Visitors and Counting Down

Today marks the beginning of my final 30 days in Bulgaria.

There are no words to describe all of the experiences I've had this year, and just how much they've impacted my life and my person, but in the next few weeks, I'm going to give it a try, so stay tuned for that.

The overarching narrative of this past week has again been--you guessed it--the inexorable march towards completing my thesis. Having passed 100 pages and 8 sections completed today, I'm now 2/3 finished with my first draft, and still sort of on schedule, give or take a day. That said, this has been the week it has stopped being fun, and begun, in unpleasant earnest, to be a slog towards the finish line. I have ceased writing; I am now doing battle.

For that, I feel like I owe this place and my experience here an abstract apology of sorts. None of this year was supposed to be killed time or compulsory effort in service of something else, not even the final dregs of it. But, I suppose, this happens quite often during the penultimate stages in the completion of something major; maybe it's just human nature to want the end of something when that end--especially when it's a goal to be achieved--is in sight.

And, in my defense, this has been one of the toughest weeks I've had in a long time, with which the details thereof I'll furnish you should you feel compelled to ask me. To keep things vague and concise, the hour-long episode I experienced of getting caught in a torrential downpour on Sunday night when I was out running for the first time with my new iPod was a fitting metaphor for the content of my life during the last week and a half.

Senioritis--or its equivalent to whatever-role-in-life-it-is-I-am-presently-filling--has been afflicting me for a couple months, but this has been the week that has vaulted me over the final wall of disenchantment separating my consciousness from the desire to just go home already. Not that I want to sound ungrateful, or unhappy, or fed up, because I'm not. Really. I'm still happy where I am, I'm still having a nominal modicum of fun, I'm still so grateful to be here and to be doing this, because this has been, and continues to be, an awesome experience in a whole mess of ways. But the honest, earnest facts are that it is late May, it's been raining here for a month straight, I have been spending the last 3 1/2 weeks sitting on my fat stores typing on this same loathsome machine, and I'm ready for a change of scenery. My only regret is that I'm afraid that all this will prevent me from enjoying this place and honoring this opportunity to the extent that I should be for my final month here. To put it more simply, I'm over this, and I feel bad about that.

But - 

30 days remain here, and no matter what has built up to this moment, the onus is on me to use those days to the fullest extent and to try to squeeze every last remaining drop of significance out of this year that I can. So, though I'm beginning my 30-day countdown, I'm still going to put my fun face on when I put both feet on the floor every morning and just do the best that I can. That's all any of us can do anyway.

All of that said, it's not like my life has been one festering hollow of despair lately. This weekend I had some visitors (as I have had almost non-stop since returning from Vienna), including my very own father, as well as Macedonian Fulbrighter Cassidy, whom I met in Thessaloniki last month.

My dad, who had been in Israel for the week-and-change prior to this past weekend, was supposed to come in late on Friday night, giving him roughly a day and a half to check out the true face and not just the fairytale I had been feeding him of my life here. For reasons stemming from the silly nature of air travel, he ended up having to fly from Tel Aviv to Vienna before coming back down thisaway, and unwisely chose Austrian Airlines to ferry him thus, as I could have advised him against. Lo and behold, this sham of a company delayed his flight out of Tel Aviv, causing him to miss his connection in Vienna, meaning he didn't get into Sofia until noon on Saturday, a mere 20 hours before he had to leave again.

So. We got to spend a little time touring the city (me giving my now-routine Eastern Half Tour) and hanging out, which was nice after going such a long time without us having done so. We played some music, went out to eat, went to the bar, etc. It was too short of a time to spend with him, but I'm going to be home in two months, so there's a silver lining in the inadequacy of that period of time.

While we were out seeing the city on Saturday, the oddest assortment of things kept happening. Cars kept driving by and honking, balloons flying from their antennae, and windows, and, seemingly, every other attachment point possible, people leaning out of those same windows and waving, screaming, and pointing. And at the Cathedral, I saw something I'd never seen before: Hundreds upon hundreds of Bulgarian kids, all decked out in the most ridiculous of dresses, suits, and tuxedos (Click this for a no-BS look at what we were seeing), all yelling, having what appeared to be a rager, bottles and all, in the middle of the day.

What we were witnessing, as it turns out, was graduation season in Bulgaria, these kids all graduating high school students heading to their proms and graduation banquets. As I later heard, it happens every year, and there is nothing else like it, as I will henceforth attest.

