My First Day in Sofia, Bulgaria

Arriving at the Central Bus Station

I almost felt as if I was at the Denver, Colorado airport

with these white-capped "mountain" roofs

My couchsurfing host Kamilla had given me excellent directions in advance for finding my way from the bus station to her place.  Bulgarians on the tram showed me how to pay and made sure I didn't miss my stop.  When I got to Kamilla's place though, no one answered the bell.  While I had stored most of my luggage, I brought one suitcase into town with enough stuff to get through a couple of days. Hmmm, if she wasn't home, I would need to take my suitcase with me sightseeing that day.  No problem. I could do that. I'm not one to let that slow me down.

A couple of Bulgarian ladies noticed me standing there and asked me what I needed.  When I told them the situation, and that I was ready to go sightseeing, they insisted on walking me the one kilometer or so to what they felt was most important for me to see. I couldn't believe the time they gave me! And I found that friendly attitude all day long.  Bulgarians made me feel incredibly welcome. My sidewalk hostesses said I needed to start with a couple churches.

This giant egg was opposite

the Russian church.

The sign says,

"This is the egg of happiness.

Touch the egg and make a wish."

Church of St. Nicholas the Miracle Maker,

a Russian Orthodox Church,

built on the site of a mosque.

It was started in 1907 to pacify a Russian diplomat

who refused to attend Bulgarian Orthodox services.

I would have just reposted the diplomat somewhere else,

but then, Sofia wouldn't have this gorgeous church today.

The outside has been lovingly restored
by a Russian government

no longer threatened by religion.

The inside,
full of candles
and the damage candle smoke can do,

is much darker and mystical.

 Upon entering the church,

I returned to an intuition I often have

when I encounter Russian culture:

a sense that an American

can never completely understand

"strange Russian soul."

A beautiful side view.

This church was just down the street

from the most visited church in Sofia.

I was glad I had taught myself

how to read and pronounce

the Cyrillic alphabet about 20 years ago.

I could get a sense of what this sign said:

something like Moscow House in Sofia.

The Russian Embassy?

This is the most visited church

in Sofia, Bulgaria:

the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

built to honor the Russian soldiers who liberated Bulgaria

from the Ottoman Empire.

Gee, no wonder Bulgaria and Russia

have always been so tight.

Beautiful iron scroll work outside the church.

A mosaic of Jesus just outside the front door.

And on the other side of the front door,

a mosaic of St. Sophia and her three daughters:

Faith, Hope, and Charity.

I tagged along with a tour group to listen to a description of the church.  It was very beautiful and I could have enjoyed the church even more if someone had turned the lights on.  The tour guide said that her company had asked the Bulgarians many, many times to light the inside of the church (it has sublime chandeliers waiting to do just that) but the Bulgarians had never been willing to turn on the lights due to the costs.  She said, "tourists would be willing to pay, no problem, just to see it.  That didn't sway the authorities. They weren't going to charge people even one lev to enter a church."

I agree with the tour guide.  It would be as if a Bulgarian had traveled halfway across the world to see the Jefferson and Lincoln monuments and Americans didn't bother to honor their interest by lighting them at night.  I suggest putting the utility costs in the Bulgarian national budget if Bulgaria doesn't want to charge tourists.  Many people only have one day to get a sense of the country - why not make the opportunity to tell the Bulgarian story count?

It was at this church that I learned the single most impressive fact about Bulgarians: during centuries of Ottoman rule, a majority of them resisted conversion and remained Orthodox Christians.  That attests to a level of stubbornness and will that is truly uncommon.  People who can do that, can do anything.

This lion statue

is a part of a memorial

to unknown soldiers

who have fought on behalf of Bulgaria

through the years.

It's fairly recent,

having been put here in the early 1980s.

Next to the cathedral

was the second most ancient church

in Bulgaria: the Hagia Sophia

(in English, St. Sophia's Church)

During Ottoman times,

it had been turned into a mosque

and minarets were added.

I went into St. Sophia's church, and it just so happened a service was in progress.  I slipped into a back seat and listened.  It was magical.  The parishioners were so devout they were standing and carrying flowers.  There were unseen someones, (monks? a choir?) chanting an unbelievably beautiful liturgy.  I could not believe my luck to get to see and hear this. I sat down, not being quite as devout as all those standing, and also worshiping outside of my own Christian tradition so I could beg off as not knowing when to stand, and also being a tourist rolling a suitcase all over Sofia in need of a little rest. Wow, that chant was magnificent!

All of a sudden, the service seemed to be over and the standing parishioners parted.  Many people up front seemed to be crying.  Could they have been that moved by the service? I marveled to myself about Eastern mysticism that I could never quite completely understand.

