things in general have gone well enough since last I wrote. The resources that I'm looking at to build a history of the Shopi people continue to trickle in, allowing me a steady stream of material, though not enough to overwhelm me. I have also been introduced, over the past week, to a veritable host of people who are experts on the subject, or tangentially related ones. I don't really have a clearer sense of direction than I did a few weeks ago, but the more I read, and the more people I talk to, the more likely it is each day that things will snap into focus.

I have also been hanging out with some of the people I met at second orientation, a pretty cool crowd. Between cleaning my apartment, reading treatises, spending some quality time with my ukulele (I am about to restring it), expanding my social circles, getting myself lost on late-night runs and significantly increasing the chances that I will be mugged and brutally murdered, and attending synagogue for Yom Kippur, I have kept myself fairly busy over the last five days.

Yom Kippur was a fairly interesting experience for me, coming from the background that I do, as was Rosh HaShanah before it. As you may or may not know, I come from a semi-observant, hazily denominational, Ashkenazic family. So to be thrust into a Sephardic Orthodox experience (in the Balkans, no less) was, while not a complete shocker, a surprising experience in a few respects. I won't go into much detail--both because I feel like it wouldn't be that interesting, and because the more I talk on the subject the greater the risk is that I offend someone--but it was a not unpleasant experience, and I found myself a few times having to roll with something I either had not expected, had never experienced, or both. But the synagogue is beautiful, it was an eye-opening experience to attend an Orthodox Yom Kippur service (the Highest of Holiday Services, you might call it), and I found myself adjusting to it with few problems.

I have always tried to use Yom Kippur as a pivot point in years past, and this year is no exception. I always strive to fix things that I'm doing wrong, recommit myself to things that matter, and to be, in general, a better person, both to people around me and to myself. So right now, I'm writing from the standpoint of someone with a healthy sense of optimism and a commitment to doing things better over the course of the next year. Go-go-gadget-improvement.

Now, I'm off to the airport to go pick up my friend Mark who is in Europe for two weeks and Sofia for two days. A recap of our adventures to come in the next entry. Stay warm!

The Last 10 Days (In 10 Paragraphs or Less)

2011-10-05T00:05:00.006+03:00

I am so, so (In honor of Steve Reich's birthday yesterday: so, so, so, so, so, so, so...) sorry that this post is coming so far in arrears. Last week threw me a few too many curveballs, and as a consequence, I spent too much time having experiences and not enough time writing about them. (Wait...) But here we are, and all I can do is to give you an enjoyable and informative retrospective. So:

Last weekend started off with another Folk Festival, При шопите в Казичене ("Of the Shopi of Kazichene"). I got up bright and early to go meet Xristo, who agreed to come with me. We got to the center of town and found all manner of people, every one dressed to the nines - dancers, singers, instrumentalists, spectators. Particularly abundant were the баби (Literally, "grandmothers," these are the older women of the villages who still sing in the old style) and some (incredibly good) junior dance ensembles. We stayed and observed for a few hours, giving me my first live taste of what I came here to study. Have a few pictures:

3 баби

Super good U-14 dance troupe

In action

We headed back to Sofia where I ran some errands and hurriedly packed, because I had a flight to catch to Germany. I got to the airport with less than an hour to go before takeoff, sailed through, and made it to Vienna without incident (whew!). After a protracted layover in Vienna due to a missing crew, we finally boarded and made it to Munich 90 minutes late. And, dear Lord, was it good to see my girlfriend after nearly two months? It was.

The next day, we went on a tour of the city for a few hours. Noteworthy were the Englischer Garten, the surfers therein who were surfing in the river (!), the historic architecture in the Marienplatz, and other items of Historic Value, of which there were many. After an obscenely pleasant afternoon seeing all these things (and eating what was perhaps the most delicious pretzel of my life), we went home and changed to go to Oktoberfest.

This rowdy, alcoholic mainstay of German culture (Wait...) was everything I had imagined (i.e. a 50,000-person frat party) and more. We started off by checking out a few of the beer tents, ended up at the Armbrustschützenzelt (I dare you to pronounce and/or translate that), had a €9 (!) liter of beer each, made friends with a group of Australians, then went in search of more fun. At our second tent, we made friends with a very nice couple from Düsseldorf who led us to a Biergarten after the tents shut down. At 10 PM. What? No matter; we managed to extend the night for quite a while after that. We somehow got lost in the woods (along with hundreds of other revelers), took two cabs and a bus, and missed our last bus home by 30 seconds. Luckily, the night buses run every hour, so we waited out in the blistering cold for 59 minutes and 30 seconds before finally getting home at 3:45 AM. Of course.