On the heels of my dad's exit came the entrance of temporary Skopje resident Cassidy. Her stay here was mostly uneventful, as I--will this sound familiar?--had work to do, though we did meet up with Georgi, who took us to a traditional Bulgarian restaurant, albeit one with questionable service (well, they did give us free brandy at the end of the night to make up for it). And we did get serenaded by a folk band in a manner broadly similar to the experience I had in Istanbul in January. But the next morning, she, too disappeared like a puff of smoke in the wind, and I was left solitary once more.

However, old Friend of the Fulbright Program Sanja, and her boyfriend, Adrian, were in town from Berlin, so last night, I ventured out of the battlefield that my apartment has become to go meet them for coffee and drinks and dinner. It was really terrific to catch up with them - they moved from Sofia a few months ago and I hadn't seen them since. Next year, though, they are moving to the Toronto area, and so are going to have the distinction of being the most local Foreigners I've Met This Year to me next year, presenting some interesting opportunities.

So -

It has not been the most fun week I've ever had, but there have mercifully been things to keep me going. Now it's time for me to go. I've been staring at this screen for--no lie--13 straight hours today, and my eyes hurt. But we'll be back together soon enough. So for now, enjoy everything that life throws you.

An American in Vienna, An Apocalypse in Bulgaria

Part 1: Travels

The thing I have probably enjoyed most about this year has been the degree of mobility afforded me by living in a part of the world with such small countries. In the States, you travel for a while, and you may or may not even be in a different state; the people still speak English; you can still walk down the road and get a pizza; your money is still green (or blue or orange or any of the other myriad colors in which legal tender in the US now comes). Traveling is just simpler, cheaper, and more accessible in the Balkans, where a completely alien culture is just a bus or plane ride away.

So to put the finishing touches on my œuvre of warmup travels that has presaged the biggest trip of my life, coming up next month (!), I took a long weekend to Austria to visit fellow Los Angeles Fulbrighter Andrea and to see Laura for a few days. Last month, I had the opportunity to be whisked through Vienna for an apocopated two-hour tour of the city (never mind that more than half of that time was spent on the U-bahn), but, that short time hardly having counted, I wanted another chance to visit for reals. So on Thursday, I made a little jump over a couple mountains and some other quasi-important stuff to go stay for a few days.

After meeting my two governesses at the airport, we scampered off to get some of the best ice cream known to man. No, seriously, hyperbole has no place in this blog, and my word here is bond. Finishing this nirvanic treat off well before we reached the safety of Andrea's apartment, we took the long S-bahn, U-bahn, and Strassenbahn ride to catch up a little and take in the Viennese scenery. Upon getting home, it being nearly 6 (my original flight having been cancelled, pushing my arrival back), we made some dinner, got settled in, and opted to chill out for the night.

The next day, us having crashed far earlier than the usual post-PM times to which I've grown accustomed, began bright and early, but with the added bonus of a decent night's sleep under our belts. We had a rather pleasant, leisurely breakfast (replete with tea and toast), and then headed out to be obnoxious American good little tourists about Vienna.

Our first stop was Schönbrunn, the summer home of the Habsburgs during their extravagant reign. To paint the most simplistic picture I can of the place: It is large, and the courtyard is huge, and it's got a lot of ornate stuff in it. Just look:

The fountain and gloriette up the hill

Looking back down, Vienna in the background

After reveling in this opulence for a few sunny hours, we made a brief foray through Karlsplatz, which included reflective, digital counters of all sorts of interesting items, like this one that was counting worldwide "armaments expenditures," AKA defense spending, since January 1st (in Euros):

€ 512 billion = A lot of money.

This being merely a transit point between where we had been and where we were going, we declined to linger, and made straightaway for Vienna's 1st District. In our jolly hours wandering around this, the city's oldest and most central part, we happened upon a large collection of Really Neat Stuff, including the Burgtheater, Vienna's most prestigious theater, the Rathaus--Vienna's city hall, all decked out for the imminent Life Ball, at which Bill Clinton was to give an address--the Austrian Parliament, the Volksgarten, and Hofburg Palace.

Burgtheater

Rathaus

Parliament, which begs the question of why our government buildings don't have stuff like this in attendance.

Hofburg Palace

While we were ogling these Old World wonders, having seen a great many cool things that day, evening fell and we moseyed back to Andrea's apartment, from which she scurried off to rehearsal, while Laura and I made dinner.

