Sofia is a really neat city. It has a great mix of old and new all thrown together in a city that is a hodgepodge of cultures having been under the control of several different empires. Being able to go down to the subway in the city center and walk along an old Roman road and through the Roman ruins as a part of your daily life is pretty incredible. Being from the Pacific Northwest in the United States where the oldest buildings are a couple hundred years at best it is incredible travelling to places with structures that are several hundred to thousands of years old. One thing that I really enjoy about the city is that there are incredibly large and beautiful centers of worship from several different faiths within blocks of each other. Now, I am not a big fan of organized religion in general, because I feel there are too many people that pervert it and use it as an excuse or justification for violence and war, so to see examples of people of different faiths coexisting peacefully is always nice. Sofia also has one of the lowest costs of living of all capital cities in Europe, so it makes for a good spot for a nomad on a budget. Sofia is serving as my base of operations while I bounce around Europe. I was here for a month before I started to venture out for further explorations, getting the lay of the land and adjusting to living in a country where I do not speak the dominate language. In this time I have done several interesting and exciting new things. I can’t cover everything in this entry but let’s hit some of the highlights.
So, first off, when I texted my friend to tell her what date I was set to arrive here, her first response was to text me back and ask: Do you have any interest in judging a robotics competition? I have absolutely no experience with robotics so of course I replied back that I would definitely want to do that. So, a few days after arriving in Sofia I went to her school and got all the information I would need to learn how to be a referee for a middle school robotics competition. I did all of the online training and testing and then spent two full days at the school watching as the kids sent the robots they had programmed through an obstacle course of sorts as they attempted to complete different objectives for varying point values. It was a lot of fun to see the different designs of the robots and the different strategies that the kids employed to get the most points as quickly as possible. Some played it safe and went for quick, easy points. Others went for more difficult tasks that took longer but had higher point payoffs. The one thing that they all did though was greatly improve their results from when they first arrived to when the competition had played out. It was pretty cool to watch their problem solving. It was quite tiring, and the most children I had spent time around since I was one myself, but overall it was a really cool experience. The main thing that I took away from it was that I really wanted my own robot to play around with.
Just a week after I arrived in Sofia, and the day after the final day of the robotics competition it was my birthday and this is how I spent it. After arriving home from the competition, I had a quick dinner and then my friend and I went out to a bar, because one of her coworkers was having a birthday party. Once we got to the bar my friend mentioned to one of her coworkers who I had already met that it was going to be my birthday in a couple of hours and a couple minutes later he came back from the bar with a round of shots for all of the November birthdays. We then socialized for a while as I met new people and had a couple of cocktails. My friend took off around 11:30 but I decided to stay out and ring in my birthday dancing which I had been doing for about half an hour at that point. When midnight came, one of the guys who had been at the school helping with the robotics competition bought a round of shots for everyone and they toasted me (much to the chagrin of the girl who’s party it was). I felt a little bad about it. At around one in the morning after I had already been dancing in the bar for about two hours, those of us still down to keep partying left the bar and went to a club, which had the spot on name: Alcohol. I’ve never been much of a club guy but I actually had a really good time, a couple more rounds of shots were purchased, there was a whole lot more dancing (at times with some pretty cute girls), and some great middle school dance music. It was my first time being out somewhere other than a friend’s house and getting served alcohol past 2am. I left the club around 5:15 in the morning. I lay down around six. I realized in the few moments where my head lay upon my pillow before I fell asleep that I had been awake for 24 hours straight, on my feet almost nonstop for about 21 hours, and dancing almost nonstop for about 6 hours. I was beat.
I woke up three hours later feeling quite refreshed. I played a round of Carcassonne with my friends, which if you have never played I highly recommend you check it out, it’s really easy to learn but never gets boring (especially with all of the expansions). After that we went and got brunch with a couple of my friend’s coworkers who hadn’t been out the night before. I had a couple of drinks there and then me and my buddy went on a Sofia communism tour, which was quite interesting. Sofia is very divided about this period of their history and our guide had experienced this division very close to home as a child with one of his grandfathers telling him it was the worst and the other telling him it was the best. Our guide was great, and quite humorous. One of my favorite anecdotes he shared with us was about how during this period, since communism and religion don’t mix, in an attempt to draw children towards communism and away from the church they would have the children close their eyes and pray to god. Then they would open them and nothing would happen. Then they would have the children close their eyes again and pray to Stalin and when they opened their eyes this time there would be chocolates in front of them. You may not approve of this methodology, but there is no denying that it is brilliant. I spent the walking time between destinations chatting with a Dutch girl who was working on her thesis and that involved going on several communism tours in both Sofia and Bucharest. It was her third time doing that tour. After the tour we went back to the apartment where there was a delicious birthday dinner and some hard cider waiting, prepared by my friend who had opted out of the tour. All in all it was a pretty fun birthday.
