The Year in Review, Part 2: The Places

Part 2 in a 3-part retrospective of the year I've spent in Bulgaria. 

It is that absolutely idyllic point in a hot, dry day when the air is in the process of cooling and it has reached that temperature when one cannot feel the presence of heat or cold on the skin. It's like being in a swimming pool that has similarly reached that perfect temperature in which one simply floats, feeling nothing to indicate that there were anything surrounding them. It is abhorrent to me, around this time of day, to jog or hurry or do anything at any pace other than relaxed, a hint of sleepiness just on the periphery of my consciousness.

Sofia is gorgeous in the early summer sun, especially around 5 or 6. For some reason, I usually hate this time of day (Douglas Adams having once perfectly labeled it the Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul), but when the weather is upliftingly, soul-affirmingly warm like it has been for the last few weeks and the shadows play their way over the ground, it's actually one of the nicest times in this city.

Sofia really is lovely, despite all of its shortcomings. It's a city that seems shaped--in my mind, at least--by its dual identities as a European city in a poor country. It is laid out in a circle, with points conveniently radiating outward from the center, and it is, in every way, designed to be lived in, contrasting with some other cities I've visited that seem to be lived in despite the difficulties presented by doing so. It has a system of public transportation that seems extensive compared to most cities in the States, but pales in comparison to some of its richer European counterparts (a host of German cities comes to mind). It is a city of 1 million plus, but the area that this population occupies seems quite small. Its distinct neighborhood-level divisions and its concentration of public spaces and eateries result in a small-town feel in more than a few places, which I really like.

I may be spoiled, having lived where I did up until two days ago, when I bid adieu to my penthouse suite studio. I lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city, and it was central to a great many things. Sofia University, the Institute of Art Studies, Orlov Most, the Borisova Gradina, a wealth of bars, shops, and coffeehouses, Zaymov Park, Alexander Nevski Cathedral, and everything I needed to live were within an easy, short walk of my apartment, and the more time I spent out among these things, the more I enjoyed the nature and culture of the city. 

Once I got outside it, however, was when my eyes began to be opened to the greater nature of Bulgaria. Living in the largest and richest city in a country will teach you some things about that country, but it can also create a bubble through which it may be hard for other facets of the place to penetrate. Sofia really has been lovely, this year--though I am not certain, were I to stay indefinitely, how long I would continue to feel this way--and I can't really imagine a better place in Bulgaria to have been, considering my affinity for urban culture and the accessibility of certain things that come with it. But to really get to know a place, you have to experience as many of its locales as you can.

The first time I left Sofia and came back--the last weekend in August, when Greg, Fred, and I went to Burgas for the weekend--I had a minor revelatory moment when, after gliding through endless kilometers of hills and fields, our train suddenly emerged in the veritable center of the city. Having spent most of my entire life in the States, where urban sprawl has transformed the outskirts of many cities into endless tracts of houses, it had never occurred to me that there were cities without suburbs, into which one could simply emerge as suddenly as one looked back out the window. Sofia, at least, is one such place, where the country starts as soon as one has passed its last industrial plant.

This fact led to what was perhaps my biggest eye-opening moment of the entire year. On Lazarovden, I went out to the village of Gorni Bogrov to observe the ritual of the Lazartsi in whatever form it still existed. When I got there, I was floored by what I found - a rural Bulgarian village with narrow roads that one could walk across in 10 minutes. To be sure, the houses were somewhat modern, and the roads were paved, but there, smack dab in the middle of an endless plain with mountains rising in the background, was a small cluster of houses whose limit was defined by a one-lane road running around its periphery. Each house had a garden, some had horses, and once you stepped across this road, you were definitively out of the village. Quite frankly, I had not expected to find something like this in 2012 in a member of the European Union. My conception was that the rural village had died, but, as it turns out, it was just a few kilometers away the whole time.

