Alaskan Bulgarian

The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love

The new volunteers, the B-15s, come in today. They'll all be getting off their plane bleary-eyed and disoriented and will step through a pair of sliding doors at Sofia Airport into the face of a mob composed of about ten or twelve veteran volunteers and about a hundred confused businesspeople and family members waiting for other people to get off the plane.

45 volunteers are expected, all teachers, all relatively young. They'll get on a bus and be whisked away to Strelcha, a small town in central Bulgaria. There they'll spend a few days picking up Cyrrilic and about four or five useful phrases in Bulgarian. They may also learn how to dance the horo. In three days they'll take this knowledge and attempt to apply it to a life with a Bulgarian family. The family will immediately get them to try rakia, and some of the guys will think that rakia needs to be taken in shots and will get really drunk at their first party. There will be at least two months of confusion before the head-nodding thing is figured out (Bulgarians do a strange nod for no, and an odd shake of the head for yes). They'll hear Usher's "Yeah" about five hundred times a day in cafes and wonder if they'd ever hear it at all in America.

It all sounds a lot like what happened last year, minus a couple of days. I got to Bulgaria on April 21st, they're getting here on the 19th. The big song back then was 50-Cent's "In Da Club." Otherwise, I'm pretty sure life will be similar to what the other B-13s and I went through. The anniversary is coming up pretty quickly here, and I suppose a big ol' retrospective will be called for in the middle of what will be a pretty busy week. It will happen though, because I think it will be pretty cathartic for me and helpful for those joining this two year story in progress.

All this one year hype comes at about the same time I wanted to celebrate the beginning of my 23rd year. At first I wanted to get some friends to come up to Silistra, but in further proof that the transportation infrastructure in Bulgaria could use a little pick-me-up, nobody could make the trip that for some could mean eleven or twelve hours on a bus. Everybody also happened to be gathering in Sofia for training. A seven hour bus ride Friday and I was at Peace Corps headquarters around 6:30. The weekend began.

We started slowly with an okay Chinese dinner at this place under Hostel Sofia. Chinese seems to be the one foreign food Bulgaria can consistently nail. There's always more than enough rice, and the portions on the main courses are usually more than ample. Mexican has yet to get a quality foothold here, sushi is pretty rare, but Chinese has picked up a reasonable following.

After the dinner, we stopped in at an expensive Italian place near the Italian amassador's house for some over-priced coffe, cake, and ice cream. There we had a long discussion about what Bulgarians call a martini. Not being a huge fan of martinis or manhattans, I didn't pay much attention, but I think it boiled down to martini being a brand of vermouth here in Bulgaria and coming in three varieties. Manhattans in Bulgaria, it seems, are martinis. I might have something wrong here, but I'm a White Russian fan myself, so I have enough problems finding a place with some Kahlua to worry about the problems facing people trying to look like James Bond.

After dessert, the tired and full left for the hotel while the rest of us decided to try a club called Biblioteka. It's buried in the basement of the national library but has built an enormous reputation for it's trendiness and soild sushi. We got there around 12:30 and were mildly curious that no one was around. We were donwnright suspicious when there were only about 25 people in the club an hour later. Then the music stopped and the DJ made some announcement about a dance group. Six guys in monks' robes got on stage and stood as if in prayer. Chant-style music came on and slowly morphed into the overplayed "In Da Club" and to our horror--absolute mind-numbing fear--the robes came off and the guys began prancing around in speedos. We finished our drinks and left when we could. Lesson learned--always pay attention to the posters on the door and around the club before entering any given building. Always.

On our way back to the hotel, we decided to stop in at Caesar's casino, as none of us had ever made the trip into one of Bulgaria's fine gambling establishments. The whole thing was electronic, and there were no card tables, only a bunch of slots and a couple of roulette tables in the corner. The six of us there: Dylan, Andrew, Yadira, Ryan, Jeff Hoskins (For convenience, Jeff H. from now on), and I gathered around a couple of the machines and triend the computer poker. Jeff H. and his contigent of Yadira and Dylan lost a lev and got bored after about five minutes. They went back to the hotel. I was up about two leva after fifteen minutes before breaking even at twenty minutes. I decided to call it a night then and accept twenty minutes of free computer poker as a pretty good deal. Sleep came easily at the hotel and we all lugged ourselves out of bed around 10.

We spent that night at a place near the mosque in Sofia where you can pay 12 leva for a bed in a room with two other beds and a restroom shared by 3 other such rooms. Peace Corps Bulgaria standard and pretty acceptable. Saturday night, though, would see the arrival of the birthday suite.