The next day was, to unabashedly plagiarize the author of a certain Text from Last Night, a beautiful one for a hangover, and Laura and I spent part of it on the lovely chore of childcare. Luckily, the kids she's taking care of are adorable, and I had a nice chance to practice my German, my command of which is similar to that of a young child. After a most welcome nap, we went out to a nice dinner at a cool little Italian restaurant somewhere in Munich (Don't ask me where anything is. I couldn't tell you).

The next day we saw a little more of Munich (including, most notably, the Frauenkirche, the Pope's old stomping grounds) and then it was time for me to fly. Though I pulled the same routine as I had on the way there (arriving at the airport in less time than was probably advisable), I made my flight, and, after another delay in Vienna, made my way back to Sofia where--surprise!--it had gotten cold in my absence.

Wednesday night was Erev Rosh HaShanah, and I spent most of the day cleaning and getting ready. Before sundown, I headed over to the synagogue with Greg, and we sat through the most disorderly High Holiday service I had ever attended. Not that it was that bad, but there was a lot of (very audible) confusion coming from the masses. But for all that, it was a cool experience, as it was my first time in an Orthodox service (other than Shabbat services once or twice), and one in the Balkans, at that. It was over in an hour, everyone wished each other L'Shana Tovah, and we went home. The next morning I showed up ready for anything, and found a rather small group for Rosh HaShanah morning. The service was a marked departure from the Conservative/Reform blend I've gotten used to in the States, but it was cool. I took the rest of the day off, as I was starting to get sick and it was an important holiday besides.

That night, I met up with a few Fulbrighters who were in town for a second round of orientation, and we went out to dinner. It was delicious Moroccan food, and I met a couple cool new people. The next day was Official Day 1 of orientation, so we spent the day in seminars, presentations, and such. That night we had a swanky reception, and we finished it off by heading to a pretentious little bar for a few drinks afterwards.

But, sick as I was, I called it an early night, and a good thing, because early on Saturday, we took a day trip to Plovdiv. Now, I had never been there, and it's a cool city. At least, the parts we saw were. We were limited to the Old City, but there was lots to see, including old Roman ruins. We had a semi-swanky lunch at a semi-swanky restaurant, walked around a little more, saw the city's mosque, and headed home. Why not some pictures?

Roman-era fortifications

One of the hills upon which Plovdiv is built

The house of Nacho Kulturata, the Culture Tsar of Plovdiv

Roman amphitheatre

That night we headed out to dinner again, got drinks afterward, and I was home in time to listen to Roy Halladay's first pitch in Game 1 of the NLDS.

Sunday was my typical lazy-productive day, with the exception of a delicious lunch of Lebanese food with Melissa, Irena, and Laura (one of the newly Sofia'd Fulbrighters, not that Laura). Taking the day mostly off set me up to get back to work this week, and thank the Lord I did, as I was starting to feel useless, having taken the whole week off. Combined with the fact that I was sick and tired, I had had a pretty Down couple of days. But, over the course of the last two days, I have successfully remounted the Productivity Horse. And now off into the hinterland I ride. I hope you've enjoyed this rambling account of a random string of days that happened to be adjacent. I will see y'all later this week.

Bonus Paragraph: WFC.

College Apps, Weekend Trips, Safe Travels

2011-09-24T00:44:00.001+03:00

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)

2011-09-22T04:08:00.005+03:00

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

2011-09-18T01:14:00.000+03:00

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

2011-09-14T21:46:00.000+03:00

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

2011-09-10T22:32:00.001+03:00

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

2011-09-08T02:06:00.002+03:00

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

2011-09-03T18:14:00.003+03:00

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

2011-09-01T15:37:00.002+03:00

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.

Cabbage is the New Lettuce: The First Days in Sofia

2011-08-31T20:42:00.003+03:00

Moving to a new city can be frightening, depending on the circumstances. Some of us have been the archetypal new kid on the block (Not the boy band), some of us have moved to a new town for college, some of us have simply packed up and left home in search of ourselves.

And then there's me. Leaving FISI, I was actually excited to move into a new apartment on my own in a big city where I don't speak the language very well. Crazy? Perhaps. But, as I've become increasingly prone to saying, if it isn't a good time, it will be a good story.

