Settling In

Me, being inconspicuous as always

Now that I've got the initial administrative tasks out of the way (for the most part), I've been able to relax and explore more. On Thursday we went out to dinner at a place nearby where the waiters spoke no English, but I managed to communicate successfully enough in Serbian to ask him for tap water and for inexpensive local wine. Afterwards, we went to a Bulgarian karaoke bar, where people sang songs in both Bulgarian and English. One of my american friends (Abby) and I sang Barbie Girl and Bohemian Rhapsody with a Bulgarian guy who lives across the hall from her and some of his friends. It was really fun and they have karaoke nights there twice a week, so we're going to try to become regulars there.

 my home, Skapto 1

We got to meet with our academic advisor Lydia some, and she's this amazingly helpful American woman. She gave us tons of advice about the city, traveling, and life at the university (she even gave us the inside scoop on some of our classes and professors). Speaking of classes, they start tomorrow. Now that I know the campus a little better, I'm sort of amused at my class schedule. The campus has two parts: one is where the dorms are, and the other is the main building. The dorms are in a row alongside the river, and after the last one is the Balkanski Academic Center, a new building where the library is. About half of my classes are there, and the other half are in the main building. The funny part is that the main building, as I mentioned, is in the center of town, about a fifteen minute walk away. My classes literally alternate between the two buildings, so I'll be going back and forth between the two parts of campus a lot. It'll probably be good, though, because I'll need a lot of walking to work off all of the delicious food.

Shopska salata and a cappuchino

 The food here is amazing. First of all, there's the shopska salata, which is just tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and cheese with olive oil. I've had almost every day since I've been here. I literally have to force myself to order other things because I could eat it for every meal. It's much more filling than a salad in the U.S. There's no lettuce or anything, just like equal amounts of tomatoes and cucumbers. It's glorious. At the restaurant I mentioned before, I had like a chicken shish kabob dish, which was really good. On Friday, a Romanian girl we met took us to this amazing restaurant in the old part of the city, which is called Varosha (more on that later). At the restaurant (which basically just looked like someone's house from the outside), Silvana (the Romanian girl) ordered a bunch of different Bulgarian specialties and we split them all. Some of the highlights were: tarator, a could yogurt soup with dill and cucumber; mish mash, a sort of stew with red peppers, tomatoes, eggs, and cheese; and tikvichki souffle, a zucchini souffle.

Pizza...complete with kiwi,
ham, and hard-boiled egg

In addition to the good little restaurants and cafes, there are also a lot of bakeries. They're really cheap and some are open 24 hours. You can get banitsa, which is a pastry with feta cheese in it (amazing!) and I tried burek, which is a meat pastry. Food here is generally really cheap. For a pastry, all of which are pretty large and filling, it's usually only 1 lev or 1.50 leva (I think that 1 lev is equal to about 70 cents in usd). So everything's pretty cheap, and I don't think I've had a single meal that has cost more than 8 or 9 lev, including dinners with wine or cappuchino. There are a couple of good Bulgarian beers that I've tried too, with the favorite so far being Shumansko. The pizza here is good, but strange. The toppings are sometimes the most bizarre combinations of food you could imagine. I had some yesterday that had meat, ham, kiwi, eggs, olive, mushrooms, and sausage on it. It was actually really good (especially the kiwi).

Varosha

The residence halls are starting to fill up more now. One of my roommates, Sonya, moved in yesterday. She is Bulgarian, from near Varna, and she is really sweet but quiet. I think that the other one is coming back tomorrow. Chelsea, another American girl (who is actually hilarious) is one of my suite-mates (6 of us share a bathroom and entryway). She and I and some of the other Americans went back to the old city today to take pictures. It is absolutely beautiful. You just follow the river and then cut over and you get to Varosha. It's where the old church is located and the streets are all cobblestone and the houses are gorgeous. The pictures do it much more justice than I can in writing.

Some cultural observations so far:

The girls here all look amazing. They are generally very pretty, but even if they're not that pretty, they all look like they put at least two hours into their appearance before leaving their rooms. Their hair and makeup always look good, and their outfits look like they put a lot of effort into them. Boots are the shoes to wear, often boots with high heels, which seems precarious given the prevalence of cobblestones. Despite their intimidating appearance, they are actually incredibly nice and friendly.

also Varosha

Bulgarian guys are interesting. A few have been very nice, including Abby's (the first person I met here and my karaoke partner) across-the-hall neighbors, Aleks and Svet. But for the most part, Bulgarian guys  sort of ignore girls. It's very strange and almost difficult to describe. They are very outgoing with other guys, including the two American guys. But they almost entirely ignore girls. It was sort of making us feel bad, like there was something wrong with us. After verifying that none of us were lepers or had spinach in our teeth, finally we asked Iana, this entertaining Bulgarian girl who is sort of wild, why Bulgarian guys never spoke to us. She said that Bulgarian girls are all sluts, and so the guys aren't used to having to initiate conversations with girls. She said not to feel bad, that it's just the way they are. Whether or not that's actually the reason remains to be seen, but it is an interesting theory at least.

The river 

This is what I'm talking about: Chelsea and I were leaving our suite to go to the dorm lobby and while walking down the hallway, we ran into Justin, a fellow American. We stopped to talk to him for a few minutes and we were right in front of two room doors, one of which was partially ajar. A couple of guys speaking Bulgarian were inside the room, and as they walked across, they saw Chelsea and I standing there and literally stopped mid-sentence with a stunned look on their faces, made eye contact with us, then slammed the door shut. It was so strange.

But it seems like guys here are nice once you get to know them. We hung out with Abby's neighbors a few times, and they actually greet us when we enter a room, etc.

Saying cheers is huge here; people are always clinking glasses. You have to make eye contact with the other person as your glasses touch though, or otherwise you will have seven years of bad sex. Drinking here is an entirely different atmosphere than in the U.S. The legal drinking age is 16 (!), so alcohol is allowed in the dorms. Technically, you're supposed to fill out a party permit form if you're going to be having a party in the dorms, but I don't know if people actually do that. The last couple of nights, a big group of Bulgarian and some of us U.S. exchange students have hung out in one of the lounges on the third floor and drank beer and talked before going out. It is definitely different to have RAs offering to take you to bars and have people drinking out in the open in a residence hall.

A pedestrian walkway in town

Smoking is everywhere here. It's not permitted in the dorms or the AUBG academic buildings, but that appears to be the only place in the city. Everyone smokes, too. After a night out, my clothes smell really smoky. But cigarette smoke doesn't bother me that much, so I'm not having as hard of time with it as some of the other people. I just wish that my clothes didn't smell so smoky all the time.

Maybe all of this isn't interesting, and for the most part it's just my personal observations and opinions or things that individuals have told me, so just take it for what it's worth.

The dorms on the left and
the river on the right

Also, let me take a moment to brag: there's a tiny convenience store like right down the street from our dorm, and the guy who works there speaks no English. We went there last night and Abby wanted to break a 50 leva bill. She bought a liter of beer and paid, but the guy only gave her 7 leva in change, instead of 47. She was panicked, so she called me in for help. The guy said that she had given him a ten, but I told him (in some sort of mangled Russian/Serbian) that she thought that she had given him a fifty. He immediately realized that we were right and gave her the rest of her change. He apologized and said that it was a big mistake. I was relieved that he wasn't trying to rip us off and that I was able to understand him and he could understand me enough to resolve it.

Again, I know that this was really long and maybe not that interesting, but oh, well. I love it here, so it's hard not to gush (haha see the multiple paragraphs on food). Anyways, until next time...