This Post is Not Entitled "The Final Countdown"

But it started to hit me this week that I have, as of yesterday, two weeks left in Bulgaria. 13 days from now, I will be leaving this good land.

This will be the last post of this blog's typical quotidian, mundane nature before I turn it over to my alter ego, who, despite remaining nameless, specializes in sentimental and poetic writing.

Anyway, yes, this was my third-to-last week here in this wild, wonderful land so recently behind the Iron Curtain, and I've started to realize how much I'm going to miss it. It has been such an enormous year in terms of, well, everything, and that isn't something I will ever be able to forget.

The first draft of my thesis is done, and, as of Friday, reorganized into a coherent narrative that builds a case for my findings in a logical, step-by-step manner. This next week I will rewrite, consolidate, and edit down, leaving four days in my final week for proofreading before I hand it in on the 29th, after which I will enjoy one last day in Sofia before departing the next day for the start of my Epic Trip of the Century.

This, I suppose, would be the most opportune place to tell you about the trip that I've been hinting at for months. From Sofia, I depart for Skopje, Macedonia on the 30th of June, following which I will spend the next five weeks traveling through Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Spain, culminating with a few days in Madrid, after which I will fly to my Urheimat of Pennsylvania and officially end my Great European Year Abroad.

I will be relying on nothing more than buses, trains, carpools, Couchsurfers, hostels, family friends, a small amount of cash in my pocket, a sizeable backpack on my back, my ukulele, a couple years of education in foreign languages, and the wits in my head to survive as I traverse and explore, in all facets of its great, exotic mystery, the boondoggle that is the European Continent. This will be a trip more expansive and ambitious than any I have ever undertaken in my life, but though it comes with a certain amount of risk, I am maybe-a-hair-inordinately eager to put myself to the test, just as a final proof that I can survive out there in the world. In that respect, this year could be seen as a prelude to that test, but that view would be injudicious to the enrichment and experiences I've had here and the ones I will have out there. This year abroad has been more than just a test - it has been a portal, a crucible, an adventure; so will the next seven weeks be.

I always get sentimental around this time of year, with lots of things drawing to a close, which inevitably means I have to say goodbye to certain people and things. But I'll try to save that sentimentality for the coming two weeks. These last four posts will be so replete with saccharine platitudes, they will give you a headache.

For now, my feelings extend little past overwhelming happiness to have had an entire free weekend to relax and breathe a little. Friday, I met Irena, Fulbrighter Melissa, and her friend Diana in the Center to participate in that quintessence of Bulgarian social culture, lounging in a streetside café at the culmination of the workday in the early evening, drinks and snacks at hand, unwinding in pleasant company. Yesterday, friend of the Fulbright Program Georgi was in town from Pleven, and we repeated in largely similar fashion. 

Today has been a day of reading (my current pursuit being Stephen Hawking's classic A Brief History of Time) and, most enjoyably, picking up my drumsticks and beginning the long process of getting my hands in shape suitable to come out of retirement from competition, which I will do in September. I also went out onto Vitosha Blvd. for the last time and busked, turning my normal hour into a 100-minute barnburner, figuring, as it was my last time, that I would pull out all the stops, and the people of Sofia rewarded me well for it. It was even--dare I say it?--a little fun.

The result of these two days of by-now-seemingly-gratuitous abstention from work has been a vastly more pleasant weekend than any I've had in a while. I needed it, and it's been nice to have a little time to enjoy this place like I used to before I got busy in January. Rediscovering how pleasant the city is--especially in the warm weather, which has been accompanied by a general uplift in the collective mood of the people here--I realized that I really am going to miss it, the people, the things - but like I said, that's a topic for the next few posts.

It has been really great and even intermittently therapeutic to be able to talk about my days on this site. If you've stuck with me for the entire year, wandered off and come back, or even been a latecomer to this blog, I am honored to have your readership, especially considering the frequently unexciting nature of my day-to-day, which has, of course, translated to frequently unexciting content on this site. To be quite honest, I wasn't entirely sure I would either have the discipline or the readership to support a year-long travel blog, but I'm glad I made the commitment to do this. It's been a place where I've been able to work out some things for myself, as well as a place to record events I might otherwise have forgotten, so that, in some distant point in the future, I might stumble back across it and be that much more able to lucidly Remember When.