Of course, I've gone to a host of other really cool places in the time I've been here. I've spent this weekend, in fact, in the seaside town of Burgas hanging out with some fellow Fulbrighters for our last collective weekend in Bulgaria. Burgas--and its coastal neighbors that I've visited, Byala and Varna--are extremely pleasant this time of year, as is to be expected. The Black Sea coast is, in a lot of ways, nicer than what we have in the States; though the culture is decidedly different, it offers most of what one might find at the Jersey Shore or in the beach cities of the South Bay, only with finer sands and (in general, at least) less trash. The weekend we spent in Byala was obscenely pleasant--though that was due in large part to the company--and the time I've spent in Burgas has been much the same. I was never much of a beach person, but I'm beginning to enjoy the setting more and more.

One of Bulgaria's biggest draws is its geography, which is on full display during the 400-kilometer journeys from Sofia to the coast. The country is bisected latitudinally by the Stara Planina (literally, "Old Mountains"), the Balkan Mountains, which are stunning in and of themselves; one of my big regrets from this year is not having made time to explore them. In the eastern half of the country, they form the northern boundary of the Thracian Plain. Much of the land to their north is uneven, forming endless foothills to the range until these run up against the Danube Valley. To the south, in the west of Bulgaria, several other mountain ranges rise to meet the Balkans, forming much of the terrain that has shaped the culture of shopski kray.

When we all first arrived in Bulgaria for FISI at the beginning of August, we were immediately swept off to the skiing town of Bansko, nestled in the Rila Mountains (in the summer, it had functioned as mountain resort for the rich and well-connected). The landscape was, of course, gorgeous, and it was a rather idyllic setting for us to gain our first exposure to this place. Mt. Vitosha, which looms over Sofia like a watchful protector, is one of the symbols of Bulgaria, and is an important peak in the Balkan Range. Sofia, which lies on an elevated plain between the Balkans and Rilas, is, one forgets, a mountain city, and there is a lot of good, accessible hiking to be had. I was fortunate to have had a day, in the beginning of the year, to hike Mt. Vitosha, though I wish I had done it more than once.

There are also a lot of cool things to see and do within plausible day-trip distance of Sofia. Plovdiv, another of the largest cities in Bulgaria, is a 2-hour drive/bus ride from the city, and its Old Town offers a lot of very cool things to see, historical and otherwise, which many of us did back in October. A few weeks after that, I took a short trip to the nearby city of Pernik for St. Ivan Rilksi Day, which was a much better time than I expected, and in December, Greg, his family, and I took another such trip to Belogradchik, about a 3-hour drive from Sofia, to visit the Magura Cave, which was awesome in every way.

Perhaps the thing that has made so many great things possible this year has been Bulgaria's relatively small size. The furthest point in the country from Sofia is 7 hours away, and bus tickets are extremely cheap compared to what we're accustomed to in the US (Chinatown buses notwithstanding), so really, the sky's the limit. The biggest limitation to my traveling this year has been the constraints of time I've been under. But as far as the plausibility of internal travel is concerned, Bulgaria is a place that is about as good as it gets. There are a lot of fascinating and wonderful things, all much different from each other, and all within a not-obscene distance from each other, either. I'm glad that I've taken the advantage of it that I have.

On Wednesday, we will conclude this 3-part retrospective, as the year draws to its inevitable close, with a look back at the veritable host of things that I have come to love about his place and that I will surely miss in the coming years. Onward ho to the bitter end, and thanks for being here, y'all.

The Year in Review, Part 1: The People

Part 1 in a 3-part retrospective of the year I've spent in Bulgaria.

I'm not entirely sure that this post should be the first in this retrospective series. What I've come to realize is that an outsized part of the way I feel about a given place has to do with the people I meet there - people make experiences; experiences make feelings. I've also come to discover that I'm really more interested in people than most other things in the world. So I sort of feel like this should be the last, culminating chapter in this miniseries - but maybe it's just as well. I've already started; let's talk about the people I've met this year.

When I arrived in Bansko in August, I knew nobody. I was, as you'll recall, brimming with trepidation at the idea of being thrown into a new situation--social, cultural, and geographical--with no contacts and little command of the local language. My experience, having yet to have begun at that point, could have gone in literally any metaphorical direction. I was in for some kind of year, but the scary part was having no guarantee of what kind of year it would be.