The first order of business was to get through the weekend - reflecting my lack of foresight, I hadn't scheduled the move into my apartment until Monday morning, leaving two days for which I had no accommodation. Luckily, Greg, one of the Fulbright Senior Scholars, was gracious enough to allow me to share his room at the Princess Hotel in Sofia, and then at his new apartment, which he moved into on Sunday.

After arriving at the Princess, we got settled in, and went out for our first walk-through of Sofia later in the day. Being highly sleep-deprived that day, none of what transpired forms a coherent string of memories in my mind, but, as I recall, we did see a couple really cool things. Our first stop was the Banya Bashi mosque, Sofia's oldest (and apparently only extant) mosque, built in 1576, during the Ottoman occupation.

Believe it or not, I had never been inside a mosque before, so I was a bit surprised at what I found - no seats, no platform, no central space at which to direct one's attention. It was, more or less, an open, square floor with elaborately decorated walls and a dome. A picture or two:

The Dome

An inscription on the wall


Georgi and Greg in the women's loft above the main sanctuary

This section of the city has an unusual feature - its only mosque, its only synagogue, and one of its biggest churches are all within a kilometer of each other, so we then set off to Sofia Synagogue, one of only two functioning synagogues in Bulgaria, and the largest in the Balkans. Strangely, it is Sephardic; I can only guess that its founders were descended from families that fled to the Ottomans after they were expelled from Spain in 1492, but this is only a guess. Whatever its origins, it is the third largest synagogue in Europe and features the largest chandelier on the whole continent, at 1.7 tons. Though only attended regularly by 50-60 members each week, the synagogue is still in operation, and it is massive. (Bulgaria's Jewish population, after being largely saved from the Holocaust, emigrated, nearly in its entirety, to Israel in 1948. Less than 2000 Jews remain in the whole country.) Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get any shots of the chandelier before my camera died, but these pictures can still be impressive:

This is what happens when you combine Eastern Orthodox architecture with Judaism

The huge, floor-to-ceiling Ark

Following this tour of the synagogue, we went to go forage for sustenance at Happy Sushi, right in the government district of Sofia. There we met our fellow FISIans, but, still being sleep-deprived, we decided to call it a night after dinner.

The next day we slept until 11:30, our bodies trying desperately to reverse the damage wrought by the last two weeks. We headed over to Greg's new (moderately swanky) apartment, where we were met and greeted in friendly fashion by the realtors. After completing the paperwork and moving-in process, we decided to explore the city a bit more with more FISIans. The first stop, being across the street from Greg's apartment, was Alexander Nevski Cathedral, one of the national symbols of Bulgaria, and paragon of Eastern Orthodox beauty:

Not actual size

Really cool fresco of Mary, I believe


L - R: The Author, Fred, Georgi, Alena, Max

From there, we took a meandering tour of essentially every major tourist and/or recreational attraction that greater Sofia had to offer. While I'm sure you'd be enthralled to hear a description of our time lying on the grass in the park in excruciating detail, I'll skip that. The short version is that we saw a couple monuments dedicated to the Eternal Bond of Friendship between the Russian and Bulgarian people--which were actually pretty interesting, both in and of themselves and in relation to how the native Bulgarians with us felt about them--we had a detailed look at Sofia University, and we saw an interesting wedding party roll through in front of us. We also had a long walk through the Boris Garden and into the woods adjacent thereto.

Orlov Most Square

Detail from Orlev Most, presumably of a Russian soldier holding a Bulgarian baby

Monument in the Boris Garden to those who were prepared to die for their cause

The following day was my own move-in, and it was mostly lost to matters of logistics, documents, explanations, and cleaning. Greg did invite some of us over for dinner, however, and I gladly took the chance to be out of my desolate, lonely, empty apartment. Tuesday featured many of the same things as did Monday, with the added experience of my first food-shopping experience in Bulgaria.

As inconsequential as this would seem, it was actually a watershed experience for me there in the early-going. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the produce section of my local Billa (who seem to be the biggest supermarket chain in Sofia) and discovered that A) Vegetables were less than 1 лев (a лев is about 70 cents US) and B) There was no lettuce to be found, anywhere. Cue my first major gastronomic (if you know me well, you know that things of this nature tend to make the biggest impressions on me) culture shock - lettuce is virtually nonexistent in Bulgarian cuisine. Situation-salvager that I am, I made for the nearest head of cabbage, and 20 minutes later, I was the proud owner thereof. Said plant is still sitting in my refrigerator, less than half-consumed, because this particular head of cabbage was, and partially remains, enormous. And it cost me 1.25 leva - about a dollar US. You could say this cabbage...didn't cost me much cabbage. You're welcome.

