Sofia, Bulgaria

Woke up the next day about a half hour out of Sofia. We packed our things and I threw on some extra layers (thank god).

The weather was... how to describe it... Imagine any movie you've ever seen about Eastern Europe. Yeah, it's like that. Overcast and dark at one in the afternoon. It seemed as if the clouds weren't blocking out the sun, but holding down last night's darkness, trying to prevent it's escape. It was raining, not terribly, but just hard enough so that if you walked for five minutes without an umbrella you were soaked.

But, it wasn't that bad. I had an umbrella.



After about an hour and a half of walking around, we finally found a hostel. Actually, it was a small hotel, and per person our nice little room with it's hot shower was only about $15. We unloaded our stuff, relaxed for a bit, and then headed out to explore Sofia.

Our established list of goals:
Goal #1: Find food
Goal #2: Walk around and explore Sofia
Goal #3: Find a good bar*

*Note: Goal #2 is included in the process of achieving #3.

Goal #1 was achieved rather quickly. Damn good pizza. I mean, really, really good. And ribs. Pork. PORK! You have no idea how great it was to experience that dirty, unholy animal once again. I've been running a nutrition deficiency since I arrived in Istanbul, severely lacking vitamins P, I, and G.

Anyway, on to Goal #2. The rain cleared up as we wandered the city in search of #3, and Sofia is quite a beautiful city. I didn't take nearly enough pictures (low battery), but hopefully the few I took can do it a tiny bit of justice.

We found a classy little bar and ordered a beer while we were figuring out where to head next for the battle plan. Jan started leafing through a pamphlet, written in Bulgarian (with Cyrillic characters), and translated for us (he speaks fluent Russian) that there was a jazz show that night at some little club across town. So, we went searching for it.

Satchmo was quite easy to find. On a main street that was well marked, look for the giant picture of Louis Armstrong. The club was in a basement, filled with people, and old brick and stacked stone architecture lined the place, while light bulbs dangled naked from the ceiling on their cables. We ordered some drinks and chilled out to a middle aged pianist, a sax player, and a young guy ripping up the upright bass.

It was a great place, and the locals were friendly. An old man, with translations through a friend of his, asked us how we found the joint. He said he'd lived a few blocks away for years and had just discovered it that night. The side room was packed with women dressed up in gaudy outfits, oversized jewelery and strange patterns... One of the old women told us that they were friends through a strange personality test they had took. All "flamboyant" personality types, they decided to go out for a drink together. What a strange crowd they were, but they were great people. One of them offered us a box of petit-flours, homemade, by a friend of theirs.

Fantastic.

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