a (minor) jaunt to Sofia.

We from Beirut back to Istanbul on Christmas Day. The allure of the overcast weather and clouded minarets won out as the opportune setting for the holiday. The odd marriage of Christmas trees and the Lebanese national symbol added to the always surreal mirage of parades, carols and seasonal lighting. Back to the shadows.


But as New Year's encroached, so did affordable accommodation. While not short of spending a week developing a committed romance to long afternoons of nargileh and chess, we sorted this out by opting for the night bus to Bulgaria a couple days prior to the year-flip.

The bus stewardess was so charming in her care for our well being during our border crossing that I psychologically adopted her as my Bulgarian mother figure. She had a long parka that stood as an indicator of the cold eastern-european winter that lay ahead.


She wore it righteously, Bulgaria was cold.


Sofia, the capital, is pretty close to the western border of the country, surrounded by Romania, Serbia and Macedonia - well landlocked and far from any warming Mediterranean air. Unlike Turkey, commercial (and specifically, culinary) establishments paled in abundance. Signage was modest, and when we finally found a hostel; it was hiding in rooms wedged off the trunk of a dim, tight concrete stairwell. It felt post-communist and nascent-capitalist; I suppose it felt like eastern europe.


A fantastic, ragged old orange tram snaked through the city. It was right outside our window and routinely sparked in passing - loud crackles heard from our freezing, white room. Later we realized the driver would have to scuttle out to manually switch the tram's path on the rails.


The streets were only occupied in an objective-oriented manner, people shuffling on the ice from point A to point B. The market felt like a crippled product port, consumers working against the much lauded normative temperature of the human body. We did find a coffee house packed to the brim, stuffed as tight as a subway at rush hour and boasting with energy carried from both vodka and coffee. Certainly, the place to be.


On New Year's we bought an array of groceries and prepared a buffet dinner in our attic stronghold. We acquired wine from the nearest street-side barrel, and watched the sparks from the tram crackle by before and after the fireworks.


We assimilated well to being objective oriented civilians living in an urban landscape in winter. We left our dwelling to seek goods and carry out tasks, and travelled to get places in the most direct fashion.

Otherwise, we stayed indoors.


While pleasurable in moderation, it all felt a rather poor way to visit a country, though we had little incentive to do much else.


And so, as per the deduction of getting the most out our travels, aborted Poland and Germany.


And on New Year's Day we took the night bus back to Istanbul.

(All pictures taken from the attic, which is to say in Bulgaria, by Andrew C.H.)