Sofia

I arrived in Sofia and was about to try couchsurfing again. I originally had a host from Australia—him and his family—but they decided to take off for the weekend, so I almost was without a place, but luckily I posted an emergency couch request to the Sofia network and was able to find a host. Her name was Radina and she was a 19 yr. old Bulgarian girl, who’d only just began to live in Bulgaria. She was born and raised in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, but her family was from Bulgaria and her grandparents still lived in Sofia. From what she told me, Dubai sounds a lot like an American city, plus or minus a few rules. One rule of Dubai being that you can only serve alcohol in hotels. I figured since she had been living in the Middle East that she knew some Arabic, but that wasn’t the case, in fact almost everything in Dubai is first in English and then in Arabic.
I met Radina at the train station, said goodbye to the Norwegian girls and we left to go to her apartment. She was living alone in Sofia on the weekends and in her dorm outside of the city during the week. She was studying journalism at an American university (she didn’t feel strong enough in Bulgarian to study in the language). I took a little nap, because I hardly got any sleep on the night train and then we went to the center to see all the sights.
Sofia is a really interesting town, in the center everything is towering, the architecture is very elaborate and the road is made of golden color bricks, and then outside of the center (just a few hundred feet) everything is falling apart or communistic. This is really the theme of the city: it is either really extravagant or falling apart. The thing I like about this is that it happens in every city, but most cities push the things that are falling apart out of the passing eye, but in Sofia everything is out and in the open.
After a few hours we finished seeing all the sites in the center and went for a bite to eat. Like most places in Eastern Europe all the traditional food involve a healthy serving of meat or a few different meats and then there are the pastry and cheese combinations. But I can’t complain about the taste because it is all really tasty. After eating Radina had to go so I was able to explore the city on my own a little bit.
It seems that most of Sofia’s parks and a few monuments have turned into skate parks. It was interesting change because up until this point I hadn’t seen any skating going on. I walked for awhile and then landed in a park and sat down to read a little. But I had only about an hour of good sleep to run off of, so I kept dozing off and at one point I laid on the bench and nearly fell asleep. But I knew I had to stay awake at least for a few more hours, so I walked over to one of the cafes and had a coffee.
Radina and I then met for a few beers and went out to a hostel bar and met with some of her friends from school. When we walked into the hostel I was really reminded of home; it reminded me of so many houses in Olympia. With the old wood floors and colors on the walls, the wooden shelves and the small hallways and stairways, instantly I though of Maxine's house and it made me really miss my friends and my family back home. Then downstairs in the bar were separate drinking rooms, and each one was unique. One had pillows on the floor and another had a table and chandelier, the other a winding couch and big chairs, and finally one with a Foosball table. We met Radina's friends here and drank with them, occasionally playing some Foosball.
The next few days I spent most of my time walking around Sofia, getting lost in the streets and finding my way back to the square. Radina and I got along really well, because we had similar views of life, the only difference being that she liked to party more often, so every night we would go out again. This was little tiring but I got to meet a lot of people and they were all really nice people and I had a really good time meeting them. From the people I learned that for the most part people were lamenting communism, but didn't especially want to return to communism, but some new kind of government. I think one issue may be that in communism everything was given to them, they may not have had a lot of money, but at least they had a house, a job, a family and a happy life (as long as they followed the rules), but when capitalism came people went broke and families split up, people became greedy and only cared about themselves and their money...this is where things got bad. Of course this happened in a lot of places, but Bulgaria is not so bad and people still have hope. In fact Bulgaria is one of the only countries that has yet to be affected by the recession.
I stayed at Radina's for three nights before I switched hosts. My next host was Yordan, and I was only staying with him for one night, so I didn't really get to know him all that well. He had lived in Montana for a year, doing odd jobs and then spent a few months traveling around to all the states. He took me up to the mountains that surround Sofia, which was a great view, and then we went over to his friends house to hang out for a bit. And just like in America, when people get drunk they love to watch Youtube and laugh. I left the next morning for Varna on the Black Sea and I was missing Zagreb, and home but ready to explore a bit more.

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Part of trip: Europe Trip 2

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