Then I saw what the parishioners had been standing around with their flowers.  A casket! And a photo of the departed! OMG, I've CRASHED somebody's funeral. I wheeled my suitcase, as quietly as one can wheel a suitcase over cobblestones, back out the front door.

It's one thing to see a church, but this time, in my own boorish fashion, I saw an ancient church in use.  Even with my unexpected need to skedaddle, I felt deeply grateful to have heard and seen what I did. Later a Bulgarian told me that only very important people would get to have their funeral in that church. I licked my wounds in a nearby park before grabbing my suitcase and "rolling on."

My goal was the Happy Bar and Grill, closer to the center, which I remembered from my Prague chaplain's blog as a place he had eaten. As I was heading there, I heard someone behind me call my name. I didn't know a soul in Bulgaria.  I turned around and there was Kamilla, fresh from the doctor's office and the tourist office where she had stopped to get some literature about Bulgaria to share with me. She had recognized me on the street!

Kamilla was an incredibly thoughtful hostess

to have provided all of this literature.

We enjoyed really delicious roasted vegetables

at our outdoor cafe.

When I had made a comment earlier

to a Bulgarian saying I had heard

about the miniskirts at Happy Bar & Grill,

the lady said, 

"Hey, it's a free country!"

Why, yes, yes it is.

  Kind of gave me shivers when she said it.

I loved the contrast of the

Happy Bar & Grill

miniskirts with a

a priest in ancient garb

waiting to cross the street.

After lunch, we went back to Kamilla's apartment and I opened my suitcase to discover I had grabbed the wrong one.  This one was filled with books.  So I had spent my day wheeling a suitcase full of books all over Sofia. Sigh.

I went back to the bus station and traded suitcases.  When the luggage attendant discovered that I could say "thank you" in Russian, she immediately dropped her demand that I pay for the privilege of changing out my suitcases. Man, these Bulgarians and Russians are tight.

I'll continue with my first evening in Bulgaria in my next post.

Drivers and Passengers without Borders

As an American, one of the things that impresses me about Europe is the amount of political risk-taking the average European is willing to step up and try as a citizen of the EU.  To tinker with elements of government as basic as currency, and border controls, and levels of local vs. continental control requires a level of shared vision that I find extraordinary in such a compressed space of time. These people are really taking thoughtful yet exciting risks with their governance.

I look at the resistance to change in reforming an outrageously dysfunctional element of American society,  health care, and then compare that to European real and actual political risk-taking and marvel at what they get done.  I celebrate one of the EU reforms that I believe Europeans cherish:  the right to cross country borders within the EU without inspection or stopping. It completely serves the people's interest.

Our travel itinerary to Sofia

included crossing the borders of

Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria.

The ability to just drive through the border

stopped when we reached Serbia.

Serbia is not a member of the EU.

 When you are here in Europe,

not being a member of the EU

seems like you and your fellow citizens

have lower class status.

Everyone piles out of the bus

while we go through Serbian border controls.

It was definitely a pain to stop

when everywhere else

the people's representatives

have negotiated speed.

That's how it feels and looks to an American.  I'm interested if it appears the same to Europeans.  Do Europeans without membership in the EU get treated as second-class citizens? Do they feel like second-class citizens? Do those of you who are Europeans cherish this right to cross borders as much as I think you do? What other reforms do you cherish?

Bulgarian Beauties

 My beautiful

young couchsurfing hostess

Kamilla

Somewhere between Prague and Sophia, the look of the people changed.  I don't know where that line was because we probably crossed it in the dark in the middle of the night.  The Bulgarians have a slavic alphabet, but the people no longer look Slavic. While there are exceptions, it's a beauty with a darker coloring.  Here are some of the beauties I saw in Sophia.

Two young women at the movies

A young woman

at the Central Bus Station

My server for dinner one night,

Christina

A beautiful Bulgarian shopkeeper.

If you've ever worked in retail,

did you do it in heels like these?

Not me! I admired her polish.

Sex and the City 2 in Sofia

Divas in the Desert

On a cold, rainy, and gray day in a cold and rainy capital city, I slipped into a glittering new shopping mall to taste a specific Bulgarian dish I had wanted to try before leaving Sofia.  The plan for the day had been to take a day trip to the Rila Monastery, a spot so mystical that many Bulgarians consider it the spiritual home of all Bulgarian people.  Too rainy, too wet.

As I walked by the movie theatre, I realized "Sex and the City 2" was out! A big girl's night out for Prague expats was planned by the Internations social media site and I was going to miss it.  My daughters and I had dressed up to the nines for the premiere of "The Devil Wears Prada."  It would have been fun to join "the ladies" and dress up for SATC2 premiere night in Prague.

I love being spontaneous and seeing a movie at the last minute.  Seriously, as a single parent, being spontaneous was so out-of-the question, I no longer thought of myself as spontaneous. If you're in the last years of raising children, comfort yourself with the thought that even if they leave, you will soon be free to do whatever the heck you want.  It feels great. 