Exhausted from another long day, we feel asleep rather early that night, and awoke not-late-ish on Saturday, first to go to Yamm--a vegetarian pay-by-weight buffet that was nothing short of damned delicious--and then to go to Vienna's huge, historic cemetery, the Zentralfriedhof. As it spans more than 2 square kilometers, we didn't nearly have enough time to see all of it, but we did hit some of the more important parts. First up was the composers' section:

Beethoven

Monument to Mozart

Schubert

Johann Strauss

Brahms, in all his perplexed glory

Wolf

After that, we wandered over to what was nominally the "President's Section," though it mostly contained non-presidential, though otherwise notable, people:

Julius Raab - actually a president of Austria

Arnold Schönberg - not a president of Austria

Zemlinsky - also not a president, but cool anyway

Finally, we headed over to the Jewish section, which, to my surprise and sadness, was overgrown and in disrepair. Having somehow escaped the destruction that befell so many Jewish cemeteries during the Holocaust, it has clearly not been maintained, either by virtue of the interreds' families having permanently fled the former Reich, and so being unable to pay for maintenance of the graves, or simply through negligence on the part of the caretakers of the cemetery. Whatever the case, it was a sad and telling reminder of the recent history of the country.

Overgrown

Broken down

Needing to get home, as Andrea had a performance of Die Schöpfung to get to, we left this sobering site and took the Strassenbahn and U-Bahn back to Schwedenplatz, where, before heading home, we chilled out with some good drinks and casually overlooked the Danube.

Pretty

Andrea went running off, as had become her wont over the course of this trip (busy singer that she is and will continue to be), and Laura and I made dinner, as had become ours, and watched FC Bayern's heartbreaking loss play out to Chelsea FC on penalty kicks in the Champions' League finals.

The next day would be our last in Vienna, and while Andrea was at church, Laura and I went spazieren gehen in the Augarten, which happens, conveniently, to lie in the shadow of Andrea's apartment. It was a warm, pleasant Sunday morning, the idyllic setting of the park being broken only by the bizarre specters of antiaircraft towers, built by Hitler in the waning days of World War II, looming over the entire place.

Bizarre, ominous

After Andrea returned, we three went out for a last tour around Vienna before it was time to go, including a trip to a little outdoor restaurant where I got my first taste of Kalbbratwurst (it was delicious). I got back to Sofia late Sunday night, a different person from all that had transpired on the trip, but there was no time to ruminate on it; as Ben Folds almost said in what is undoubtedly one of the greatest songs ever written, life was calling, and wouldn't hold.

Part 2: The End of the World

I arrived back in Sofia to the welcome of fellow Fulbrighter Michael waiting at my apartment, as he had been staying the weekend in my absence. Going to bed far too late on Sunday night--the result of our lengthy discussion of my trip--we woke up Monday morning, I organized some notes, and just like that, with no time to pause and catch my breath, it was time to venture out into the world again and continue with my daily slog to fulfill the raison d'être for my continued presence here, the writing of my rapidly-ballooning thesis. So Monday passed in a whirlwind of writing and editing (Michael similarly being occupied, in his case by LSAT preparations), ukulele playing, and running.

Friend of the Fulbright Program Chris showed up in time for dinner, and after all was said and done for the evening, we three occupied my kitchen until the wee hours of the morning, me finally giving up on my work for the day as the conversation about the state of the American economy and worldwide financial policy became too interesting for me to resist. We continued in our heretofore fashion well past the hours when all but the most ardent of night-owls would be abed when the unexpected happened.

At first, I thought it was the vibration from the nearby elevator shaking the floor, but when it lasted far longer than a second, I knew this couldn't be the case. And as I nearly lost my balance from the lateral back-and-forth of my apartment up on the top floor of my Gd-be-praised-structurally-sound apartment building, ukulele still in hand, Tupac lyrics still hanging on my lips, I knew: We were having an earthquake, a big one.

My first instinct being to bolt for the doorway (the wisdom of which, as it turns out, is not entirely based on fact), I shouted, "Door!" and the other two followed me, huddling inside the doorjamb for what were 30 seconds of the 5 scariest cumulative minutes of my entire life. Finally, the shaking subsided, and we were left to slow our racing hearts and sort out what had just happened.

