Bulgarian Education and Culture Day and Slavonic Literature Day

Bulgarians love to celebrate. In just the 6 weeks we've been here, there have been 3 major holidays: Labor Day, St. George's Day, and the Bulgarian Education and Culture Day/Slavonic Literature Day this past Monday which coincided with the final day of the Historical Seas Tall Ships Regatta. In this family-centered culture, holidays are taken seriously and are spent elaborately.

I had the fortune of spending St. George's Day with a Bulgarian family in their village home and I will try to explain that cultural experience in another post. Monday's holiday was spent very differently. My apartment is right off the main square and so while drinking my coffee on the patio Monday morning I heard some commotion coming from the square. It sounded like a marching band. I walked outside to find that an insanely large mob was making its way down the square towards the Sea Gardens and the beach. Inside the mob was a marching band that the people seemed to be following. Young girls were dressed in traditional Bulgarian dresses and women were holding bouquets of flowers. Apart from the band, there was nothing else indicating an official parade so I thought perhaps there would be something at the end of their march and I joined in to find out. They all dispersed at the Sea Gardens, some going to the beach, others lining up for ice cream and popcorn, many grouping up to take photos. I walked back towards my apartment and the mob was still coming; it seemed neverending. I sat on a bench to watch for awhile and finally went home, realizing there was really no central event going on.

A bit later, Brock and I walked back outside and as we got towards the sea and noticed that the mobs were either on the beaches or along the Sea Garden looking out. We realized that for the Regatta's final day, the 70 or so sail boats were all out on the sea cruising around for the people to see and to warm up before their race to Istanbul. It was an amazing sight, so many sail boats of all sizes sailing together.

The event supposedly drew a crowed of 200,000. We had visited the Regatta and checked out some of the sail boats from around the world while they were on display at the port. They were very impressive, reminding me of Pirates of the Caribbean. The highlight for me was the Indonesian vessel. On board were musicians and dancers performing some traditional numbers.

Saturday there was a parade that included representatives of each sail boat in the contest, so there were bands, dancers, and sailors from all over the world, making it one incredible parade. I suppose this is why I was a bit let down when Monday's parade-like event was nothing more than a marching band leading the entire town to the sea front.

If Monday's holiday was anything like St. George's Day, I expect that after the town saw the sailors off to Istanbul, they went home for a long day of eating and drinking... but more on that later.

My Perfect World

I've found my perfect place. Not Bulgaria, per se, although I really don't want to leave here anytime soon. Where I know I belong is by the ocean or sea.

This is the first time I have lived near a beach and I don't want to have to wait for vacations to experience this. Of course, this isn't exactly real life right now, but when I go back to the real world, a major body of water and a beach better be part of it.

Since we arrived, I've been taking Majerle to the beach each morning right after my first latte. If we get their early, we have most of the beach to ourselves and can walk and run with him off the leash and I've taken to doing stretches from my gymnastics and yoga days. Or I just sit and watch the sail boats and ships go by while Majerle runs around looking for sticks to bury and dig back up. I want to stay there forever. I feel sad leaving the beach even though I'm just going home to have my second latte and then get ready to return in the afternoon for more beach bummin.

This lifestyle has changed me. Lately I listen to almost nothing but Bob Marley, The Beach Boys, Sublime, and songs like Red Red Wine and In the Summertime. I can read for hours. I feel so relaxed and peaceful, especially when the Black Sea is in front of me.

I've always wanted to learn to surf, so we decided this is the time, since we may never again have two months with nothing to do but play in the water. So we're buying a couple of boards and signing up for lessons.

My sister asked me what I like best about Bulgaria. I love so much, the sea & beaches, the people, the post-communist revival, the food, the produce markets, the colorful architecture... but what I love best is this: there are so many beautiful places in the world where people say, "You should have been here before all the tourists came." I feel like we'll be saying that about Varna in a few years and we'll be happy to know we lived here when we were considered the exotic foreigners who took surf lessons, frequented jazz bars, removed ticks from stray dogs, and traveled by bus to Istanbul and by ferry to Ukraine. Or maybe the tourists will never come and we can keep returning here for this inexpensive and free-spirited beatnik lifestyle.

A Backwards Story about a Backwards Doctor's Visit

I stepped out of the cab, my husband handed me a bouquet of flowers, and I walked into the hospital to have my ultrasound. It went well, confirming what I already knew and nothing more and I was sent home with 3 ultrasound photos.

(5 minutes prior)

The cab driver couldn't break a 20 so to pay our fare Brock had to find the nearest item he could buy so we would have smaller bills, hence the floral arrangement.

(22 hours prior)

The male nurse present who was doing the translating for the doctor explained where to go the following day to have an ultrasound performed. The doctor wrote me a prescription and then uttered to me the only English words he seemed to know: "you pay me 20 leva for write this prescription." I handed him a 20, got no receipt from him, and realized I had actually paid him for writing me a prescription and nothing else. At least he's honest, but talk about a corrupt system!

