Thessaloniki, Passover, Lazaruvden, Tsvetnitsa

I apologize for the fact that this is two days late in coming (my endeavor being to publish over weekends), but in my defense, it was kind of an eventful week, and my normal three-day window for starting, developing, and finishing these well-copy-edited, insightful articles was pushed back. But instead of rambling on with another tired excuse, let's just cut right to the chase.

Chapter 1: Thessaloniki

One recent seminar already under my belt (read about it here), the Fulbright Commissions That Be saw fit to send me off to another one, balancing my trip up to the frozen wastelands of Northern Europe with one to Greece, the quintessence of Mediterranean life.

Leaving my packing, in typical fashion, for the morning of our departure, I hastily threw together the necessary items, caught a cab to Jamie's apartment, and he, Fred, and I set off on our 5 hour, 20 minute road trip to Thessaloniki. In spite of a couple of (very) wrong turns, we made it mostly without incident, and were welcomed that night with a reception in the art studio of the Thessalonian artist Soros. Much like Berlin's, this welcoming event served as our first contact with the other Fulbrighters in attendance, though instead of being charged with the Herculean task of meeting 500-odd people, we had simply to meet 30 or so, this conference comprising only that miniscule amount of wide-eyed wanderers.

The next day, with a good night's sleep under my belt (beginning to sound familiar?), I--much more happily than on the previous day--partook in the Seminar's festivities. These included presentations from 8 of the other Fulbrighters, which were both engaging and gave me some ideas about my own work, the author of a forthcoming book on Thessaloniki sharing excerpts therefrom, lunch in the swanky dining room of the hotel, and an after-dinner trip down to the White Tower, where I and my companions made merry--in the medieval sense--and furthered ourselves in the cause of meeting everyone else.

The next day's activities began at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, and the morning progressed in much the same fashion as the the previous day, comprising project presentations and the offering of another speaker--this time Athens' Deputy Mayor for Finance--who spoke to us about the current debt crisis. After a tour of the museum and a small lunch, we got to go on a bus tour of Thessaloniki, which contained some extraordinarily cool things. But instead of tell you about everything we saw, be it that the thing I leave you with from this fly-by of history is that I saw my first blooming tree of the Spring, so--poof!--there went my martenitsa.

Tying it to the branch

This would be the natural place to share any and all of the gorgeous pictures I took, but I, in my sometimes-staggering boneheadedness, neglected to bring my camera along for this tour, thereby relegating the spectacular views I witnessed to virtually certain forgottenness. Later, though, I would atone--at least with my own self--by venturing out, along with some new friends, on an ultimately-rewarding quest for gyros, which I found to contain, to my immensely pleasurable surprise, thick, American-style fries, which, when complimented with thick, American-style ketchup, transported me, in my mind, back to many a happy day under the Los Angeles sun.

As Wednesday dawned, we had come to our Last Day. After gorging myself on another large breakfast (I have really come to appreciate hotel breakfast buffets in the last 3 weeks, both German and Greek), I and the rest of my compatriots boarded a bus to visit the dubious purported tomb of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Before we did that, however--and after one wrong turn dropped us right into the middle of a convent--we ended up at a little monastery nestled in the Greek mountains, which we toured, to the accompanying explanations of the abbot, Father Panteleimon. Check it out:

The view from the monastery. Seriously.

Inside

Leaving the monastery behind to a now-steady drizzle, we continued our journey to the Vergina Tumulus, whose curators insist contain the tomb of Philip II, though thorough scholarship makes a strong case against this possibility. Nonetheless, there is some very cool stuff housed therein, including, but not limited to, several relatively-intact tombs from the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, which made for an interesting, if a tad too-long, excursion.

It was nearly 3 by the time lunch rolled around, and we were all exhausted, resulting in the collective lucidity and order of said meal being reduced by half, give or take. Returning to the hotel, and eschewing the proposed walking tour--which would have had to take place in the rain--we instead rested up before our final communal dinner. Some food and several bottles of wine later, we were transformed into a band ready to head out for one final night in Greece, which many of us did, and deep into the night, at that. While less of a raging affair than was our final night in Berlin, it was still fun, and to be sure, the next morning arrived far too early.