FISI proved to be a godsend for how I would make my initial contact with the people of Bulgaria. It worked as those who organized it had conspired: Our first interactions with Bulgarians were with ones that had much in common with us, so the initial bonds developed easily. I made many friends those two weeks, not just with Bulgarians, but with Serbians, Croatians, and many others. Having that early nexus of contact was comforting, and it would prove invaluable to have a rudimentary support system already in place by the time I and my compatriots were finally released into the wilds of this country. More rewardingly, that support system grew into a web of friends, with some of whom I've kept in contact through the entire year. This place has been a lot less scary with them around.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned living in Sofia this year, not coincidentally corresponding to one of the primary aims of the Fulbright Program, has been that of openmindedness, and, more specifically, cultural relativity. The general idea was that, being acculturated to a certain society with its own norms and values, it would take an open mind to accept a different society with different norms than my own and to realize that, no matter how different the behavior of the people in that society might be, it would be as correct in that society as mine had been in my own. As simple and intuitive as that sounds, that consciousness has not always been easy to maintain this year.

Sofians, by habit--that is, by acculturation--do a lot of things that Americans might perceive as rude. Some things that we take for granted in our society, both small--smiling, saying "please," holding the door for people, giving the right of way--and larger--avoiding incursions into personal space, waiting in lines, and even refraining from low levels of public shaming--are not generally facets of the culture here. This is changing somewhat, especially--being subject to the highest degree of exposure to Western European culture in this country--in Sofia, but I have witnessed the breaking of all of the above American morés here. What has been surprisingly difficult to keep in mind is that these actions, performed by Bulgarians in their own society, have violated no social principles.

That's not to say that I haven't witnessed, and even been party to, genuine mistreatment in some instances. Jerks exist in every society, and Bulgaria is no exception. But the concept of cultural relativity is that values and norms in a society are, by definition, right within the context of that society if the social order accepts them, and if they persist, then it means that the social order has indeed accepted them. Every culture's customs, in other words, work in maintaining a functioning society. Even if some of the actions I've witnessed here violate the values of American society, those rules do not simply apply here, just because I'm an American. A society should not be expected to change for my sake. There is no set of universal human norms, save, perhaps, one or two, and so it is unfair when anyone thinks less of another culture because of theirs. Thence has derived my lesson in openmindedness.

I found, this year, that the degree to which I was able to integrate into this society was largely dependent upon my command of its language. Language being people's primary method of communication, this is not surprising. For most of the year I struggled to gain a better understanding of the language so that I could do things like have conversations, and progress was slow, but tangible. By this point, I can go out into the world and not be completely at a loss, which I'll claim as a moral victory. A lot of people speak English in this city, typically depending on their age, and they generally appreciate it if you make a good-faith effort to communicate with them in their language.

The generational divide doesn't just pertain to language use. The fact that many younger Bulgarians speak English while many older Bulgarians speak Russian is but one vestige of this country's fascinating recent past. This divide even extends, I've found, to manner, customs, and outlook. Younger Bulgarians tend to be more receptive to Western culture, and, less predictably, even tend to be more optimistic. If I knew more about the dynamics of this society and the psyches of its people, I could speculate that this has had to do with growing up in a "free" society as opposed to a "censored" one, one that is integrated into Europe and the rest of the world like it hasn't been in generations, one whose inhabitants have greater opportunities for mobility and wealth and individualism than their parents before them, but, sadly, I don't feel that I know these things well enough to make any sort of confident statement about them. What I've observed, to a large extent, is that younger Bulgarians tend to be more trusting and less skeptical than their older counterparts.