It's given me a nice dose of perspective to be able to go back and, with the benefit of distance and hindsight, recall moments from this tremendous year abroad, how they made me feel at the time, and compare those feelings to the ones I have now, now that the year is mostly behind me. I've certainly done a lot of changing these last 10-odd months, and a lot of things that once seemed alien to me are now commonplace, just as my life has changed in numerous ways.

But, before we go down that road, I'll leave you to your pleasant Father's Days, and wish my own Father a very happy one, accompanied by my love. I'll be back in a few days to begin wrapping up this wild, startling, totally unexpected but gratifying and momentous year.

Welcome to June

It's fairly incredible and unbelievable that it is already the third of June. June has always been a month that has taken me by surprise, as it usually comes on the heels--or in the midst--of some manic attempt to complete something or somethings. It is the end of the school year, the choral season, the spring. This year, it is the end of my stay in Bulgaria.

As a result of all of these, I'm usually exhausted by the time this month rolls around, and it, despite my lack of foresight in anticipation thereof, that is always welcome, as it means the summer--which typically equates to a glorious period of rest and fun--is right around the corner. Which is now the case.

I have one more week, plus a couple of fudge days during the next, to finish drafting my thesis. A good thing, too, because I'm seriously starting to question my ability to write anything more at all. I have never applied myself to an academic venture of this magnitude before, and I'm worn out. This process has imbued me with the perspective to be flabbergasted by the reality that there are thousands of people out there who do this every spring, working under stricter deadlines than I, with more in their schedules.

Sporadically Diligently working on this demonic leviathan, however, has left me few opportunities to have fun. My attention span being shorter than is probably conducive to a 24-year-old male in need of some efficient work periods producing a paper of this magnitude in a timely fashion, my work days tend to get spaced out over a period of 12 hours or more, not entirely all of which is actually spent on work. This phenomenon tends to get in the way of having free chunks of time for getting out and doing fun stuff.

The good thing is, though, that today I got such a day, as I decided to leave my work for tonight--it remains to be done--and to just get out and relax. This morning I met Irena, committed the heinously indulgent crime of buying ice cream at 10:30 AM, busked out on Vitosha Blvd. for about an hour, went to a cafe, tried in vain to organize my notes so I could begin writing section 9, actually organized my notes, began section 9, and then chilled out with fellow Sofian Fulbrighter Sophia and her friend Adrienne for a couple hours to commemorate the 45 minutes of real work I had done earlier in the day.

And a good day it was for it, too, as this is the first day it hasn't rained (though four hours remain, I suppose, in which precipitation that would force me to eat my words could ensue) in, no lie, more than a month. I wore shorts today, and sat in the sun for awhile. It was really--really!--nice.

But as a result of this relative loafing, I'm left with many pages to write tonight, so I will bid you adieu and goodbye. Until next week, when, hopefully, I will be bursting with the news that my first draft is complete. Here's to hope.

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.

Pause

Today, on this meteorologically erratic, rainy-sunny-delugeal-sun-setting-over-peacefully-parting-clouds day, I will make soup with the matzah remaining from Passover, call home, listen to the Phillies game, and take a breath.

It has been a disjointed week. I'm caught in the limbo of the middle ground between trying to finish the fieldwork component of my research, a quick trip to Munich and Vienna, and a trip home to the States on Friday. The week past, and the one coming, are no-man's-land, flexible time whose use I have not yet determined, yet ganz wertvoll; I feel the time I have left in this place, and thus, the time to fulfill my purpose here, inexorably slipping away, grain by grain.

This past week, and this next one, are planless - with much to be done, full of specific tasks to be accomplished, but utterly lacking those sine quibus non of all constructive progress: definitive order, clear organization, engaged motivation to use them to their fullest.

