Made it to Europe...Kinda...
Hello Everyone,
How are you?
Well, after three enjoyable but long weeks we have left Turkey and have entered Europe. However, it's not really Europe. It's Bulgaria. We are in Sofia, the capital city.
Sofia is nice but odd.
very
very
odd
Let me explain.
Biggest odd thing: they shake thier heads to mean 'yes' and nodd their heads to mean 'no'. It is seriously the weirdest thing! We asked for the bill at our restaurant yesterday, and the waitress shook her head at us - we were, like, 'what do you mean we can't have our bill!?!?' Then we realized, she was acutally saying 'yes'. We have been trying to just keep our heads still when agreeing or disagreeing with things, but it is virtually impossible to to stop - try it; try to nod your head, or even just keep it still, when you are disagreeing with something....betcha can't!
Next odd thing: sometimes the street signs are parallel to the street you are on, but sometimes the signs are perpendicular, so it's pretty much impossible to figure out where you are. Seriously, is there anywhere else in the whole entire would that puts street signs perpendicular to the street!?!?!
Next odd thing: Bugarian is similar to Russian, but not quite identical. They use the same alphabet and some words are the same, but some words are just similar without being the same so it's just similar enough to make me and B think that we understand what someone is saying, but acutally we don't....
Suffice it to say that we have spent the majority of our time here totally and completely lost!
Other observations about Bulgaria:
- They make very good ice cream. Really, really good!
- Food and alcohol are DIRT cheap. We've been eating really good, really large meals with lots 'o beer, and paying about $3 or $4 per meal! Love that!!!
- They really love football (soccer). We actually went to a football match last night. A guy from our hostel recommended going, and tickets were super, super cheap. We paid the equivalent of about $2CAD for our tickets! But, little did we know that the match was the biggest, most important match of the year for Bulgarians!
How are you?
Well, after three enjoyable but long weeks we have left Turkey and have entered Europe. However, it's not really Europe. It's Bulgaria. We are in Sofia, the capital city.
Sofia is nice but odd.
very
very
odd
Let me explain.
Biggest odd thing: they shake thier heads to mean 'yes' and nodd their heads to mean 'no'. It is seriously the weirdest thing! We asked for the bill at our restaurant yesterday, and the waitress shook her head at us - we were, like, 'what do you mean we can't have our bill!?!?' Then we realized, she was acutally saying 'yes'. We have been trying to just keep our heads still when agreeing or disagreeing with things, but it is virtually impossible to to stop - try it; try to nod your head, or even just keep it still, when you are disagreeing with something....betcha can't!
Next odd thing: sometimes the street signs are parallel to the street you are on, but sometimes the signs are perpendicular, so it's pretty much impossible to figure out where you are. Seriously, is there anywhere else in the whole entire would that puts street signs perpendicular to the street!?!?!
Next odd thing: Bugarian is similar to Russian, but not quite identical. They use the same alphabet and some words are the same, but some words are just similar without being the same so it's just similar enough to make me and B think that we understand what someone is saying, but acutally we don't....
Suffice it to say that we have spent the majority of our time here totally and completely lost!
Other observations about Bulgaria:
- They make very good ice cream. Really, really good!
- Food and alcohol are DIRT cheap. We've been eating really good, really large meals with lots 'o beer, and paying about $3 or $4 per meal! Love that!!!
- They really love football (soccer). We actually went to a football match last night. A guy from our hostel recommended going, and tickets were super, super cheap. We paid the equivalent of about $2CAD for our tickets! But, little did we know that the match was the biggest, most important match of the year for Bulgarians!
IT WAS INSANE
The match was between two Bulgarian teams, so there was huge, and I mean HUGE, rivalry between the fans. We ended up in the 'Blue Section' with fans cheering for "Team Levski". There were 11,000 people at the match and all of them, except us and the 3 other nice Americans we met on the train from Istanbul and who came with us to the match, spent the whole time incessantly screaming nasty things (at least they sounded nasty) regarding the 'other' team. The craziest thing was the level of security. As I say, there were about 11,000 fans at the game and I swear there were 1,000 police. Most of the police were in full-on riot gear and several dozen were on horseback. Despite this massive police presence, the fans still set fire to the 'other' teams flags, set off flares, shot firecrackers towards the football field and towards the police officers, and pushed poor little me over running towards the field when a penalty was called. We left shortly after the pushing over/falling over incident, but it was fun while it lastest!
So that's Bulgaria! Photos coming soon.
T
posted by TK at 7:05 AM
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