Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria, United Kingdom | Tags: Avebury, Bulgaria, Martenitsa, spring, tradition
Hello everyone,
there are a lot of new stories that I would like to share with you. I’ve been to the Lake District last weekend and yesterday I got back from a weekend in Bath and Avebury and Stonehenge. I’ll write about that very soon, uni is keeping me rather busy, sorry! Anyways, here’s a little update on the Martenitsa story, the Bulgarian tradition I told you about a few weeks ago.
Yesterday I left one of my two Martenitsas in Avebury. Now hoping for my wish to come true 
That’s all for now, I’ll be back soon with the latest stories!
As the tradition demands, I left the Martenitsa with a budding tree
Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria | Tags: Baba Marta, Bulgaria, culture, Martenitsa, tradition
Today is the first of March, a special day in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian culture is very rich in traditions, stories and also superstitions.
Naturally, people are craving for spring to arrive at this time and in Bulgaria it is believed that the month of March (called “mart” or “март” in Cyrillic letters) is a grumpy old lady who often might send even more snow to the country in her moodiness. In order to please Baba Marta (Grandma March) people give each other so-called Martenitsas (мартеница). These are little adornments made of red and white yarn, worn around the wrist. Red and white are symbols for health (red cheeks) and a long life (white hair). I received one from my Bulgarian friend today and I feel honoured and happy to be part of the tradition!
The Martenitsa has to be kept around the wrist until one sees a sparrow, a stork or a budding tree – or alternatively until the 22nd of March. Once you saw any of the above or it’s the end of March you have to take off the Martenitsa and put it either around the branch of a tree or under a rock, then you make a wish.
If you ever visit Bulgaria, have a close look at the trees there, you will spot a lot of Martenitsas!
My Martenitsa (actually it should be worn on the left wrist I just read... oops)
Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria
I just found these pictures I had taken with my phone and wanted to share them! They show scenes from my daily life in Sofia.
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- View from the classroom window
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- Tourist Tea? Can somebody explain that?
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- I lived in this house
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- The elevator inside the house… trustworthy isn’t it?
Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria | Tags: Bulgaria, communism, Cyrillic, sights, Sofia, st. george church, Stambolov
Finally all the work for university is done and I have a couple of days left to enjoy Sofia. Eventually I managed to take part in the Free Sofia Tour organised by volunteers who show people around Sofia every day at 6PM and additionally at 11AM during the weekends. Definitely worth it!
During those two hours walking around with a small group I got to know many interesting things that were not in my guidebook!
My personal favourite was the small Church of St. George which is hidden in a courtyard surrounded by the presidency and the Sheraton hotel (see pictures). It is a very old building, dating back to the 4th or 5th century. Back then it was a Roman temple, afterwards a Slavic Christian church, in Ottoman times it was a mosque and since the Bulgarian independence it is a Christian church again. In front of the church there are ruins and leftovers of old houses and streets.
Our guide also showed us some trivia that not many people know about Sofia. One of them is the big red star that all communist countries used to have on top of their party headquarters. The Bulgarian red star still exists and can now be spotted forgotten behind a fence at the public bath which is not operating anymore. Personally, I find that very interesting from a cultural perspective. I believe that in Germany such symbols would be either destroyed or put into a museum. The Bulgarian government doesn’t seem to care though that this historical object is rusting and falling apart somewhere. One of the pictures shows the building which carries the Bulgarian flag now instead of a star.
The pictures beneath also show some other interesting places, for instance the National Library with the statue of Methodi and Cyril who invented the Cyrillic letters that are used in Bulgaria and some other countries such as Russia. Also the statue of Stefan Stambolov can be seen. He was an important statesman, but was murdered with an axe, which is why there is a cut in his head.
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- The famous Alexander Nevski Cathedral
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- National Library with statue of Cyril and Metodi
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- The National Theatre
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- Where the red star has been.. now there’s a flag
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- Stefan Stambolov and his axe cut
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- St. George’s Church and ancient ruins
The body language of foreign countries is always something to be really careful with. Gestures that might be normal in your culture can be not understood or even taken as an offence in other countries. These two I observed in Bulgaria:
• Yes/No
Be aware that Bulgarians shake their head when they mean “yes” and move it up and down when they mean “no”.
• Thumb and index finger form a circle, the other fingers are up
This gesture is very rude in some countries; in others it is to indicate delicious food. In Bulgaria it means “zero”.