This is what it is to drift.

I could write about the weather which greeted me upon my return to Sofia on Friday, about how the rainy season is here in full force, evidenced by sometimes-torrential downpours and intermittent hailstorms mixed thereinto. I could write about going out for pizza and beer last night with some friends to celebrate the end of Passover and the subsequent reintroduction of leavened breads and wheat products to my diet. I could write about later being swept into a beautiful Easter vigil at an Orthodox church, being given candles, witnessing the entirety of the musical ceremony, congregating with hundreds of other churchgoers as the crucifix was paraded around the church, being subsumed into the thrice-completed procession around the church, and walking home at 1 AM, accompanied on the streets by hundreds of Sofians, all bearing lit candles, keeping them lit the entire way back to their homes.

I could write about my excitement at my impending excursion back to the States to witness my brother get married, see old friends, and be able to enjoy the pleasures of home without the hindrance of a stressful purpose for being there, in contrast to my last trip home. I could write about my anxiousness to finish my research and start writing my thesis, my soon-to-be-frenzied drive to move towards that final step in my work here, the completion of that process being the golden key that will unlock the gateway to what promises to be the best summer of my life. I could write about all the fun things, still prospective, that lie on the horizon, waiting first to be planned, and then realized, over the course of my final two months here.

But today, and for this I sincerely apologize, I simply and utterly lack the inclination to do so. Today I would much rather simply check in with you, my magnanimous readership, tell you that I'm surviving, drop hints about all the exciting things that lie ahead, and call it a day. The internal battle to procure a high-quality, detailed account of this particular episode in my life is one from which I will have to accept a moral victory, in the fact of the realization of this post, alone.

Just know that things are the same as they never were, and that I will see you very soon. Good night.

Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, und der Tag hat sich geneiget.

Forging Ahead, Comfort Zones, Changes

It's been another one of those weeks.

It all started on Thursday. Since getting back from Berlin, I had been watching videos of some of the groups that performed at the 2010 Koprivshtitsa Folklore Festival as part of my research. The idea is that by watching performances of the pertinent types of music, I can get a feel (and make objective qualifications) of the state of folklore today, which is, of course, essential to the comparative analysis I'm doing. So, I spent the beginning of another week sitting in the library at BAN, watching videos, making transcriptions, and taking notes.

But there was only enough material to last a couple of days, so I finally made my way, along with my adviser, over to the archives of the Institute of Art Studies, where I first had to get set up. Which meant having to explain myself and ask for help. Not typically a problem for me anymore, except:

My adviser understands English fairly well, but is uncomfortable speaking it, which is more or less the same relationship I have with Bulgarian, except I think that her understanding of my mother tongue is better than mine of hers. So our conversations tend to be in Bulgarian - simple Bulgarian, unable as I am to understand or articulate anything complex. These conversations tend to make me nervous, as I will admit to being a bit intimidated by trying to keep up semi-academic discussions in a language not my own. 

However, we've hit on more or less an ideal solution. We typically communicate by email, as both of us are entirely competent readers of each other's languages, provided academic or overly floral registers have been avoided. She writes me in Bulgarian, I respond in English, and we understand each other satisfactorily. This works just fine, unless there are occasions when face-to-face contact is a necessity.

Like Thursday. As we went to the archives to get set up, I was my typically nervous self, straining to make out enough words per sentence to put together its basic meaning. I gamely struggled through for close to an hour, and when we got there, we met the ladies who would be setting me up with my materials. To my sinking realization, they possessed the same knowledge of English as my adviser, so I was forced to continue straining for comprehension--not having had a chance to release the cumulative weight of the previous hour--as we all sat in the listening room and discussed a bit of this and a bit of that. 

I will confess to becoming more and more stressed out by the minute. It's exhausting, and nerve-wracking, trying to prove that you aren't a simpleton to three completely-at-ease speakers within an environment that's entirely comfortable for them, speaking their native language. In a moment of self-awareness, I caught myself huddled up against my chair, making myself as invisible as possible, trying to disappear from the room, and I realized I was more on edge than I had thought.