One of the things of which I've become acutely aware this year, something which I hadn't really thought about in any depth prior to my arrival here, is the fact that Bulgaria, despite its former membership in the Eastern Bloc, despite its location down in one of the more isolated corners of the continent, despite its proximity to the Middle East and, though less so, to Africa, is still a European country, and its inhabitants are still European people. As such, there are elements of its society that I've perceived to be pan-European. As it has turned out, I like Europe. I like the people's propensity for sitting in the park, drinking beer when the weather is nice. I like how dinner can take hours and hours, the meal and subsequent socialization being a process rather than an event. I like the fact that public transportation exists here, and the quasi-comical culture that accompanies it.

And I love the sociability of the Bulgarian people. This sociability was one of the first things I noticed about their culture when I arrived, in the midst of a heat wave, in the late Sofian August. At a time when the inclination of the average American would be to stay inside and turn on the air conditioning, Sofians refused to be deterred--many of them being without air conditioning in the first place--and came out in force to distract themselves from the heat. This was not just a warm-weather phenomenon, either, though the people of this fine city have come out in greater numbers over the course of the last few beautiful weeks than I have ever seen. Throughout the winter, round about 5 o'clock, the cafés, bars, and restaurants began to fill in identical manners to the ways they have filled on these recent warm summer evenings, only in the winter months, the drinks were hot and the doors were closed, the tables and chairs safely ensconced inside their establishments.

Just down the block from my apartment is a small park, and at the same time that Sofia's plethora of establishments (the sheer number of places to stop in and get a drink or something to eat being something I really love about this city, though we'll get to that in the next post) are getting full, this park--and, as I've discovered, seemingly every public space in the city--is overrun with families, children, adolescents, and adults alike. Babies are especially popular sights, much moreso than in the States, the significance of which I don't know enough about to speculate on. Though this results in a setting that is a bit too loud to be idyllic, it is nevertheless pleasant, and insightful, to boot.

This is representative of something that I always imagined when I pictured my ideal community: a group of people who spend their lives outside their homes, savoring the weather when it's nice, distracting themselves from it when it isn't. This was always my conception of the American dream - a vision of a community that lived its collective life not in isolation, but in the presence of the rest of its collective self. And, at least in this way, the Bulgarian people have not only fulfilled my idealization of community, they have, in some way, redefined it. When the day comes for me to find some place to settle down, to pick a group of strangers amongst whom to live in a place that may or may not be totally alien to me, this is the standard to which I will hold each prospective home. The people of Sofia have shown me that community like this can exist, and it is something I will forever hold a significant desire to be a part of.

It seems almost bizarre, but I have witnessed the realization of many small American dreams in this land so far removed--geographically, historically, politically, culturally--from America: unspeakably perfect, warm summer evenings, what seems like the entire population of the city out to enjoy the weather in all its splendor, ice cream vendors on every corner, adorable children happily frolicking in the glory of air that seems tinged with magic, dogs happily chasing each other, parents attending to their newborns, adolescents in the throes of tweenhood bravely forging ahead in their quest to find their place in this world, a sun that seems like it will refuse to set tonight, a world at contented peace. In its own not-entirely-superficial way, the dream of the white picket fence is thriving tonight, and I am fortunate to be, in this moment, surrounded by it.

If this has resulted in an overly romanticized or idealized account of the residents of this place, then so be it. The evening is beautiful beyond compare, and I am in a peaceful and generous mood I have rarely experienced so overflowingly. I am sitting in the Borisova Gradina with the first golden raisins I have tasted in a year, I have given my spare change to beggar and busker alike, the children are flying kites, smiles ablaze on their faces, so far from quarreling that their attendant father must certainly be as contented--for the moment, at least--as I am. It is difficult to be objective about this place or its people when surrounded by so much pleasantness.

I have had a true myriad of experiences with the people of Bulgaria this year, but overall, that body of experience has been decidedly positive. Fulbright is supposed to serve the purpose of cultural integration, understanding, and experience, and I certainly feel like I've accomplished that. I've had a good time here, and it is mostly attributable to the people who have populated my life in the past year. I will leave this place with positive memories of this society, maybe even having learned a few things. In that respect, my purpose here has been fulfilled.

Bye-bye, Bansko; Zdravei, Sofia

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

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

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!