After breakfast, Jamie and I--Fred having departed late on Tuesday night--loaded up the car, and headed back the way we had come. Or so we thought. Making a wrong turn outside Thessaloniki, we ended up traveling more than halfway to Kavala before we realized that we were headed in the wrong direction. But, as with many wrong turns in this serendipitous universe of ours, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

After stopping at a roadside service station to get a map and figure out where the hell we were, we decided that the best course of action was to continue in the direction we had been headed so that we could pick up the highway that would lead us back to the E79, the freeway that would take us back to Sofia. And, as we made our way down the highway, passing from small town to small town, the Greek countryside opened up as I had always envisioned, but never got to witness; rolling hills and vineyards splayed before us like something out of a made-for-TV-movie on BBC. After 4 days in Greece, we were finally seeing what we--or, at least, I--had come with the expectation to see.

Stretching into the distance

Mountains

And this was only the beginning. Crossing the border back into Bulgaria, those fields and vineyards turned into the types of mountains I never expected to see in this part of the world, so much like the beautiful, rocky, sparsely vegetated hills I had grown to love in Southern California they were. The air was warm; the colors stark. Spring had reared its gorgeous head once again.

At the border

Seriously, Topanga?

The Pirins

Finally arriving at my apartment many hours after we had departed (with a good in-car nap to my benefit), I was feeling better, and ready to take on the next challenge: preparing a Passover seder in 24 hours.

Chapter 2:  Passover

Mere minutes after returning to my house, I threw open the windows (this day offering sun, warm air, and a light breeze), put on some music, and began to clean. Winter dies hard in this stalwart of the former Eastern Bloc, and 6 months of having the windows shut against the snow and wind will allow quite a bit of dust to accumulate. The time for Spring Cleaning had come.

So I vacuumed the floors and washed the walls, cleaned the bathroom and mopped the kitchen, moved furniture around, and put my winter blanket away. The sheer exuberance of a warm April day notwithstanding, I also had company coming in short order.

Every year, my family gets together on the first (convenient) night of Passover for a seder, something I haven't been able to be a part of since 2006. This year, being abroad, I wanted to try my hand at hosting one, hence all the cleaning. The cleaning ended up being just the beginning, though.

After doing an initial round on Thursday night (while listening to the first game of the Phillies' 2012 season on the radio, a textbook 1-0 victory), I woke up early-ish the next day to finish what I had started. Emerging from my now-pristine apartment around 1 PM on Friday, I headed out to buy the assortment of vegetables, fruits, wines, and matzah that would constitute the ingredients for my share of the Passover cooking. Arriving back at my apartment, I spent the next couple hours whipping up matzah-ball soup, potato kugel, xaroset, and the various other accoutrements of the seder plate.

And people came, and food, and wine, and pretty soon, 11 of us were seated around the periphery of my kitchen/dining room, reading from the Haggadah and singing the songs, making one of probably four seders in the whole country. It was an immensely nice experience, especially being so far from my family this year, and successful to a detail. Exhausting, but totally rewarding and gratifying.

Chapter 3: Lazaruvden/Tsvetnitsa, or, The Bus that Wouldn't Come

Lacking the opportunity to sleep in this past weekend, I arose on Saturday to go out into the field for my research for the first time since I narrowed my focus specifically to Shopski dvuglas. And though, in most places in the world, it should have been relatively straightforward to get to where I was going, it was anything but.

After calling up Alex, an American law student living in Sofia this semester, to accompany me--with getting lost a near certainty--we made our way down to Петте Кьошета (The 5 Corners) to catch the #17 мартрушка, the mini-bus that, I was told, runs to Gorni Bogrov, the village I needed to get to. Pulling up in my own bus just in time to meet her and clamber aboard the martrushka, I paid for our tickets and asked the driver to tell me when we had gotten to Gorni Bogrov. He replied that his route didn't include a stop in Gorni Bogrov. Thinking I had misheard him, I asked again, and annoyed, he replied that we needed bus 118.