I was never more proud to be an American woman than when I sat in that matinee with five other Bulgarian ladies waiting out the rain.  Besides being enormous fun, the film is so moving, I found myself tearing up at several spots during the movie.  It was all I could do to restrain myself from a raised fist of joy and solidarity!  That just wouldn't do though, would it? The SATC gals would be more likely to support each other with air-kisses.

"Sex and the City 2" is a love letter from American women to all of the females on the planet. I'm so proud of my culture for sending out this glorious message of empowerment and pleasure in being a woman. What's exciting is that someday the women of the world will all be writing us back!  What an exciting time to be alive and watch the changes that happen as half the people on the planet wake up and realize their possibilities.

Safely in Sofia

Good morning from Sofia, Bulgaria! What a fantastic, comfortable, and easy bus trip that was. There was so much to look at.  It was the first time I was in Moravia, Czech Republic. I loved seeing all of this beautiful wine country.  The bus drove through Brno, and I remarked to my bus companion "wow, so many panalaks (Communist working housing that looks like an American housing project). It's too bad."  "I don't see them that way," she said. "to me, it's normal."

I had always heard that Bratislava was a Communist architecture monstrosity, but it didn't look so bad as we drove through it.  My Slovakian companion showed me the historic castle up on the bluff overlooking the Danube.  The Danube River was large, filled to the brim, and it looked worth singing about. The bridges in Bratislava were beautifully designed and quite striking.

From Bratislava, we drove on toward Budapest. I loved seeing this crazy Hungarian language on all of the road signs.  In both Slovakia and Hungary, it looked like the topsoil had been eroded away (Iowans care deeply about such things - we're topsoil proud).  Hungary had beautiful wildflowers, especially fields of wild red poppies.  I wonder if Frank Baum, the man who wrote "The Wizard of Oz" had been to Hungary.  Remember when Dorothy falls asleep in the field of poppies? I don't think buses go through the pretty parts of a city because I didn't see any historical parts of Budapest, only globalized McDonald's drive-thrus and Aldis. Not so compelling.

A friend of a friend was on the bus and she prepared me that we would have to sit for a long time on the Serbian border because it wasn't a part of the EU. I'm glad she had told me this because it took a good hour.
Most of our journey through Serbia was in the dark.  My only real outside contact with anything Serbian was going into two globalized large convenience store/gas stations that could have been anywhere in the world. That hardly counts!

We arrived a half-hour early.  I chatted up three Bulgarians the whole way and they were so kind and helpful to me when we arrived in Sofia.  They helped me haul all of my luggage to the storage facility and translate with the staff there.  Truly, when I have an interaction like that, it makes me vow to look out for foreigners who need help when I'm also traveling.  These Bulgarian bus drivers were so nice and helpful too.  I was the only American on the bus. Now it's time to connect with my Sofia couchsurfing host.

I've Got a Ticket to Ride

I decided to take a bus to Istanbul because I knew it would be a volcano-proof plan, I wouldn't have to stay awake watching my luggage like on a train, and I simply wanted a sense of the geography and distance I'm traveling.

My daughter asked, "Does it get to count as a country you've visited, if you just ride through it?" I thought yes.  I told her, "well I count Poland and all I did was go through the Warsaw airport."

"That soooo does not count!" she insisted. What's your standard, gentle reader, for saying, "yes, I visited that country?"  I figure if you breathed their air, you visited it.

This morning, I"m boarding a bus at 9 a.m. for a 27-hour bus ride to Sofia, Bulgaria.  It's a little wierd to be looking forward to a 27-hour bus ride, but hey, that's me. The route covered is fascinating.

I'm moving to Istanbul!

Today is a blur.  A sunny, potentially relaxing day in Prague but still a blur. I'm packing up my things because today marks my last day in Prague.  I hope it's "just for now." I realized when I came here this time that my love of the Czech Republic wasn't going to be fulfilled by just coming for a couple months and doing my to-do list of sites. It's not a "if it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium kind of feeling." This is a life-long passion for a country that has only increased, not decreased with my three months here.

My 90 days in the Schengen zone is up, and I need to move somewhere out of the Czech Republic to apply for residency.  I looked at Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Burma, and Russia in addition to Istanbul. Everyone raves about Istanbul.  And I have a friend there.  It made me count up how many times I've moved to a new place without knowing a soul: eight.

I have been truly blessed with incredible friends here in Prague, especially in my church home of St. Clement's Church.  They sent me off with much love!  Well, here, my chaplain tells it well. I'll let him tell it, you can read my plan, and I'll keep packing.  And returning library books.  And dropping off thrift items.  You know what these kind of days are like!  Click on this link to read my plan.