But something changed when my adviser and one of the assistants left the room and it came down to me speaking one-on-one with the other. As we chatted about life and ourselves--and the pace of the conversation slowed--I relaxed, and to my surprise, found myself understanding more and searching for words less. It made me realize, though it may seem self-evident, that the further inside your comfort zone you are, the better you tend to think. In this case, that meant being able to speak a language with far more ease.

It was a trying experience, but ultimately a valuable one. For most of the year, the lingua franca between myself and the Bulgarian interlocutors with whom I've had extended conversations has usually been English, as in most cases, their English has been better than my Bulgarian. It has certainly been that way as I've spoken to the younger generation of Bulgarians, as knowledge of English is near-universal in schoolchildren in this largest and richest of cities in this country. 

But it was rewarding to have the roles finally be reversed, for the others to have to depend upon my knowledge of their tongue. And it was instructive to see how being within or without one's comfort zone can directly affect one's ability to--broadly--recall information and--specifically--to speak a foreign language. It's now more apparent to me than ever that the best thing I can do for myself is simply to speak this language with others as much as I can in order to expand that particular comfort zone.

To that end, I went today to Sofia's weekly conversation swap, which was a great chance to work my Bulgarian out with people who are there for express purpose of helping foreigners like me work their Bulgarian out, clause by halting clause. And it actually went pretty well, warmed up as I had been from two previous days of racking my brains for the right words to say. The part I was most pleasantly surprised by was my ability to listen and to comprehend meaning. Today was the most successful day I've had in that regard, I think, so it's something to build on.

Today happened to be a fairly representative sample of my week, actually - though I didn't do any research, I spent time speaking Bulgarian, getting things together at home, and going out to the Sofia University metro station--like I've been doing every day this week--and busking with my ukulele, mostly just for the sheer fun of it. I've been playing songs like this, this, this, and this. It's really been quite fun, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call it lucrative, I have managed to put away a (very) little traveling cash.

The only thing diminishing the fun of these jocular one-man jam sessions has been the weather. Yes, sadly, after a semi-pleasant week, capped off by a glorious Thursday, winter, in its death throes, has returned to strike one final blow at the collective morale of the residents of this fine city. If the forecasts are to be believed, it's actually going to snow tomorrow--a fine April Fool's prank if there ever was one--before the climate finally relents for good and Spring begins in earnest. But if it has to happen, it couldn't come at a better time, because:

Fresh off of one international Fulbright conference, I'm headed to another tomorrow, this one in Thessaloniki, Greece. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited, as this will be my first time in Greece, a country which necessitates no reminders of its awesomeness. This conference, well placed in the Springtime, before tourist season picks up, will have me spending 5 days--along with my Bulgarian Fulbright companions Fred and Jamie--in a city with more history than any I've ever been in. Ridiculous? A bit. Fortunate? I am.

So I'll be back in a week with pictures of Greece. Get excited. Until then, Stay Classy.

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!

In Which I Come Crawling Back from the Wars

Hello again.

Nothing I could possibly say herein would serve as ample justification for a month-and-a-half-long absence. But, if it please the court, I'll tell you my story and let history be my judge.

What seems like an eternity ago (the date actually being November 1st), I got back from a trip to Romania and began in earnest the process of applying to grad schools. I was nervous, but--perhaps in greater measure--tragically overworked in completing what would seem to be the simple tasks of filling out electronic applications, writing and editing résumés and personal statements, selecting and editing footage of myself conducting, and jumping through the hoops requisite to making it all official. These tasks, however, proved to be not-quite-so-simple, and I worked, with ever-increasing degrees of desperation, right up until my deadlines, most of which fell on December 1st.

Having accomplished these surprisingly Herculean tasks--in quintuplicate--I was pretty exhausted, but, having partially neglected my responsibilities to my country grant to get them done, I worked more or less feverishly over the course of the next two weeks to make up the lost ground and finish the calendar year strongly. Luckily, I did, and had a nice two-week break to recuperate, grad school applications having receded, more or less, from my consciousness.