I came to Bulgaria fresh off of 5 years of living in Los Angeles, and I somehow managed to be out of town for both of the substantial earthquakes that struck during that period. I felt a couple of smaller ones when I was there, maybe 3.5's or 4's--just large enough to rattle some windows and shake some things around--but never before had I experienced any seismic activity as strong or lasting for quite as long as that which struck at 3 AM that morning. The official word coming out of Bulgaria's geological service is that it was a 5.6 quake, followed by two aftershocks at 4.6 and 4.3, both of which we felt and somewhat-less-fearfully reacted to.

We took it as a sign that our night should probably have ended, so we went to bed, waking the next morning to repeat our routine of LSAT preparation (Chris and Michael being identically occupied) and thesis writing. While out at the coffee shop into which we had settled, the apocalyptic phenomena continued to hound our lovely city of Sofia when large hail began to fall, leaving us to stare out the plate glass windows and wonder just what was going on and what it could mean. It made sense to me, in that moment, why ancient societies, without the benefit of scientific knowledge and skepticism, sometimes went so crazy over phenomena like these--ones that we now know to be unrelated and caused by natural forces--and assigned them supernatural, cosmic meaning. It was an interesting perspective-generating moment.

Today, on this rainy Wednesday, I've had much to do, and accomplished nearly all of it, so while I go to finish the rest, I'll leave you all to enjoy your lives, hopefully enriched by this, the tale of one of the more bizarre pages out of my own. Until next week, when we'll talk about a few visitors I'll be having this weekend, as well as the continuation of this less-fun-by-the-day process of academic pontification I find myself in the midst of, be happy and fulfilled.

This Mother's Day is Full of Post

Something I suppose it took me until about 9 months into my Bulgarian adventure to notice about Bulgarian society is that peace and quiet are not especially valued here, at least not in public.

This has been the week that I've dived headfirst into vast tracts of academic writing, and because I seem to have such a hard time working when I stay home, I've been seeking out good spots where I can sit for a few hours, churn out a couple of pages, and relax as much as possible while doing so. The problem in every place I've tried thus far has been that music seems to be a sine qua non of public space here. Coffee shops, restaurants, and the like have all been filled, to varying degrees of volume, with music, chatter, and/or commotion. I suppose there are some of you who can work perfectly well under these kinds of conditions--I remember that I used to work better with music on in the background--but now, I have the hardest time putting words together to form coherent thoughts and sentences together to form cogent arguments when my ear is being bombarded with what-have-you.

And thus has gone the week - a series of never-ending searches for a good space to work, followed, when a remotely satisfactory space has been found, by the exhaustive cudgeling of my brain in sometimes vain attempts to string thoughts together in manners that will somehow advance my thesis.

It's been an interesting experience, delving back into academic writing; it's something I haven't done in quite a while. But--resounding praises to the deity of your choice--I'm making satisfactory progress so far. The goal for this past week was to complete the introduction and Section 1 of this thesis, and come the neighborhood of midnight or 1 AM tonight, these will indeed be finished, albeit much longer than I had envisioned them being. But their unanticipated lengths, in some ways, are a blessing, as I was--and remain--unsure that I have enough material and will be able to say the same things in a sufficient number of different ways expound enough upon the critical subjects to flesh this thing out to the length I had originally envisioned. But I'll let you in on a little secret: I may not be actively striving to write in the concise manner that high school teachers upon college professors have tried to beat into me by virtue of pain and F's.

One scheduling matter that I had hoped to avoid, however, was working on the weekends. The way this process had come together in my mind prior to the actual moment when I sat down and dug in was that I would slowly grind through page after page, Monday through Friday, and so earn weekends that would be gloriously free and unfettered by self-imposed exile in order to get done the tasks that needed doing. Having failed to complete the week's requisite amount of work by Friday evening, however, I've had to work straight through this weekend, which isn't exactly how I had envisioned spending it. To unabashedly mix two wildly disparate pop culture references, I have met Lumbergh, and he is me.

On an unrelated note, wild pianos have appeared at various points in my neighborhood. There's currently an old, beat-up upright, encased in an inexplicable exoskeleton of styrofoam, sitting in the middle of the path in the Doctor's Garden--a four minute walk from my house--which I've taken the liberty of playing a few times as I've walked by. There's also a much nicer one, a quasi-in-tune 6-footer, sitting underground in the Sofia University metro station. This one, more-or-less constantly attended by surprisingly well-trained Sofians, has been a bit harder to gain access to, though I did manage to bang out a rendition of Tiny Dancer on Thursday. These have apparently been placed in preparation for the Subtitled Music Festival, which is taking place this week. Exactly what said Festival will constitute, I couldn't tell you, but I've certainly been reaping the early benefits of its publicity in the form of the little vain thrills that attend the public performance of anything. 