From my personal experience, it also seems that Bulgarians smile less than people in other countries and sometimes they make an unfriendly impression on me. However, I think they are actually very nice people and just do not know how to handle the fact that I have no clue what they’re saying and they don’t speak English either. This country is not very used to having foreign visitors yet. In the city centre of Sofia you won’t have trouble to find people who speak English, but in the residential area where I live, most people don’t. It’s perhaps the same on the countryside, too. So don’t take it personal when people frown and walk away from you when they find out you don’t speak Bulgarian.
My time in Sofia is slowly coming to an end, which is a pity. But there is also a saying that, the higher you climb on the ladder, the better the view. So, if the ladder is my time in Bulgaria, I can say that I’m now ready to give some good recommendations to you, for the case that you’re visiting Sofia.
Today, I have some tips for those of you who like good food.
My personal favourite restaurant in Sofia is called Pri Yafata. It offers traditional Bulgarian food and the whole place is also decorated in a traditionally Bulgarian way. There is also Bulgarian music and in the weekends there’s a Gipsy band playing. 100% Bulgarian! They have a big grill where you can watch your food being prepared. I recommend pork with apples and blueberry sauce.
Address: 28 Solunska street
An insider tip for those of you who like alternative style is the Dreamhouse. It is a vegetarian restaurant that also offers organic food. The menu has some really creative dishes to offer, for example chocolate mousse with avocado and orange. It is not a very popular restaurant (yet) and a little difficult to find to entrance (you have to enter a passage in a side street and then go upstairs), but definitely worth it!
Address: 50A Alabin street (How to find them)
Generally, the food prices in Bulgaria are really economic. For a main dish, a side dish and a non-alcoholic drink you can expect to pay something around 15 to 20 Lv., which equals 7.50 to 10 Euros.
Добър апетит! (Bon appétit!)
Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria | Tags: Bulgaria, Cyrillic, groceries, Sofia, supermarket
In a foreign country, even simple things such as grocery shopping can become a sort of adventure. Especially in a country that also uses foreign letters that you’re not so familiar with, such as the Cyrillic letters of Bulgaria. Meanwhile, I can read these letters, but it takes me some more time and effort than to read Latin letters.
The supermarket chains in Bulgaria are really well-equipped and there are many products and brands that I’m familiar with. Often, products also carry pictures that explain what they are. On strawberry jam for example, there is mostly a picture or drawing of a strawberry. Nevertheless, there are also many products that carry only a Bulgarian brand name and description. Take sausages. There’s really a big variety of them in the shelves (I mean those you slice and put on your sandwich). Personally I prefer chicken, but I have no idea how to identify it! I looked for pictures of chicken on the packaging, but there were none. I even took my pocket dictionary to the supermarket, looked up the word for chicken and compared it to the product tags without success. Next time I should try to find someone who works in the supermarket and ask…
Also buying fruit and veggies can be a challenge. Usually I go to a supermarket where you have to weigh the fruit yourself and press the right button on the scales to print a sticker with the price. Luckily on the screen of the scales you see pictures of the products, but sometimes there is more than one sort of that product available, such as apples. So then you have to memorize the (Cyrillic!) name of that sort of apple, go to the scales and find that name back there. Sometimes I see people looking at me a little bit confused wondering if that girl is in a supermarket for the first time in her life of if she maybe has visual problems since actually it is really obvious which button she is supposed to press, yet she takes ages! (A few times I put the wrong sticker on my fruit already which once made the cashier rather angry…)
At some point, I wanted to buy a water kettle in that supermarket. As the law dictates, there is a warranty for electronic products and you need the receipt and a warranty card in order to make use of it. I didn’t really have that in mind when I went to the cash point with my water kettle and the cashier did not speak any English. [Looking at it from retro perspective, I know now that she was asking if I wanted the water kettle on a separate receipt, without the other groceries on it and that I should go to the information point with the receipt in order to receive the warranty card.] At some point I identified the word “garantia” (guarantee) and only then I had an idea what she was talking about. She phoned her colleague from the customer information point and after I had paid, the colleague came to the cash point to pick me up and made a hand sign for me to follow her. She took the receipt from me and stapled it to the warranty card. I managed to say “Thank you” in Bulgarian and left the supermarket praising the power of body language.
Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria | Tags: Bulgaria, culture, public transport, Sofia
For me as a German, the Bulgarian culture and daily life bear some amusing and surprising facets. Admittedly, I don’t consider myself as a German-German who has been exposed to nothing but German culture her whole life. I’ve lived in four countries up to now and I have been in an intercultural environment for the past four years or so. Yet, Bulgaria can still surprise me and sometimes confuse me. There are certain things here that I just don’t understand. Here comes the Public Transport Mystery.
