Sofia!

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so yea, bulgaria's still awesome. but first, i feel like i've forgotten to mention whitney houston's song 'dance with somebody', which most of you probably remember. this song is seriously everwhere, and has been the trip's theme song since way back in Krakow. we were wondering how whitney was still able to keep up her crack habit, but then we came here!

anyway, arriving in sofia after around a 3 hour bus ride we had no problem getting a cab, though our driver was a big asshole and didn't even help us with our bags. hope he liked his shitty tip! our hostel was nothing special on the outside, but once upstairs we knew we would like it. we have i think the only private room, which is cool, and it has two double beds as well as a balcony, though you can't go out on it.

i don't really remember what we did the first night, and my journal is all used up, so i'll do my best to try and put something together. once we got settled and dried our nasty clothes, we headed out for some chinese food. our waitress clearly wanted to practice her english, so i didn't get to use my bulgarian much, but whatever. our big greasy plates of noodles were delicious, and did taste rather asian, which of course was a plus considering our past experiences with eastern europe's take on asian cuisine. the fried ice cream couldn't been better.

continuing to walk around the city it was of course awesome to just bask in sofia and all of its cyrillic glory. finding the sofia mall was a bad idea, since i had to buy something from kenvelo, and then we ended up seeing the new pirates movie which was fun with cyrillic subtitles. i saw a preview for 'cars' in bulgarian and i want to see it because i could surprisingly understand a lot. we were ridiculously tired after that so we pretty much came back to the hostel to chill, getting some laundry done, and whatnot. the staff here have all been pretty shocked when i bust out in bulgarian, and the first thing they ask re: my studying bulgarian is "why bulgarian?" um, cuz its cool? i find it annoying that i grew up speaking THE world language, though i suppose it does come in handy at times...that's right, at times...

the next morning we pretty much ditched our hostel's walking tour that we committed to since we were not in the mood, and it also took forever to get in the shower because of all the people waiting around for it. the breakfast here was pretty good, especially the bulgarian sheep's cheese which is to die for. i'm quite the little eastern european. once out of the hostel we headed down vitosha and toward where all the main stuff was, first stopping for some coffee at a cafe. it was no caribou, but whatev, i need caffeine.

first stop was the russian chuch, built in the early 20th century to appease some russian diplomat who i guess found the bulgarian orthodox churches inferior. figures, those russians. right down the block was alexander nevsky cathedral, the most famous church in sofia, built in honor of the russians who liberated bulgaria from the turks in the russo-turkish war. on the street leading up to the cathedral, the block is entirely lined with tables of all kinds of kitschy antiques from the soviet, nazi, etc. times. we seriously wanted to buy everything and spent over an hour just parousing all the tables. i ended up with a pin from the 1980 moscow games, this 'bulgarian shield' pin that had all the flags of the eastern bloc countries, and then this little bulgarian pin that is like an award for little commie kids. i couldn't resist. then i bought my awesome belt with a big gold buckle with the bulgarian lion and communist star on it. i'll be busting it out shortly. kasia bought stuff from poland as well as an old pocket watch and a 19th century austrian coin.

once reaching the cathedral, it was pretty cool but not unlike the other orthodox cathedrals we had seen. it was really dark inside but i hear at the right time of day it can be really bright, so perhaps we'll head back tomorrow. next stop was lunch, and we just ended up at some like irish pub. still, i got a shopska salad because i'm obsessed with them, and we split these like zucchini pancakes that were really gool.

we continued to explore the city, seeing the national assembly, sofia university, the national history museum, etc., but only from the outside. eventually we reached the national palace of culture, another nasty soviet eyesore built during communist times like in romania and poland, except that theirs were at least either cool looking (warsaw) or the 2nd biggest building in the world (bucharest). the building was surrounded by a big square with white stone, and seriously if you were stand anywhere for longer than 15 seconds you would roast alive from the reflected heat. its definitely pretty hot in bulgaria, but its more of a dry heat so that's definitely more tolerable than humidity of any sort. i tried to buy my tickets for warsaw and then madrid at the LOT office but of course i got there like 5 minutes after they closed and will have to wait until monday.

back at the hostel we enjoyed the free pasta dinner, which was surprisingly good. after that we were off to Jimmy's, this ice cream place recommended in my book. i was pretty awesome at ordering our ice cream and didn't make any mistakes. we had a pretty early night in since we had Rila monastery to look forward to the next morning...

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