Another great highlight was going to the casino. I am 29 years old and I had never been to a casino before. I had kind of been waiting for my first casino experience to be in Las Vegas, but had just not gotten around to getting down there yet. I figured a trip to a casino in a foreign country would be good enough to break with my Vegas plans though. My friend I am staying with had also never been to a casino, but another buddy who had come to town to visit loves casinos so the three of us headed off to go gamble. Sofia has many casinos, but our top choice by far was the casino that is in the same building as the presidential offices (because how cool is that?). We got there, and ordered drinks, which were complimentary (because this was a classy establishment). I had my usual of a shot of vodka with a coke. We then walked into the room with the table games. It was a rather small casino and neither of the blackjack tables were being operated that evening. There were a couple seats open at a poker table, but it was a type of poker that none of us had even heard of before. The Texas Hold ‘Em table was all full and only one of the roulette tables was open, but when we tried to play there we were told that it was a private table. So, a bit perturbed we exited the table games room and entered the adjacent room, which had a large roulette wheel and several seats around it with computer screens. We took seats at the table and my one buddy played roulette the whole time while my other buddy switched between blackjack and roulette. I set my limits before I started to play. I would start by playing blackjack and was fine with losing 200 lev playing blackjack and if I did that and we were still hanging at the casino I was willing to lose 100 lev playing roulette. That converts to around $160 total that I was willing to blow on this night out. I played blackjack for a while and then ordered another drink and that’s when one of my worst nightmares occurred. It was something I had feared ever since I started drinking but that had never actually occurred before. They brought me a coke MIXED with vodka. Absolutely disgusting. What really baffled me about it was that they had already given me the drink the right way earlier in the night. Ridiculous. Anyway, after playing blackjack for a while longer, I was down to less than 10 of the 200 lev I had invested. Then I implemented a betting strategy and the comeback began. All of a sudden I was only down 150 lev, then 100, then 50, 40,30, 20, 10, I BROKE EVEN, then I was up ten, then twenty. Then my buddies were talking about heading home. I played one more hand, bet 20 lev, was dealt blackjack and walked out of there up 50 lev. Baller. Overall we really cleaned up and left the casino a little drunker than when we arrived and with 190 lev more than we had come in with. Despite the early frustrations in the table game room, and the terrible drink that I choked down, it was a pretty great first casino experience.
Now the food.
One day my buddy and I went on the free food tour of Sofia and got to sample several delicious items from a few different Sofia restaurants. The final of which was a fairly fancy restaurant that after talking about for a while we finally went to for a full meal. Now, if I have one true love of my life, it is probably food. So, as a great lover of food, it is no small thing when I say that this restaurant, Hadjidraganovite Izbi, may just be the best restaurant that I have ever been to. There are many things that contribute to this assessment so let me break it down for you. First off, they have delicious food there. Just really tasty, traditional Bulgarian food. Second off, as I mentioned before things are pretty cheap in Bulgaria. So the quality and quantity of food for your money is quite simply top notch. My friends each ordered a reasonable amount of food and then it was my turn. So, this was my order with the descriptions of each item as they are written on the menu:
Lamb Hlebnitca – Lamb soup served in a bowl of bread
Radziaka – Appetizer from cheese, drained yogurt, walnuts and garlic, served with bread.
Nevrokopska salad – Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper, red onion, marinated white cheese, olives, oregano, olive oil.
Usukan Shish – Pork, chicken and beef on spit. Served with seasonal garnish.
Trout on fire – (enough said apparently)
The waiter seemed to think I was making a mistake in ordering. I assured him that I was not. Fortunately we were at a six person table and there were only four of us because my food ended up taking up over two peoples worth of space. I accompanied my food with a pretty tasty Bulgarian wine. The cost for all of this you ask? Including the wine for the table it all came out to 66 LEV (about 35.50 USD).
Unreal.
I don’t get full often, and when I do it is almost always at home because the cost to fill me up at a restaurant is usually too high. On this night however, after this incredible meal at this incredible price, I was full. Stuffed really. I love you food.
One final note before I close out talking about Sofia for now. I briefly mentioned cars throwing on their hazards and driving the wrong way down one way roads at the beginning of this post. My favorite example of this comes from a street right out the window from my friends’ apartment. For the first month of me staying with my friends there had been construction a block down the road and because of this people seemed to think they had to take a really fun detour down a one way road. One of our favorite activities was watching the incredible attempts by people to make a run down this long one way road. We saw some really great ones. There was the guy who decided to back down the road (I guess so that it looked like he was going the right way) and had to pull out five times before he finally made it. Props for persistence. One of the best things about his attempts is that if he had just driven forward rather than backing up he probably would have had enough speed to make it to the end of the road before another car turned in on at least two if not three of his attempts. Another favorite was when a car was being rejected and started coming back out only to have another car turn in the wrong way. It was particularly hilarious when cars attempted to pass each other on this super narrow road with cars parked on both sides. We saw several cars gets backed up while people attempted this one. It is such wonderful entertainment. Too much good stuff.