In any event, Wednesday saw me complete the move into my apartment, replete with swept floors, a full refrigerator, rearranged furniture, and a few minutes of contemplation of my fate out on my balcony. To celebrate, I had Greg and Fred over for dinner followed by music that was in all ways illicit, as it was after 10 PM. Nevertheless, we played on (quietly), and the night was done. A picture or two:

My living room, which opens out onto the balcony

Kitchen/dining room

After-dinner jammin'

And that was the end of my first week in Sofia, because the very next day, we three went to Burgas. Now it's time for me to do a little more shopping, go for a run, make some dinner, and study some Bulgarian on this unofficial last day of Summer, but the third of the Promised Entries is forthcoming, never you fret. Until tomorrow...

Bye-bye, Bansko; Zdravei, Sofia

2011-08-31T02:19:00.006+03:00

My apologies for the criminal length of time between posts herein - it has been an incredibly busy two-weeks-and-change. So I'll make it up to you in the form of THREE separate posts. Won't this be fun?

While I would love to wax on and on (and on and on) about the last week of FISI, and as much as it merited my potentially doing so, I'm afraid that that would run counter to the interests of my time and your attention span. Nevertheless, I shall wax for a few lines, at least:

The second week of FISI was quite possibly better than the first, despite the still-greater abuses of our collective sleep schedule. Classes this week were Bulgarian Language and Human Rights. Added to the mix were a large (verging on titanic) contingent of MBA students from UMichigan. While I didn't get the opportunity to meet all of them, I did have a few conversations about the school and about their personal experiences. They seemed like an OK bunch for the amount of time they were there, and they--of course--participated in the festivities of the Last Night.

This second week of FISI, I got out into the town of Bansko a wee bit more, and even got over to the neighboring town of Razlog. With the help of my new friend Xristo, I ventured over to the Vivacom store in Bansko to pick out a Bulgarian SIM card; thus, I now have a local number. (A quick aside - The Bulgarian system of phone carriers is depressingly similar to that of the States, in that the three largest providers--MTel, Vivacom, and GloBul--provide something like 98% of the service to the country. Chalk this up as one of a few small ways Europe has disappointed my expectations in the Somebody Out There Must Have A Better System Of __ Than Ours category) It has been a strange feeling going back to working within the confines of a finite (and rather small) number of minutes per month. Call that another perspective-generating experience.

The following day, Xristo and I tested fate and went down to the bus station (na Bulgarski, Avtogarata) to buy a ticket for Razlog. Anticlimactically, the ride took 5 minutes, and it didn't take long for us to find what we had come in search of - the notary. We used this trip to check out a little bit of Razlog, and found that not much was different from Bansko. Satisfied, we returned, and I squandered another beautiful late Bulgarian afternoon attending to the mundane details of my business-oriented life.

Not strictly relevant to the content here, but Xristo and I saw this kitten on the way back from Razlog and OMG LOOK AN ADORABLE LITTLE KITTEN

Well, all good things must come to an end, and before we get to the juice--TMZ be damned--I wanted to offer my little tribute to Bansko, which represented my first interaction with Bulgaria. The town was lovely, picturesque, and really a nice place in every way. The people, I found, were pleasant enough, and imbued with what I'll go out on a limb and call a universal small town citizen quality - that quiet, welcoming aura that, it has been my experience, most citizens of small towns around the world share. Being there for the Jazz Festival was a real plus, and I got to see some really good music take place, for free, a five minute walk from the hotel. I never once felt threatened, or alone--although this sense may have had the most to do with the by-design bonding experience that was FISI--or overwhelmed by a sense of geography or anything else. Beyond that, it's quite difficult to separate out the experiences with my fellow Fulbrighters from my experiences purely with Bansko, so I'll conclude this little tribute by saying that my two weeks there, among Bulgarians, Americans, Those Of Other Nationalities, students, small town citizens, musicians, teachers, colleagues, and friends, were quite pleasant, and just about the best way I could have begun this adventure.