Then, I returned to Bulgaria and Real Life caught up with me. I learned about auditions at Westminster Choir College and Yale in quick succession, and was treated to the first Sinking Feeling In My Stomach in a while when I realized that they were scheduled for the same day, February 27th. Working as best I could to resolve the conflict, I got Westminster to reschedule me to February 3rd, but by the time that particular flurry of correspondence resolved the situation, it was January 18th, leaving me two weeks to prepare two movements of Brahms' Requiem, coax my dormant knowledge of music theory and my aural skills out of their deep hibernation, learn to play piano, study up on said work, and book a flight back to the States. But all of these I did as I continued to put in my hours at the library.

Given this cornucopia of Things To Be Done, I didn't have time to breathe, let alone sleep. Those two weeks were among the most manic of my life, but, somehow, some way, I managed to cram an amount of productivity into them that would make the heads of the staunchest proponents of the Big Bang Theory spin. And just like that, without a single chance to pause and decide if what I was doing was just mostly or completely nuts, I was off on a plane back to the States.

One of the things I've been debating as I've been planning out this humblest of returns to you, my indulgent and forgiving readership, is how much to actually say about my time back in the States. This is a travel blog, after all, and it, as sure as Barbra Streisand is both a Grammy Award-winning music goddess and a #1 club hit, isn't named An American in America. That would be gratuitous and silly.

So forgive me, should you find it necessary to do so, for choosing the Middle Way of going about this: I'll leave you with just enough detail to give you an idea of how my month went, but, as I've already rehashed nearly every moment of every day of it, either to myself or to others, I'll avoid doing so here. If you're really dying for a blow-by-blow, appeal to me via some medium other than this one, and I promise, I'll oblige you.

So...I landed on a Wednesday night; 36 hours later, I was driving to my first audition. (Driving, in and of itself, was strange. It took the end of my six-month vacation from driving a car to realize how incredibly pleasant it has been not to have been concerned with the operation, maintenance, or--most of all--costs thereof.) The Westminster audition would turn out to be a semi-grueling, all-day affair, one which tested my level of preparation. But despite the short amount of time I had had to prepare for it, it went mostly well, and I came away feeling good about what I had done, all things considered.

If you thought I was in panic mode following my abrupt decision to fly home and audition two weeks hence, imagine my state of mind, five days after that particular decision, when I found out I had also secured an audition at the University of North Texas. The kicker in this scenario? This audition was scheduled for three days after the one at Westminster, though I managed to stretch that three to five after supplications to the head of their program. But the inadequate amount of time I had to prepare for my first audition forced me to put off preparing for the second until the first was finished. So when that day had come and gone, I switched gears to spend the next three days cramming every bit of knowledge and music into my head that I could.

For those of you who aren't conductors, two weeks--let alone three days--is a woefully inadequate amount of time to prepare the amount of music that these fine institutions required of their auditioners. Without going too much into the process, it takes a while to internalize said amount to the point where one can hear errors in its rendition, and as dedicated as I was in feverishly trying to do so, I came in feeling moderately underprepared for the first audition and horrifically underprepared for the second.

The day before my audition at UNT, I flew to Dallas, and I stayed with some friends of my mom, who, fortuitously, live quite close to its campus. When they dropped me off the morning of the audition, I had no idea what to expect. As it would turn out, the process there was much lower-impact than the one at Westminster had been: I sat in on a lesson, had a relatively brief interview, went out to lunch, sat in on choir rehearsal, and rehearsed the choir through my two quite-underprepared pieces. That was that, and, another audition down, I celebrated that night with my buddy Adam, whom I hadn't seen in more than a year.

I flew back to Philadelphia the next day, and the day after that, I began preparing for the big one - Yale.