The German in me loves rules and regulations and feels a strong urge to adhere to them. It’s only a few weeks ago that the thought of using public transportation without a ticket and getting caught caused me goose bumps. Yet, here in Bulgaria I was kind of forced into this. In order to get to the university I have to catch the bus. The busses are… let me put it like this… not the latest models on the market. And apparently it was necessary to build a sort of protection for the bus driver in the shape of a big, transparent plastic wall. Then, it was realised that this newly built plastic wall stopped any interaction between driver and passenger, also the act of buying a ticket. So in every single bus they sewed a little, not very neatly-done square-shaped hole into the plastic, which is barely big enough to put two fingers holding a coin through it so you could buy your ticket.
Yet, there are two reasons that keep you from buying your ticket. The first reason is that the busses are often so stuffed with people that you can only hope to still fit in somewhere and get out again where you hope to get off. There’s no way to even think you could make your way to the driver and ask for a ticket. (Luckily there is also not a way to even think somebody could walk through the bus and check whether everyone has a ticket.)But even when the bus is not as crowded and you actually make your way to the driver, he might not sell you a ticket, because he’s talking on the phone (alternatively: smoking) and driving and the same time, so he just doesn’t have a hand to give you a ticket and take your money. He just makes a quick gesture that you should go back to your seat.
At other times he just doesn’t seem to be in the mood to sell you a ticket and mumbles something in Bulgarian. Well then, what else can I do than to shrug and go back to my seat? But then I start to look around me nervously if there’s anyone dressed like a conductor. Would they understand my excuse in English? Would they believe me? Would they have a deal with the bus driver so they can collect fines from as many people as possible? I’ve been an “illegal passenger” for quite some times already (don’t tell anyone!) and even though it saves me some money, I don’t understand why the bus drivers don’t sell me tickets. If I’m the only person they do that to it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but in the end, their company pays them with the money the clients paid.
By the way, there is something like a student discount ticket for public transport tickets. All you need is something they call “student book” that carries your picture and is filled in with university data in Bulgarian. Even your name needs to be translated and written in Cyrillic letters. That has been kindly done for me by the secretary of our programme coordinator. It took a few days though. When I had finally picked it up I went to the city centre with it. There’s a ticket office there and there’s always a really long queue. But I waited patiently in anticipation. When it was my turn, it turned out that the girl at the ticket counter didn’t speak English. She was desperately looking around for a colleague that could save her from this conversation with me, but there was nobody. So I just gave her my student book and said very slowly “ticket for one month”. She took the book and returned it to me with the words “no stamp” and then showed me that there were four stamps missing. So now, until I have figured out where I get these stamps I will probably continue to be an illegal passenger.
So, the central question at hand is: How do Bulgarian public transport companies survive when people just don’t buy tickets?
Something really enjoyable to do in the Bulgarian capital is to visit the opera. The tickets are really cheap (I think the most expensive one is 40 Lv., which equals 20 Euros) and the architecture both inside and outside is very nice. We have visited the opera to see the ballet Swanlake by Tchaikovsky. We got tickets for 10 Lv. (5 Euros) and had a very good sight of the stage.
Both the orchestra and the dancers were really skilled and my first visit to a ballet was a complete success. In December there will be The Nutcracker, so that is a must on my agenda. Despite ballets, the opera of course also plays real opera such as La Traviata by Verdi.
Filed under: Sofia, Bulgaria | Tags: Children, International, Park, Sofia
Not really in the centre of Sofia, but rather in the district called Mladost, you can find a really special park: The International Park of the Children of the World. It is a kind of monument dedicated to the well-being and happiness of all children in the world.
In 1982 a UNICEF reunion took place in Sofia and the monument was built on this occasion. The participating countries all installed bells in the park (see pictures). Every country’s bell looks different and many carry slogans or pictures that represent the country. Back then in 1982 the political situation of the world was still kind of different which is why you can find bells from Eastern and Western Germany, from Czechoslovakia and from the USSR. There is also one bell dedicated to the children of Bulgaria by Pope John Paul II.
A lot of families visit this park and the children find it a lot of fun to ring all the bells and see how they all make different sounds. An interactive monument thus, which brings joy to all visiting children (also to “elder children” ). I never knew something like that existed and I was happy to find it in Sofia.
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- Dedication to the children
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- Families visiting the park
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- The GDR bell
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- That was a lovely bell!
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- The Vietnamese bell
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- From the distance.