Hopping off at the nearest convenient point, we then proceeded to mosey our way down a street that looked as though it ran in the right direction. After being supplied with fresh information in the shadow of the crumbling apartment blocks by another local, we hopped a passing bus and took it the four stops to where she had said to go. As this was the end of the line, we again hopped off and found ourselves in the middle of nowhere.

Trudging to the main road, we happened upon yet another bus stop and asked an overly friendly teenaged girl how to get to where we were going. She told us to head back to the stop where we had gotten off and take bus 14. This we did, when it finally came around, but to our chagrin, the end of its own line was a mere 2 stops hence. This stop, at least, was populated, and fortuitously replete with a scheme of Sofia's public transportation. It appeared to us as though we could get to the stop where we could finally board bus 118 via one final connecting bus, so before we boarded that, we bought day passes for ourselves, unsure of how many more trials we would have to go through before we reached our day's land of milk and honey.

Hopping on the appropriate bus for 2 more stops, it dumped us off at a remote terminal past which we could make out the tracks of a tram line. Upon further inspection, we discovered that it was tram 22, which happens to run directly in front of my apartment. 5 stops away. We had made a large circle.

Refusing to despair, however, we trekked up the road to a bus stop that looked like it could have been the right one. Instead of the promised 118 line, however, it showed only that bus 90 ran there. I was on the verge of giving up, when, perusing the list of stops along the line, I caught sight of the most blessed words I had ever seen in my life. Село Горни Богров - Village Gorni Bogrov. We had found our bus.

From there, it was simply a matter of waiting for it to show up, passing the time en route chatting with a rather nice fellow whose rudimentary command English was the result of many hours spent playing Starcraft with "millions of Americans," and getting off at the appropriate stop. Once we did that, though, the day became eye-opening.

I had come to think of the concept of the small Bulgarian village, tucked away in a remote corner of the landscape, as extinct, or, at least, so far removed from the bustling metropolis of Sofia as to be effectively out of reach to me. But ah!--such is the wonder and mystery of living overseas--how one is constantly surprised by any new culture amongst which one lives. 

One of the extraordinarily refreshing things I have recently discovered about Bulgaria is that there are no suburbs here, in stark contrast to the urban sprawl that has become the common plague of the American city. The city here literally fades away to countryside in a matter of meters. So there we were, less than 20 kilometers from the city center, surrounded on all sides by fields and small, ramshackle houses.

And it was beautiful. Before sharing the pictures I took, let me just note that the thing that really got me about this village was the juxtaposition of ancient and modern here. For starters, consider that we were standing, in the year 2012, in the midst of a tiny village that had probably been there for hundreds of years, with a European capital a few kilometers away. And within the city itself, the combinations of old and new were striking. To be sure, we found no mud-brick huts, but we found more than our fair share of old houses, and standing neatly next to them was a row of--there is no other word for them--mansions that would have fit in perfectly along the back streets of West LA. Most houses here, instead of a lawn, had a garden, neatly plowed, some with sprouts emerging from their soil, and I imagined that this was their modern-day adaptation of the subsistence farming paradigm that has been the hallmark of agrarian Western Bulgarian society for centuries.

Let me waste no more words on the subject:

Gardens

Note the secure fencing on the left and the tumbledown houses on the right

Alex and I just wandered around the village for a while, taking it all in. After a few minutes, though, we remembered the purpose of our, or, at least, my journey: to capture the performance of the Lazarus Day customs. And if the first half of our day had been marked by wrong turns, bad luck, and getting progressively more lost, the Great Forces of Equalization decided to make up for it during the afternoon hours, as we rounded a corner and stumbled onto the village's singing troupe.

We followed them for about half an hour as they went house to house, singing songs specific to the day and collecting food, hard-boiled eggs (traditional for this holiday), and money. When it was time for us to part, they cheerfully replied that I could take their picture.

The keepers of the tradition

Not quite having gotten my fill of the rural landscape, though, I wanted a few more pictures before we departed.

Mt. Vitosha across the plain

The old section of town

A shepherd with his flock

It ended up being a very interesting day.