Yale happened to be Choice Numero Uno on my list, and, fittingly, presented the most extensive and challenging audition. In addition to the usual litany of tests--theory and aural skills, sight-reading, and the like--we had to dictate a Bach chorale, identify unmarked scores, sight-read an open-score four-part Bach chorale in c-clefs, conduct a movement of Carmina Burana, and prepare six movements of Messiah. With two and a half weeks to prepare, I had my work cut out for me.

But Yale boasts by far the best reputation and the highest-quality education of the bunch, and, perhaps even more desirable, a guaranteed full scholarship to all music students, so it had been my primary target from Day One of this process. With great tribulation comes great reward, and boy, was I in for some tribulation.

I spent nearly every day of those two and a half weeks locked inside one practice room or another (as well as living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, hotel rooms, libraries, and even, once, a car), feverishly preparing music, practicing my score reading, scribbling notes onto manuscript paper, reading up on the history of Messiah, settling on bowings and marking them into my score, and all the other hurried actions of an aspiring conductor with a less-than-adequate amount of time to prepare for the biggest audition of his life.

I can honestly say I have never worked on something so hard.

But all that disciplined work, borne out of a greater hunger--a greater desire to achieve--than any I had ever experienced, changed me, much in the same way that spending this year abroad has, and continues to, change me. Somewhere along the way, I was transformed--through the work itself--into something I have always desired to be - disciplined; a winner; the type of person you see on ESPN who, out of sheer will to win and drive to succeed, puts themself through all kinds of hell to get what they want.

I have never been that. I have never been the most disciplined or the hardest worker. But the last month, and especially those two and a half weeks leading up to the Yale audition, turned me, out of sheer necessity, into the hungry striver with the superhuman will to achieve. It was one of the first times in my life that I had wanted so badly to succeed that I made myself miserable in the pursuit. And as I put in the hours, day after day, and began to look back on the body of work to which I had applied myself, I began to feel more strong and capable and successful than I ever had before. I had finally begun proving to myself that I could be focused, and disciplined, and relentless in pursuit of something. I began to feel like I could do anything. It was intoxicating.

So I came to the audition prepared as best I could be, given the sub-preferable amount of time to be so. Things went about as well as could be expected (though made interesting by the spacing of my appointments between 8:30 AM, 4:15 PM, and 9:50 PM, leaving me lots of down time to psyche myself out), I had a great experience talking to the other auditioners and some of the current students, and when it was all over, a huge sense of relief washed over me that--finally!--my whirlwind 4-months-or-so were over.

And so, I returned to Pennsylvania with a huge weight lifted off my shoulder, simultaneously feeling empowered by the sense that comes from climbing a mountain you didn't think possible. And though I flew back to Bulgaria (and to Laura, who was waiting for me at the airport) the next day, a part of my mind lingered on the previous month, decompressing and sifting through everything I hadn't had the time to think about at the time it was happening. And a few days later, I learned that all that miserable, relentless work had paid off.

I got in.

I'm going to Yale in the Fall.

Since being back, I've taken a little time to celebrate, despite being preoccupied by the need to get back to my research. This week, I've been transitioning back into library work, which will soon give way to the next leg of my research - analyzing recorded material in the library's Archives. I'll go into more detail in my next post as the situation develops.

Overall, it has been an exhausting couple of months, but things are beginning to get back to normal here. My goal for my last four months in Bulgaria (can you believe it?) are simply to finish my research and get my thesis written. To accompany that, I'm delving back into my effort to learn this boondoggle of a language, I've gotten back to my workout routine, and here I am, reaching back out to all of you after my heretofore hibernation.

While we're on the subject of Spring Thaws, let me wish everyone a very belated честита Баба Марта (literally, Grandmother March, as this month, with its wild swings in weather and temperament, is personified by a cranky geriatric). The day I flew back, March 1, was the traditional beginning of Spring here in Bulgaria, and to celebrate Nature's rebirth, Bulgarians wear мартеници (martenitsi), little bracelets of red and white, of which I've received two from a couple of friends.

Ever onward; ever upward. My tale thus completed, let me bow respectfully from the room and leave you to contemplate all herein. But I'll see you very soon.