Nearly every time I've passed one of them by, there's been some mix of jazz, classical, and blues issuing therefrom. And as I've started seeing the same people over and over, the greater meaning and lesson to be taken from this episode has begun to dawn on me. It's a very real illustration of the power of music to bring people together in ways that otherwise wouldn't happen. The crowds stopping for minutes--or, in some cases, hours--at a time would have otherwise continued on their way, following the quotidian routines of their life, but for these accessible, public implements of music, and skilled hands to play them, in their midst. But, by virtue of this art and its accessibility, a great many Sofians have already been brought together--and more will surely follow suit--in a manner totally foreign to the norms of everyday life.

Looking to the next week: 

This coming week will be of a character broadly similar to the one of the week past. Two more sections of my thesis await being bullied into existence, after which their oppressor is going to take a long weekend in Vienna to visit fellow Los Angeles Fulbrighter Andrea before she, surely called to be one of the Elect, has the privilege of returning to the City of Angels on June 1st. 

Happy Mother's Day to All, including my own forebear, if she's reading this. I love you! Treat your moms well today. Stay tuned for more on climbing this Final Hill.

Happy (and Warm!) December

OK, so I lied about posting pictures yesterday. My schedule got a little backed up. I finished my grad school applications! I submitted the last one at 4 PM my time. Winning!

So happy December. Only 3 weeks (!) 'til Christmas! They have long since begun playing festive music in all the shops, and the lights have begun to go up. Christmas, it seems, is much the same in a lot of different places.

One of the things I was told to expect, being here in a former Eastern Bloc country on the other side of the world, was for weird things, the likes of which I wouldn't normally experience in the States, to happen. Tuesday played host to several.

I was in the library, reading through the current dissertation I'm working on, when a semi-distinguished-looking old man in a suit and scarf approached me in Bulgarian. It took me a second to work out what he was saying, so while I was hesitating, he promptly got frustrated and asked if I spoke French, to which I replied in the affirmative. He then proceeded to go off on a rapid scree in French, nearly speaking too fast for me to keep up, but I got that he was a professor of something-or-other and he wanted me to step outside with him. Deciding that he may have been someone important to my research, or at least someone I wouldn't have wanted to offend, I complied, walking up the street with him for a few blocks, he blowing through a long speech in rapid French, me still struggling to keep up, as I haven't spoken French on a regular basis in 6 years.

We got to a street corner when he turned directly to me and asked me for money. What? He said something about having left some important documents in his apartment, along with his phone and wallet, and asked me again for money for a taxi, not bothering to tell me how he got to be so far from his apartment that he needed a taxi in the first place. The situation having decidedly taken a turn for the bizarre, I pretended not to understand, but he repeated himself several more times until there could be no more pretending that I hadn't gotten the message. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of leva, offering him 3, at which he tsk'ed disapprovingly, snatched said leva out of my hand, and took off up the street, never to be seen again (or so I presume). I have been asked for change by the homeless before (I am from Los Angeles, after all), but never before have I been asked by bilingual professors of something-or-other who somehow found their way into a secured library.

Upon returning, still in a daze from the experience, I idly began chatting with one of the women who work at the library. After a few pleasantries and discussions of books I was reading, she stopped and asked me where I was from. When I replied that I was from the States, she gasped and proceeded to tell me that she thought I was Bulgarian. Now, I'll admit to having improved my Bulgarian, and to being momentarily flattered that someone would be so confused, but this was quite patently an exaggeration. The chances that anyone on the street would confuse me with a native speaker after any sort of substantial conversation lie somewhere between laughable and nonexistent. Nevertheless, she then gave a speech to several of the other women about how I was an American, and how uproariously funny it was that she thought I was a Bulgarian. There may, quite possibly, have been alcohol involved at some point. (Not on my part, for once)

This collection of events, having enveloped me in quick succession, left me with a most peculiar feeling the rest of the day. But, as I am growing increasingly fond of saying - This is Bulgaria.

Today was inexplicably warm. So much so, in fact, that I got hungry around lunchtime and went up the street for some pizza sans jacket. It was one of those warm days after a string of cold ones that makes one's heart, if one is sufficiently susceptible to the weather, fill up and makes one want to be silly. So today was silly. But it was nice. My money is on this being the last day it gets into the 50's for several months.

...

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.