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First impressions of Sofia
by Margot de Messieres - Editor@mytravelbug.org : Traveling in Bulgaria
I arrived in Sofia, exhausted from a 24-hour long trip. Nevertheless, as I walked out of customs, my new friend, an artist named Angela, met me and whisked me in her ancient little Skoda car through the night to her attic apartment. In blissfully rapid succession, she showed me where to shower, fed me delicious vegetable stew, introduced me to her little cat, gave me a shot of rakiya (Bulgarian plum brandy), and sent me to bed. I woke up the next morning to the sound of a cart and horse clacking slowly past my window, and looked out over the tiled rooftops to see Mount Vitosha looming in an elegant haze of blue over the city.

Sofia is lovely, but, I have to admit, a bit dirty. Smog and traffic noise fill the air, the streets have a lot of dog droppings (and tons of stray cats and dogs) and the cobblestones flip and twist loosely below your feet. Baroque and charming as some of them are, many of the buildings are crumbling. Walking isn't made any easier by all the cars parked directly on the sidewalks.

And yet, I'm falling in love with this city. The people are amazingly, extraordinarily kind to strangers. Even the bank tellers and police have been cheerful and patient with my limited Bulgarian as I try to navigate the bureaucratic obstacle course of registering with the university and settling in. If I get lost, people don't just point the way, they actually walk me to my destination. Despite the hazards, the streets are a wonderful place to be; book shops, vegetable stalls and bazaars crowd the sidewalks and it seems that every little street has a cafe. And Sofia really is pretty. The city is full of shady parks, fountains, and playgrounds. Flowers and grapevines tumble out of the little dirt alleys leading between buildings and beautiful churches nestle in every quarter. I stepped inside Saint Nedelja church early one morning during service. It was dark and yet warm and gleaming with gold and dozens of candles. People of all ages stopped in, clearly on their way to work, to light candles (up high for the living, down low for the dead) and to pray. The resin being burned filled the air with a scent like spiced cider. Standing in the doorway, I could hear both the chanting of the service and the honking of morning traffic.

I've rented a little tiny apartment with a balcony right in the city center. My street is narrow, tree-lined, and fairly quiet except at about 2 am, when the trash trucks come through to empty the metal dumpsters below my window. The amount of noise this makes is almost comical. It usually gets the local dogs howling, too. I am learning to sleep through it. The bathroom deserves note; it's actually a tiled shower stall with a toilet in it. The toilet paper stays dry when I pull a vinyl curtain across the doorway. Everything else gets wet. At first, this arrangement seemed pretty odd to me, but now I appreciate that I will never have to scrub the guck around the toilet; it all gets nicely washed every time I take a shower. The sink is across the hall in the little kitchen, keeping company with an ancient, monster stove. I have a washing machine, which is actually a plastic tub that I fill with hot soapy water. I then insert a plastic contraption which, when plugged in, churns the water violently. When I think my clothes are clean, I pour out the water, wring out my clothes, and hang them out on the line on the balcony. Most Bulgarians seem to have regular washers, though. My landlord kind of chuckled and shrugged when he showed me mine. I don't think it's great, but it works fine.

The food here is fantastic; the feta cheese and yoghurt are Bulgarian specialties, the vegetables are fresh and beautiful, and I bought the most fragrant and delicious raspberries of my entire life in a little plastic cup from a sidewalk vendor. Old men and women sit on buckets at the street corners, selling produce from their gardens such as flowers, eggs, walnuts, fresh cheese or potatoes. Their shoes are shabby, so I try to buy from them. Overall, the level of poverty here seems pretty high, and I'm learning that I have to be careful about which things I accept or ask for. People will literally give me the shirt off their back, and smile as though it were no
trouble at all.

Saturday, Angela took me and a skinny fourteen year-old orphan she mentors named Itso to Boyana Church on Mount Vitosha, which is just south of Sofia. The trip began with some car troubles; when we filled the tank, the Skoda began to leak gas onto the pavement at an alarming rate. There was a conference between Angela, the station mechanic, and a friend Angela called on her cell phone. All agreed that the Skoda would stop leaking gas within a few kilometers. I wasn't so sure, but we hopped back into the car and drove on. Angela tapped the gas gauge, and told me it was broken. I had visions of getting stranded high on the mountain without a drop in the tank, but Itso and Angela seemed unperturbed. Sure enough, the leak dried up. We wound our way up the mountain and parked next to an artist selling small landscape paintings in front of Boyana Church, which is small, shaded by pine trees, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The little caretaker unlocked the inner door of the church with an enormous ten-inch key and enthusiastically showed us the 13th century frescoes filling the interior. Half the church was under restoration so we squeezed around the scaffolding and flood lights as we craned our necks. My favorite images were the gentle portraits of the church donors. One was gesturing gracefully toward her ruddy-cheeked husband. As we left, the caretaker pointed out several large holes riddling the main door of the church. "Turks," she said briefly. "Bullets." Bulgarians don't look back on the Ottoman Empire with much affection.

After our tour, Anglea, Itso, and I drove further up the mountain, parked, and walked along one of the roads, enjoying the scenery. Fall is just starting to turn the trees gold, and we could see Sofia lying on the plain far below. As we walked along the road we passed thick stands of pine, graceful birch tree forests, and tumbled rivers of rock, which are remnants of the mountain's volcanic history.

Itso, who was starting to get over his shyness, practiced his Hollywood English on me while I worked on my Bulgarian. I gave him my camera to take some pictures; he was particularly taken with the zoom function. At the end of the path, we came to a nondescript concrete house, which Angela insisted we enter. Itso took my arm. "Special Operation," he assured me. We skirted a scrawny young German Shepherd lounging on the front step, walked down a long, dark, uninspiring hallway and pushed open the last door, bursting into a large warm room packed with young hikers. The walls were wood paneled and hung with skins. Beams crisscrossed overhead and several big plank tables stood beside a large fireplace. Smoke hung in a haze. I felt like I'd stepped into another century. We sat on the benches at one of the tables and ordered drinks from a sweet woman who informed us she'd just taken over the operation of the place two days earlier. When we left, it was finally starting to get dark, and the German Shepherd puppy escorted us down the path.

Editor's Note: To view Margot's pictures go to http://www.pbase.com/mytravelbug/2004_fellows