(15 minutes prior)

The nurse gave me my diagnosis and also said I had too much sugar in my urine and that is bad, although this was subsequently not addressed. Perhaps the nurse had just had a donut for breakfast....

(20 minutes prior)

The male nurse who spoke some English handed me a cup to pee in without trying at all to avoid touching the inside of the cup with his bare (possibly sugary) hands. I walked into a dirty bathroom which was void of hand soap and void of that nice little door where you can discretely deposit your urine and walk out of the bathroom with some self-respect. No, I had to walk down the hall to the lab with my cup in hand in front of those waiting to use the bathroom. The lab nurse finally asked for my name, scribbled it down in Bulgarian on a scrap of paper and placed my urine cup on top of the paper and asked me for $4 to cover this part of the doctor's visit.

(5 minutes prior)

After following a nurse up and down the stairs a couple of times, she found the man she was looking for and she snatched my insurance card out of my hand. The two nurses read the card and noticed the part about my needing pre-approval before a surgery, cat scan, MRI, etc. Somehow this led them to believe I needed an MRI and they explained that I needed to take a cab to another facility to have this done. I reminded them of why I was here in the first place. They said I would then need a urine test and a blood test. I told them I was pretty sure just a urine sample would suffice, so they went to find a cup.

(20 minutes prior)

After following my landlord's not so perfect directions to a nearby clinic, I finally found it, entered, and asked if the receptionist spoke English (she did not), so she rounded up a nurse who did and I explained the reason I was there. She picked up the phone and called someone to explain very loudly and clearly in Bulgarian for all present to hear something about my being there that of course, I could not understand. There was no waiting room (just a couple of chairs), no weighing in, no taking temperature & blood pressure, no asking for the date of my last period, they didn't even ask for my phone number, the nurse just asked me to follow her.

(52 hours prior)

On a bus from Istanbul to Varna, I realized something was wrong with me. I felt worse and worse as we finally approached the bus station at 5:30am. I walked as fast as I could the mile or so home from the bus station, and for the next two days I hoped things would be ok and that I would not have to go to the doctor. I have never in all of my time spent overseas had to seek medical attention, and I sure didn't want to start in the country ranked 103 for health care, just above Iraq and just behind a couple of countries I have never heard of. Finally, I realized it was better to be safe and go get checked out.

In conclusion, I'm fine, thanks to the drugs I was sent home with. And I am definitely not pregnant, I just found it amusing how the circumstances could have been misconstrued as such. I figured that my story about such a backwards system deserves to be told backwards as well. I sincerely hope this was my first and last experience with the Bulgarian health system. The clinic resembled a very old home with skinny hallways and many small rooms. It was far from handicap accessible considering the steep and cracked six steps leading into the facility. Nothing about the place felt remotely sanitary. However, the staff was accommodating considering my inability to communicate in their language and they did do whatever they could to help me, albeit with plenty of confusion. In the end, I must say that the US health care system is looking pretty darn fabulous after this excursion.

This Dog's Life

I'm used to seeing stray dogs all around town. But there are some that are just a little more friendly & affectionate than others.

I saw this dog walking along the water today while we were lying on the beach. I yelled something like "hey dog!" Usually dogs will glance over and keep on going if there's no chance of getting food. This one took that as an invitation.

At first he laid down near us, but not too close.

Then he nonchalantly got a little closer.

Once we started petting his ears he decided to try and get real comfortable by crawling on our beach towel between us, but there wasn't room for all 3 of us so instead he dug himself a hole right beside us...

...which he laid down in, but kept getting up to dig more and to make it just right.

After just a few minutes of hangin out with us, he took off to follow some people who were picking up garbage on the beach.

Освен на делфините! (Save the Dolphins)

The Bulgarian town where I now live, like most cities of its size (pop. 356,852), has plenty to do. There are concerts, plays, tons of restaurants and cafes, an opera house, a zoo, a dolphinarium... I made plans to take advantage of all of this while I'm here and I was especially excited to visit the dolphinarium since I have never seen a dolphin show before.

Then I watched The Cove last night which is a documentary about the constant mass slaughtering of dolphins in Japan for our entertainment. I was disgusted that I had previously been excited to watch the dolphin show. I was ignorant in believing these trained dolphins to be well cared for and happy when in fact they are constantly dying prematurely due to the stressful living conditions and they are performing mainly because they won't be fed otherwise. For every one dolphin that makes it into a show, hundreds or thousands are needlessly killed and even though their meat contains poisonous amounts of mercury, it is sent around Asia for human consumption.

Last year while spending 4th of July in Coronado, I got to witness some dolphins cruising back and forth across the beach, flipping, diving, and playing. It was beautiful. I swam out as far as I could in the freezing Pacific to get a better look. I now know this is surely the best way to see these amazing creatures, in their natural environment. They'll still put on a show, a free show, but it will be of their own will to entertain and will not be at the expense of thousands of their own kind.