And yes, the Last Night happened, and it was everything that the collective Summer Camp-like energy leading up to it anticipated. The night started out innocuously enough, with an awards ceremony and farewell banquet at the slightly-more-upscale-than-our-host-hotel Hotel Gardenia. After the banquet came dancing, followed by a bout of packing back at our hotel by numerous members of our party who had left preparations for our departure until the last minute. There was a palpable buzz in the air as the clock ticked down those last few hours, and so we decided to do the only thing we could do to fight it - we went to the club.

From L to R: Katelin, Keša (Not the Rapper), Katerina, the Author, Naadiya

L - R: Delvina, Tijana, Melissa

I believe, though without conviction, that this was to Chalga

Aside for some antics afterwards back at the hotel post-club, that effectively did it for the night, and a good thing, too - by that point it was already 3 AM, and--more was the treachery of circumstance--we had to be up, packed, and down to breakfast by 8 AM. And down to breakfast we somehow made it, though none of us had gotten a full night's sleep, some of us staggering across the deadline with 2 hours or less to our coherence's credit. Nevertheless, sleep deprivation or not, it was time to say goodbye (Not the Andrea Bocelli song) to Bansko and to our first taste of Bulgaria.

I could not have been more excited about the trip

FISI was a superb way to begin this long journey. It was functional, practical - we learned some things about how this part of the world works, got acclimated to a new language and culture in a safe environment, surrounded by our peers who knew just as little about them as we did, and got to practice being on our own in a setting in which we weren't really on our own. But perhaps--dare I say it and risk a reprimand from those who organized the thing for the aforementioned serious purposes--more importantly, it was a chance to meet and network (read: party and bond) with peers who are going to end up being, in all likelihood, our primary source of support during what will be, at times, a scary, intimidating year.

So with that, Chapter 1 so ended. To find out what happens in Chapters 2 - ?, read on, dear reader, read on...

1 Week in the Books: Days 5-7 in Bansko

2011-08-15T20:44:00.002+03:00

It's been about as good of a first week in a new, strange place as I could ever have hoped for. FISI continues:

More classes on Thursday and Friday, interspersed with meetings and more orientations. We had a presentation by Ken Moskowitz, the US Embassy's Counselor for Public Affairs, and Eric Alexander, the Consul General to Bulgaria. One of the topics of these presentations had to do with Internet privacy, the upshots of which you'll notice - I am required to severely censor my Facebook page (nothing personal - don't take it the wrong way) and post a disclaimer here, which you can see at the bottom of my page.

Friday night, after classes and the first week Closing Ceremonies, we had a special dinner featuring traditional Bulgarian music and dancing. Voici a few shots:

A traditional dance involving scarves

Line dancing, Bulgarian style


L - R: The Author, Irena, Georgi, Gustavo, Fred, Ana

Post-dinner came my first European Club Experience, as the lion's share of us headed out на клуб. Sparing the details, it was a whole lot of fun, and cool way to get acquainted with Eurotrash, albeit an apparently toned-down version ("This is not Miami. This is not New York. This is not London. This is not Hong Kong. This...is...BANSKO!"). Much satisfied with the course of the night, we headed for home somewhere around 3 AM, sleeping far too little in anticipation of our trip Saturday to Rila Monastery.

Founded 1100 years ago, and named after Иван Рилски (or St. Ivan Rilski), the Rila Monastery is one of the national symbols of Bulgaria. Nestled in the Rila Mountains, the Monastery has been continuously operational since its foundation, and, though burned to the ground several times, survived the Ottoman Occupation and the Socialist Period with functional existence intact. Its artwork and architecture are a breathtaking testament to the attention to detail emphasized by Balkan Orthodox culture, which stands in direct contrast to the Western, Catholic Monasteries of the same time period. Nearly every square inch of the entire complex is covered with artwork, and the interior of the sanctuary contains work so intricate that it would take a lifetime to see all of it. The mountains slope sharply upward all around it, so the effect is that of an outpost of civilization among the forbidding Balkan peaks.

Words can't effectively do it justice. Thus:

From the front

Fresco on one of the domes

All along the base of the walls there is a huge mural depicting the damned in Hell

St. Michael vanquishing some unfortunate dude

"The Repose of St. Ivan Rilski"

The monastery, as you can see, is beautiful, and covered head-to-toe with frescoes. We had a wonderful time there, and afterwards went to lunch at a little restaurant by a river.