The next day served much the same purpose, but with far fewer complications and far less drama. Heading out to the village of Jelyava--in the same direction as Gorni Bogrov, but further out--I went, alone this time, to attend the celebrations put together by the chitalishte, the community center, for Tsvetnitsa, or Palm Sunday.

After my trip on what must have been the oldest and slowest bus in existence, I finally arrived, 30 minutes late, to the village, and proceeded up the winding road to the chitalishte. When I got there, I found, instead of folklore, a junior cheerleading squad doing a dance routine to a techno remix of the Popcorn Song. Though initially a bit confused, my patience was ultimately rewarded by 10 minutes of authentic dvuglas from a sextet of babi, though to my annoyance, the crowd apparently did not find it engaging enough to give them their attention, talking loudly over their performance.

Thus went these particular praznitsi - vestiges of tradition mixed with the modern. It seemed to be a microcosm for how Bulgarian society has appropriated tradition today--by diluting it, with an amount, that I have yet to ascertain, of disregard for it, with the modern--but this will be the subject of its own post at some point in the future, as it is a crucial and interesting point of this culture, so I won't get into it now.

After making my way around the inexplicably cold village (believe me when I say that winter dies hard here) to take some more pictures, the bus mercifully came around again, and I went home.

It was quite a jam-packed week, and it contained a lot of new things for me to assimilate. I'm still working through them, but ultimately, I think it will prove to be one of those weeks that help to crystallize my experience here. So there's a good chance I may be revisiting it in the coming months.

That's about all for me this week, and with good reason, as I'm catching a flight to Vienna in a few hours to visit Austrian Fulbrighter and friend from home Andrea. From there I will hop to Munich for a couple of days before returning to the friendly confines of my adopted home. So until the weekend, stay happy, stay healthy.

Breakfast in Berlin

Things I have done in the last three days in defiance of the fact that it's still March:

• Hung my laundry on my outdoors clothesline
• Wore my flip-flops when I went out
• Went for my first outdoor run of the year
• Busked in the metro station for money (and made 12 лева!)
• Smiled at everyone and everything, because it was 21° (70°F) (!)

It's Springtime in Bulgaria. The calendar says it, the martenitsi say it, and, best of all, the weather says it. Color me exuberant.

I should preemptively apologize, at this point, for my near-certain preoccupation with the weather over the course of the next several weeks. As I mentioned before, I hate the cold, so the couple of weeks in March when it starts to get warm again and everything comes alive is one of my favorite times of year. I can get a little obsessed. So please excuse all future references to the weather from here on out.

Let's talk about my awesome trip to Berlin, though, ja?

This past Sunday to Thursday was the annual conference in Berlin of a selected sample of European Fulbrighters. For four days, this miniscule club of 600 was tasked with sitting through rather a lot of presentations and making the effort to meet every single other member of said club. In retrospect, I think we did surprisingly well.

Very early on Sunday morning, Fred and I caught a flight to Berlin by way of Munich. Arriving at Berlin's Tegel Airport around 10:20, we caught a bus that conveniently delivered us directly to Alexanderplatz, where our hotel was located. As we checked in, I found Laura--who had ventured up from Munich the previous day--waiting for me in the lobby, and we crashed for a couple of hours (as I, having awoken at 4:45 AM, was experiencing something akin to the sleep deprivation that might befall a survivor of the Apocalypse) before setting off, with several hundred of the other Fulbrighters, on a tour of the city.

Designed to be a survey tour rather than a detailed one, the bus took us to a lot of the sites important to the history of Berlin's role in the Cold War, and, of course, showed us much of the path where the Berlin Wall stood. Starting at Alexanderplatz, we soon found ourselves at the East Side Gallery, a section of the Wall that has been painted over extensively by muralists and graffiti artists alike.

The East Side Gallery

Driving past this section of the Wall for a while, we then crossed the Oberbaumbrücke into West Berlin. Driving through some of the more "artistic" neighborhoods on this side of the city, we ended up at Checkpoint Charlie, which was not, I was surprised to learn, a metaphorical character symbolic of the division between East and West, but rather an actual border crossing at the former site of the Wall.