(This is the best picture I could get of one of the dolphins)

Check out these sites for more information about the movie and the actions being taken to put an end to this brutal industry:

http://www.thecovemovie.com

http://www.takepart.com/thecove/

Death on a Sidewalk

Today seemed like a pretty ordinary day at first. I slept in, took Majerle for a walk on the beach, did some reading at a nearby cafe, watched a few episodes of Arrested Development.

Late in the afternoon we decided to buy some produce at one of the outdoor markets downtown to fill our empty fridge. On our way there, we chatted about restaurants we'd like to eat at this week, the recent Coyotes victory over the Red Wings, the wind surfers I saw out in the sea today, regular stuff.

Then I noticed an unusual gathering of people on the street across from the Cathedral. And then I saw a man's lifeless body laying on the sidewalk near a bus stop, with a blanket covering his head and torso, but tattooed arms and legs remaining in view. Here laid the body of a deceased man. A few police officers stood near the body, visiting causally with each other.

We stopped for a moment to take in the fact that a man was lying footsteps away from us, dead. There was no blood and seemingly no urgent pursuit of a criminal, so we assumed that this was a natural death of sorts. There were a few blocks of cheese on the ground surrounding the man's head, so like us, perhaps he too had just decided to go buy some groceries.

As we walked towards the market, our demeanor having drastically changed, our dinner plans didn't seem so important. After we bought a few items, we again passed the bus stop just ten minutes later. The body was gone, the police officers were gone, and most of the people gathered had dispersed.

I was present in the hospital room when my grandpa died 12 years ago. Since then I have not been in such close proximity with a death. This was on my mind for much of the day afterwards, but really life just went on, back to planning our dinner and evening. But for awhile today, that man's death affected a lot of people. While the rest of us go on with our lives, surely he leaves behind family and friends who will be forever affected.

Part of the experience today makes me wonder what I am doing so far away from home and from my family, but I'm also reminded that I'm here because I'm trying to make the most of this short life while I can.

Learning Cyrillic (Живот Кирилица)

With all of the free time I have on my hands and because I would hate to live here three months and miss out on the opportunity, I am determined to learn to speak some Bulgarian. My first approach was to learn and master a new phrase every day. By the end of my first week in Bulgaria, I could say "good day", "thank you", "hello", "good evening", "have a nice day", "see ya soon!", etc.

During week two I realized that knowing these phrases is fine, but it only gets you so far. It doesn't help you read a menu and while pointing to a menu item and hoping for the best can be fun and suspenseful, I want to have at least some idea of what I'm eating.

So I buckled down today and decided to learn the alphabet. I found a few websites and youtube videos that went over the basics: the letters, sound pronunciations, and examples. I wrote the whole alphabet down the little notebook I take with me everywhere and all day I studied, practiced, and quizzed myself. While laying at the beach I closed my eyes and visualized all of the letters I could remember.

Later in the day, Brock got a hankering for a kebab at a street-side stand and while waiting for it I perused the menu and was stunned that I recognized the word falafel in cyrillic! I pointed at it and excitedly shouted "FALAFEL!!" Of course this led to a bit of confusion with the guy making the kebab who now thought I was placing another order.

We walked over to a restaurant with a patio on one of the main squares to have a drink. The waitress brought us menus in Bulgarian. Usually they bring the English versions once they realize we aren't from here. I started proving to Brock how my new alphabet skills would help me figure out the menu items. My first drink was a chai tea, mainly because I was thrilled to be able to read the word. After seeing what she must have thought was us struggling with the menu when in fact I was studying the menu, the waitress brought us an English one. So Brock used the English menu to quiz me on the components of pizzas, pasta dishes, and salads from the Bulgarian menu and I realized that just simply being able to sound out the word in cyrillic can lead one to figure out the word since there are a lot of words from English and French as well as those from many other languages in Bulgarian. This is the same reason an anglophone can generally muddle through French, Spanish, and Italian, picking up a few things here and there in print because the alphabets are so similar, as are many words. Now I may not always know what I'm reading, but at least now I can take a stab at the pronunciation and then I'll learn new words along the way. I can't stop reading everything I see now. I realized that the hair salon below my apartment also does pedicures! Very useful knowledge of course.

It must have been pretty entertaining for anyone within earshot to have heard my attempts to sound out these words, especially the ones I ended up knowing. It may have sounded something like this: "B... B... AHHH, Nnnn AH... N? BANANA!!! K- Koh- Kohnnn -ya. K. COGNAC!" I relayed this experience to my sister who said it sounds an awful lot like her witnessing her three year old son learning to read.

I was proud to go back to O'Neill's to tell Nikola to bring me the Bulgarian menu, because I can read! Sort of.