Blog-aria: Tales of a Semester in Blagoevgrad: School Stuff and Pageantry

Hi again loyal followers,

I'm back with more of my life here in Bulgaria. Last week was relatively stressful academically speaking, with a philosophy paper, my Bulgarian folk music midterm, and a philosophy presentation all crammed together in a few days.

So most of my weekend looked like this:

But there were some exceptions to the working. We went to the Irish pub in town on St Patrick's Day, and even got some green beer, which was fun. St. Patrick's Day wasn't too much of a big deal here though, compared to the U.S. Most people weren't even wearing green, and it probably would have been inappropriate to pinch. But there was still some degree of festivity.

Part of the band at the mehana

On Friday night (after a day at the library with Abby), my roommates invited me and a few of my friends to go to a mehana (sort of like a traditional tavern/restaurant) with them. It was similar to what we did for St. Trifon Zarezan day back in February, but at a different mehana in town. There was live folk music playing, and all four of us Americans tried our hand at dancing the horo, with varying degrees of success. The evening ended with dancing on benches and tables, which seemed to be perfectly acceptable. My roommates are actually a lot of fun. They seemed quiet early on in the semester, but I've gotten to know them a lot better over the last month or two and they're actually really funny. They've taught me some Bulgarian (mostly slang words, but nothing too offensive) and they think it's funny when I try to use it. I'm actually going to miss them both a lot when I leave.

Sunshine at Skapto

The rest of the weekend I spent in the library, distracting myself from Pitt's excruciating loss in the NCAA tournament with Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy. I turned that paper in on Monday, then spent Tuesday studying for my Bulgarian folk music midterm. It turned out to be equally as strange as the class has been so far; we were given two general concepts to talk about and basically had to write everything we know about them. The professor caught two people cheating (looking at sheets with notes) during the test, but he didn't take their tests away. It was bizarre. Thursday I had my big philosophy presentation, which actually went surprisingly well despite my intense anxiety. After I finished, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders since my week was basically over.

Miss AUBG

We had beautiful weather over the weekend (70s and sunny), so I spent most of the day Friday and Saturday either laying outside on a blanket or exploring Bachinovo Park (just outside the town). On Friday night I went with my friends (and also most of the school) to the Miss AUBG pageant, which had been publicized around campus for weeks with giant pink posters featuring the silhouette of a girl in stilettos standing with her legs spread and her hands on her hips. This was actually amusingly close to the reality...The pageant was held at a nightclub with a catwalk/stage and there were tons of people there to watch. The girls competed in a number of different categories, the most entertaining of which was the talent portion. One girl danced with ribbons, one girl danced with a giant exercise ball, and one girl belly-danced. There were some singers and one girl played the violin (and of course, having an actual talent, lost). They also paraded around in bikinis at one point with angel wings on. In addition to a formal gown segment and an interview portion, I think that there was also some sort of group dance number. It was hard to see everything from where we were standing, but even so it was quite the spectacle.

Close-up of the church at Zemen Monastery

On Sunday Bulgaria sprang forward an hour, a time change that I felt acutely when I woke up to leave for my history field trip. For my falsifications in history class, we've taken two field trips so far: one to a local museum in Blagoevgrad and another to Boyana Church and the National History Museum near Sofia. This was our third and last of the semester and we went to Zemen Monastery and Kyustendil (a town in western Bulgaria). Zemen Monastery features the oldest church in Bulgaria, the church of St. John the Theologian. It had beautiful 11th centruy frescoes of the passion of Christ and various portraits of saints inside, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures (you'll just have to go there yourself someday). The weather was nice out, which was good since we had to go into the church in two groups since it was so small. While the other group was inside we wandered around the monastery grounds and looked out over the village of Zemen (the monastery was at a high elevation).

Zemen, not Kyustendil

After the monastery, we went to Kyustendil, a town of important historical significance in Bulgaria. As I've written about before, Bulgaria actually refused Hitler's orders to deport the Jewish population. Kyustendil was actually where the resistance to the order began when some local leaders lobbied politicians in Sofia to halt the deportation orders. The Jewish people in Kyustendil had already been ordered to report for deportation when the order was finally denied by the Bulgarian government.

In Kyustendil, we went to a neat art gallery featuring the works of Vladimir Dimitrov Maistora, an important Bulgarian painter. The paintings were beautiful and many featured portraits of local people (he was from near Kyustendil) surrounded by local fruits or flowers. There were a lot of pretty landscape paintings with very vivid colors as well. It's the largest public collection of his work, and it was interesting to see because his homeland, Bulgaria, obviously provided the primary inspiration for the paintings.

Kamen Bridge

We stopped at a bridge that was constructed during the 1400s under the Ottoman rule of Bulgaria. It was scenic and the sun was setting. By the time we got back from the trip, it was around 7 pm, so it was a long and full day, but I enjoyed it.

Now, I'm back into school mode for a while. I spent a considerable part of yesterday laboring over my schedule for the fall back at Pitt. I'm working on plans to travel to Lake Ohrid in Macedonia in a few weeks and the plan is still to go to Istanbul over Easter weekend. Plus, I've got to start planning for after the semester ends, when I'll have a week to travel before my flight back to the states.

More pictures: