Geo: 42.7339, 25.4858 The great, empty Danube River is smoothly passing beneath us; it reminds me of that lovely state a cooking pudding reaches just before it turns into a full rolling boil. The river is stunningly calm and widely beautiful here, as we pass from Ruse on our way to Vidin, all in Bulgaria. To me, Bulgaria is a surprise. We never studied about it as school children; Eastern Europe was just that grey area on the map, that communist block region, somewhere near Russia, and we were taught to be very afraid. When I was little, in addition to regular fire drills, we also had other drills, air raid drills, where we learned to hide under our desks to protect ourselves from falling bombs, I think. Adult thinking was very strange: how would hiding
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