Anonymous Soviet Soldier is watching you

After a fascinating trip through the museum that accompanies this landmark, we headed off again through Potsdamerplatz, past what I believe was the seat of the European Trade Commission and the former headquarters of Radio In the American Sector, and found ourselves at another section of the Wall that has survived, largely unaltered, since it was constructed.

Here stood the Wall

The Iron Curtain epitomized

Following this, we began to make our way back toward the hotel, along the way passing several musea, Humboldt Universität, the Berliner Staatsoper, and the Berliner Dom (pictures of that to come later) before finding ourselves back at Alexanderplatz. Our tour ended, we filtered back up into the hotel.

Resting up a bit more before dinner, I met my roommate for the week, Arthur, and we went back downstairs for the pre-meal ceremonies. Dinner itself was a raucous (and delicious) affair, with the introduction of good beer and wine almost certainly a move motivated by the desire to facilitate networking. Well, it worked. Three hours later, having met a large share of the students flung afield throughout Europe, I left the dining room to meet Laura before she had to catch a midnight ride back to Munich.

Having somehow survived this long day, I fell into bed that night and awoke the next morning with a good night's sleep under my belt, and feeling all the better for it. Monday would set the tone for the rest of the conference, as it featured several long "mini-conferences" (speeches, panels, and the like), several more "networking meals," and on Monday night, a long opening ceremony at the Federal Foreign Office featuring several speeches auf Deutsch (perhaps defeating their purpose for the non-Germanophone members of the audience), after which there was a reception filled with supremely delicious German delicacies. Said reception also featured my reconnection with a couple of old classmates at USC, neither of whom I knew were in Europe on Fulbrights. It was a Small World Moment.

Tuesday, though filled with different content, contained many similar events. The morning session featured another spate of speeches at the Berliner Rathaus (City Hall) and a Q&A session with Björn Böhning, the head of Berlin's State Chancellery. (The Rathaus also contains a very imposing and very cool painting of the Congress of 1878--which I couldn't help staring at every few moments--at whose center is a towering and dour-looking Otto von Bismarck.) After lunch, I decided to make my way around our section of Berlin to see some of the cool stuff we hadn't had the chance to see on Sunday.

Within a few meters of the hotel are Berlin's TV tower and the Marienkirche. The TV tower is rather large.

Seriously.

Just down the road are the Rathaus and its awesome (and mildly famous, I've heard) fountain.

Poseidon with the Marienkirche in the background

Another few meters down from these magnificent wonders (there really is a lot of cool stuff in this neighborhood packed into not very much room) is a Platz bounded by the Berlin Cathedral and the Altes Museum, with the Humboldt Box just off to the side. None of the following pictures will really give you an accurate impression, but one of the reasons this area is so fixating is because these structures are gigantic with a capital HUGE. Seriously. They are beautiful, and old, and large.

Altes Museum

The Cathedral, with the TV Tower in the background

Tearing myself away from this concentrated display of Old World architecture after taking 98265898356 pictures thereof, I continued my journey along the River Spree, only stopping to witness an impromptu performance by a couple of Marktsackpfeife players accompanied by a drummer.

Super cool

My next stop was the Neue Synagoge, which was built in 1866, set on fire during Kristallnacht in 1938, and destroyed by bombing in 1943. It was rebuilt after the war, and dedicated in 1966 on its 100th anniversary.

Like few synagogues you've ever seen

After that, I headed back south to the Spree and continued to follow it west. After crossing over it on the Friedrichstrasse bridge, I headed toward the penultimate stop on my mini-tour: the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament.

Approaching it from the river

BAM

After stopping to marvel--again--at how grotesquely large yet another important piece of architecture was in this city, I walked the last hundred meters to the final destination of my tour, the Brandenburg Gate, made famous, perhaps, by this photo:

Hopping the Wall in 1989

Here's what it looks like 22 years later:

With Victoria and her horses looking on

Having seen nearly everything I had set out to see, and running short on time before dinner, I made my way straight back to the hotel down Unter den Linden. After stuffing my face for the millionth time on this trip, it was time for the Music Gala, an extensive concert put on by some of the current Fulbright music students. Though I was expecting it to be good, it turned out to be really good, and it made me miss the days when I used to go to concerts all the time. (But those days are coming again soon!) After returning to the hotel, I went out to a local Brauhaus to grab a beer with several members of the Spanish contingent, plus some others, thus ending another long day.