Sunday I took off to take care of some business; chiefly, sleeping in for the first time in a week and doing laundry. Apparently, there are no laundromats in Bansko, and so I embarked, for the very first time in my life, upon the Old World adventure of washing my clothes by hand. In my bathtub. Let me say nothing more than that it gave me a wealth of perspective - it made me feel so fortunate to live in a country where nearly every house has a washer and dryer.

The rest of the day was slightly more mundane and a great deal more aggravating. Long story short, my iPod got completely erased and my external hard drive started malfunctioning. The folks at Apple were less than helpful. To clear my head, I had the brilliant idea to go on a run at night in an unfamiliar place and got horrendously lost. An hour and a half later, I finally found my way back. The day was redeemed by the Skype conversations I had later in the night with my family, Ignacio, and Laura.

So now, the second week of FISI begins. If you've stuck with me so far, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. More updates soon.

Traveling and Days 1-4 in Bansko

2011-08-11T18:12:00.005+03:00

Flying East is difficult. On top of the 7000 miles and 10 hours spent in the air, you lose 7 time zones between Philadelphia and Sofia. My dad and I left the house to go to the airport at 11 AM Saturday morning. I arrived at the Orphey Hotel in Bansko at 9 PM Sunday night. It was a long day.

The flight from JFK in New York to Paris was uneventful, and even quite pleasant. If you've never flown AirFrance, I recommend it, not the least reason for which is the food - not disgusting, and served with wine. I managed to catch an hour and a half of sleep, waking up about an hour before we landed in Paris at 5:45 AM local time. Coming over the English Channel, we were treated to a spectacular view of the south coast of England right as the sky was just beginning to lighten in the East.

Interestingly enough, this was my first time in France, despite having wanted to visit for years. And though it was only a 4-hour stay at Charles de Gaulle airport, it didn't disappoint my expectations for a visit of that nature. My (condensed) takeaways:

Everything was quite a bit more expensive than in the States--even taking into account that airports tend to significantly overprice things--except, curiously, the Swiss chocolate. You would think that import fees would drive the prices way up, but gargantuan Toblerone bars were only €7. Also of note - €200 ties, €2000 cognac, and €30,000 Rolexes.

Europe lives up to the hype of being a continent full of tri- and quadralingual people. I overheard a clerk in one of the duty-free shops greet a German customer in English, thinking him to be American, and then promptly switch over to fluent German when the man asked, "Deutsch?" My extremely-rusty French got a nice workout.

France is a really nice place. /End takeaways

From Paris, it was another 2 1/2 hours to Sofia. Landing at 2, I promptly changed--doing my futile best to curb the consequences of 10 hours on a plane and not being able to shower in what felt like weeks--and headed for customs. No visa being required to enter the country, I passed through, collected my bags, and met and chatted with some of the other Fulbrighters who had also just flown in. At 5, we boarded the bus to Bansko. The trip took another 3 hours, and by this time, we were in a daze. Mercifully, dinner was waiting for us, and without too much fanfare, we headed for bed.

The next day featured opening ceremonies and our first classes. This week, I'm enrolled in Bulgarian language classes and a course entitled Communicating Effectively Across Cultures. This class also interestingly, is taught by Noemi Marin, whose father was Constantin Marin, the famous choral conductor.

Taking place in Bansko this week is its annual Jazz Festival, a rather large affair which draws a lot of bands from overseas every year. Monday night, after having had the chance to catch a nap, a bunch of us went to see the show, and it didn't disappoint. The music was quite good, I had a great chance to meet and talk with some of the other Fulbrighters, and the beer was cheap (You can get a half-liter of Carlsberg here for 2.50 leva, about $1.75 US). A late night and an early morning later, and I was effectively dead.

And so have gone the last couple of days in similar fashion. Bansko is a small, isolated town in the Pirin Mountains of Bulgaria, and the landscape is quite beautiful. The weather had been hot, but it has chilled considerably the last two days and is now overcast and chilly. It rained last night, and there are lingering clouds on the mountains. The people with whom I'm staying, Bulgarian, Serbian, American, et al alike, are all very cool, and it has been a nice time getting to know them the last few days. Last night we went out to a bar for one of the guys' birthday, where, true to form, I was forced to sing"Stand by Me" and "Stairway to Heaven" for a barful of drunken Bulgarians, Americans, French guys, and Brits. Nothing truly ever changes, no matter how far we venture from our homes.

Now I'm off to take a nap before dinner and yoga later tonight. Довиждане!