Spring is For Storks, St. Nicholaus is for Christmas

            There is a really cute tradition in Bulgaria where on the 1^st of March; everyone gives all of his or her friends red and white bracelets. After this point, whenever you see a budding plant or a stork, you tie one of your red and white bracelets to the nearest tree (or the budding plant you saw). When I was walking around the park on Monday it was one of the first really sunny days in Sofia. There were red and white bracelets hanging everywhere.

            When I got into Sofia I met up with my couchsurfing host. Her name is Stef, she is in her 4th year of university. We became friends really fast and she was one of the best couchsurfing hosts I have ever had. She showed me all of Sofia on foot, which was beautiful. Sofia wasn’t affected too much from WWII like other European countries; there are a lot of old style historic buildings everywhere. There are a lot of really pretty Eastern Orthodox churches, including the biggest church in all of Europe- The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

and she is in her 4

            There is also the church of saint Nicholaus. In the basement there is a small shrine to St. Nicholaus. People go in write a wish on a piece of paper, pray over the grave, and insert their wish into a wishing box. It reminded me a lot of being at a department store before Christmas and telling Santa what you wished for, except for I only saw middle aged women at the St. Nicholaus’s church J.

letter to St. Nick

Tomb

Outside of the church

Bulgaria has gone through different shades of leadership. It was conquered by the Turkish Empire until the 19^th century and was then set free by Russia; Bulgaria was later under the rule of the U.S.S.R. until 1989. A lot of the food and culture is kind of a mix of Turkish, Greek, and Russian food. My host’s mom made us dinner, which was a potato and beef casserole covered with a layer of cooked eggs called Baklah. They told me that it was originally a Greek dish, but it has been around so long that it is considered Bulgarian. It was Yummah.

It is interesting to me that in different languages, the noises that animals make is different, even though we are hearing the same noise. My host had two Siberian huskies and she kept saying “Bow-wow” to them. In Bulgarian the “noise” that dogs makes is “Bow-ow” instead of “Bark-Bark”. Interesting, right? Body language is also different. Instead of nodding your head to mean yes, it means no. It threw me off for such a long time until I finally asked someone if it was different. I was buying food at a store and asked if I had the correct amount of money, she kept shaking her head but saying yes. I was so confused.

Today I went to a little town about 2 hours away from Sofia called Plovdiv, which is the oldest continually inhabited city in Europe, it is 8,000 years old.  You can see different remnants of the different ruling periods. There is a large Mosque in the middle of the old city; there is also an old Roman Amphitheater. Anyways, at about 2 P.M.  I decided I wanted to make sure that my train was leaving at the time I thought it was. Surprisingly, the train I was taking had been cancelled and I needed to catch it in order to catch my overnight train back to Bucharest for my flight home. I decided I needed to go check the bus station to see if I could get to Sofia in time to still catch my train. Sadly no one I could find could speak English. I finally found one lady who spoke English and told me a bus was leaving from Plovdiv in 10 minutes to Bucharest and it was only 4 hours (the train takes about 10.5 hours from Sofia alone). I really wanted to catch it. The clerk kept telling me it wasn’t going to work out. And she kept walking away, not answering my questions, and blowing me off. A flock of Bulgarian women became really worried for me because I seem frustrated by this clerk. One by one, a new lady came up to me to try to figure out what I needed and where I needed to go. Finally a lady came up who spoke perfect English and she translated what the clerk was trying to say to me. It turns out that it was too late to catch that bus, but I could take the bus to Sofia in time and catch a shorter bus from Sofia to Bucharest. It was really sweet that all these really sweet Bulgarian women who couldn’t speak English, were so set on helping me. One of them even offered to drive me to another bus station just in case I could get to Bucharest easier from there. In the end I took the bus to Sofia with the woman who spoke perfect English and her mother. We had a really good and long conversation and we really connected. It seems that every time I get on public transportation I meet someone new and interesting and we end up bonding and becoming potential pen pals. On the train from Sofia to Plovdiv I met a cute teenage couple and we also had a really good conversation about Bulgaria and their views.  I like this style of travel much more than just sleeping in a hotel every night or sticking with other travelers at hostels, but to each his own J.

 

I am now back on my way to Bucharest on an overnight bus, then I’ll spend my last day in Bucharest and my flight back to Jerusalem on Tuesday. It’s been a good week J.