Everything's up to date in ... Sofia

After our experience with hairstyles in Plovdiv and our guidebook's lukewarm recommendation of Sofia relative to Plovdiv, I went to Sofia with decidedly low expectations. Boy did Sofia deliver. First of all, we stayed in a bizarre room decorated with animal print, Tahitian wood carvings, and lots of mirrors, but equipped with satellite tv, and all for 40 leva a night!

Then, while looking for new headphones, we saw a 16 gb flash drive for the first time and declared Sofia thoroughly modernized. The verdict was confirmed a night later with the best meal of the trip. An honest-to-goodness salad, followed by browned chicken tenders in a honey, orange, and rosemary sauce with grilled zucchini in a Roquefort-based cream sauce. Cost, including fresh peach juice: 10 leva. Aaron ate more traditional fair - potato soup and wine-soaked veal with local beer - for even less.

Not everything was so thoroughly advanced. Aaron had read that the per-capita income in Bulgaria was 150 Euros per month, a staggeringly low sum and impossible seeming in the city center where residents wore designer clothes and drove luxury automobiles (we heard that the police drove confiscated Porches but we never saw them). On our way out of town we had a sobering realization when we saw the city's slums. Built within the city garbage dumps, and populated with large families, this housing made other most dire areas I've seen on Skid Row and in Cambodia and Peru seem relatively hospitable.

We didn't do a lot of traditional sight-seeing in Sofia, so instead you get pictures of random things I noticed just walking around. First, really nice terra cotta tile work at the bath house:


Also , these basement-level tobacco and convenience shops:

Bulgaria is predominantly Greek Orthodox, which provided a change of pace, architecturally and culturally:

Finally, there was a significant language barrier. Bulgarians use a Cyrillic alphabet, they do not speak English, and they shake their heads from side to side when we would nod and vice versa. So we were lost a fair bit, but signs like these made up for it:


Chinese style Cyrillic - it never would have occurred to me!

xoxo Jessie