And just like that, when I awoke the next morning, it was the last day of the conference. It was a good one, too; the morning featured the project presentations of 9 current Fulbrighters as well as a panel of 8 others who shared their experiences with such exotic locations as Finland, Hungary, and Sweden. After a lunch of some surprisingly good Chinese food (prepared by a Korean woman on the streets of Berlin - I love Europe), we had another panel regarding the future of the EU with several officials thereof. It was a great chance to learn about the dynamics currently working themselves out within the economies of Europe, ask some questions about them, and speculate about where everything was heading.

After dinner, we were all bussed to the Kulturbrauerei, a club/bar-like situation, where we hung out, danced, and got the last of our "networking" out before we had to depart. It made me realize how much fun I had had at the conference, and that it actually had its intended effect - I now know people living all over Europe, which will be awesome come this summer (more to come on that in a few months).

But alas, even after staying out until 2:something AM, breakfast the next day refused to postpone itself to a decent hour, so I dragged myself out of bed, forced myself downstairs, and had a long, groggy breakfast, mostly spent rehashing the details of the night before. After checking out, I went to lunch with Joe, one of my aforementioned USC compatriots, and then set off to see a couple more things before my 5 PM flight. The most important of these was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located just to the south of Brandenburg Gate.

The Field of Stelae

From inside

After spending an hour and change absorbing all of it, I was out of time, and caught a bus back to TXL. Fred and I got back to Sofia at 9:30, and just like that, our trip was over.

It was fun. I really like Berlin.

Now it's back to reality, and I have a mountain of work to do this week before it's off to another conference in Thessaloniki. Stay tuned for more.

Springtime for Borisov

After five long, dark months of biting cold--and nearly as long a period of snowfall--spring has descended upon Sofia. Cue The Producers, Carmina Burana, and The Beatles.

I wouldn't go so far as to say we're into the warm part of Spring yet - give that another couple weeks. But when I walked out of the library yesterday, it was windbreaker weather, and the sun stayed out until nearly 7. And today was, for the sheer fact of Sofia's previously dismal temperatures, glorious. It got up to the 60's, and, for a few liberating moments, I walked around in my T-shirt, which felt just plain nice. And soon, mid-March will give way to April, and we'll really be talking.

I think I've coped reasonably well with my first prolonged winter in six years, but I'll be the first to admit that it's gotten me a little down, and I'm immensely happy that its last traces will soon be swept away. Sunny days will soon be here to stay, as evidenced today by the uplifting sight of a park full of happy, playing children. I even caught a few of their more gastronomically exuberant parents eating ice cream. All will soon be right with the world.

Yesterday, I finished the book I've been slogging through for the last couple of months, something else I'm overjoyed to be rid of. And today, Xristo and I pored over the last of my reading in Bulgarian. It didn't go so easily, as these last two articles were in the infuriatingly academic mold that goes out of its way to reiterate something in as many different ways as possible, deliberately taking several pages to impart knowledge that could be passed on in a paragraph. But finally, we finished with them, which leaves me one more paper to analyze before I move onto the next phase of my research in the archives. That insane, manic schedule I laid out in my previous post? One week down, and so far, so good.

Tomorrow, I will indulge in the awesome experience of visiting Berlin for the first time. Fellow Fulbright Compatriot Fred and I have a very early flight out, and we'll spend 4 days there, conferencing with other Fulbrighters from around Europe. It should be a scintillating time, as every account I've heard of Berlin has been of a ridiculously cool city, and getting to meet with Fulbrighters from other countries is guaranteed to be enjoyable. Laura will join me for the day, and we will bask in what promises to be a gorgeous weekend.

Tales from Berlin to follow. Thanks for reading!

Bringing the First Half to a Close

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

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

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

At any rate -

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

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

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

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

Back to Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/End philosophical paragraph(s)

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