When my family came to Bulgaria, we all decided that a fun way to spend their last night in-country would be to live it up for a night at the Sofia Sheraton. We checked-in late and they were busy. The result: we got two dirty rooms full of ashtrays in a family of non-smokers. A complaint at the front desk and via e-mail later, and the management at the Sheraton granted a complimentary night in a junior suite with VIP accomodations. I don't think they were expecting anyone in the family to make a return trip to Sofia any time soon and I suppose it was a pretty good gambit for a luxury hotel chain. Anyway, I took them up on the offer the same week they proposed it and reserved the suite for Saturday night.

I checked in Saturday afternoon with the other two members of the grande trio, Kate and Jeff H. We unanimously decided that the suite, with complimentary fruit, baklava, bottle of wine, slippers, and Bulgari bath products, would do. There were also a couple of bathrobes, a shirt press, and a scale in the bathroom to try while we were there. When the rest of the entourage, a total of eight of us, arrived at the suite, we all decided that there was enough bed space and couch cushions for all, and that the Sheraton whouldn't mind helping out a few extra volunteers needing a place to spend the night. For my part, there's no way in hell I would have wanted to stay in that giant place alone for the night. I probably would have spent it pacing around the suite in circles in a bathrobe and shower cap, and that wouldn't have been fun for anybody.

So that's where we established party HQ before heading off to catch Intolerable Cruelty, an outstanding, hilarious flick no matter what the IMDB comments may say. I like everything George Clooney does when he works with the Coen brothers. Every movement he makes and line he reads in "O Brother" and "Intolerable Cruelty" seems right and/or funny as the case warrants. Great movie, highly recommended. But I'm still confused about how it took six months to get to Bulgaria. Lost in Translation still hasn't made it here. That "Day After" movie will probably have a simultaneous international release. Life is hard sometimes.

But we somehow we go on. Saturday night we ate at Dreamhouse, the Sofia vegetarian restaurant tucked away in an alley off Vitosha Boulevard. It always has great food and an outstanding light show provided by the trolleys sparking on the lines outside the window. If ever in Sofia, try anything there. I can give no single recommendation, but the fried ice cream is always a good way to end the meal.

After dinner we all wandered off toward Murphy's("where good friends meet") to have a long-awaited get-together with Jeff R. and Petya. It was fun walking in with eight other Americans and watching them trying to make sure I was the right one to greet first. Introductions ran all around and we sat down for drinks and good conversation. We talked about our various jobs and the better luxury hotel in town. Jeff R. will probably swear by the Hilton to his dying day, and since he has far more experience in such things, I'll take him up on that.

The group broke in half again as some wimps went back to the Sheraton to catch up on lost sleep. The remaining members went with Jeff R. and Petya to a club very rarely visited by Peace Corps volunteers. Any place with any kind of a dress code usually reeks of expense. The Black Label, near Sofia's art museum, denied people in shorts.

Kevin, a volunteer who had joined the party out of a good sense of sporting fun, understood and accepted being turned away. He's a fun kind of guy and always wears shorts and Hawaiian shirts. Kate, who had gone home after Murphy's, heard about some of the cast and crew of Jeff R.'s movie Death Cloud! who had been at Black Label, and asked Kevin the next morning if he had met "Winnie Cooper." Kevin responded "Danica McKellar? She was there?" and could only recoil in horror at the opportunity missed. A lifelong fan of "The Wonder Years" and holder of great respect for Ms. McKellar, Kevin was apparently noticably upset. Life is hard sometimes.

A club called Chervilo later, I parted company with Jeff R. and Petya, and made my way back to the Sheraton where I crawled into bed and went to sleep. The next morning, I had a late breakfast, an early lunch, and a long, relaxing trip home to Silistra. It was painful for everyone leaving the suite, the weekend had been good and the time in the suite well-spent. Everything that was confirmed complimentary was looted from the room. The minibar left untouched. Kate and I met at the bus station after lunch and she rode along part of the way until her stop in Pleven. We had a great debrief about the weekend and talked about the things that keep us going when the kids are unbearable on Mondays.

Mine weren't too bad today, and I come to the internet club in good spirits, the week of the year in Bulgaria just beginning. Another year waits, and I'm ready for it. I think. I hope. I'm pretty sure.

Administrative Note: "Explanations" has been changed to more accurately reflect my current age and laziness in getting posts up on the site. That is all.

Posted by Rob at April 19, 2004 08:02 PM