After Bucharest we went to Sofia, our final destination in Europe.
We heard that there was nothing to do in Sofia, so we left only 1.5 days for it. And that was a big mistake because we loved it there.
The first day, when we arrived to our hostel it was pretty late. The hostel was a great change from the one in Sibiu. The common area was just really cool. It was big, with funky decorations, and cozy couches and very, very helpful staff. Right away we got a recommendation for food and went out for dinner.
The next day was a lot more eventful. We found out that there was a free tour around Sophia and were excited to go. I think we have mentioned before in this blog that free tours tend to be the better ones. In general, the tour guides work for tips which means that they have to earn that tip. This means that they really put a lot of effort into the tour and into making it engaging. This particular company works differently. It’s a non-profit organization whose goal is to open up Sophia and Bulgaria to tourism. The guides are really volunteers and any tips that they receive go to non-profit organization and not directly to the guides.
This may have been the best tour that we received to date. Boyko, the guide was funny, engaging and knowledgeable. He reminded us a lot of Borya Dolin (for those who do not know Borya - he is our favorite guide from Israel). We spent about 2.5 hours walking the city.
We saw a church, a mosque, a synagogue and 3 communist-era government buildings standing practically side-by-side. We saw thousand year old churches hidden in the middle of government buildings, and dug out in the underground metro stations. We drank mineral waters – hot and cold that are abundant in the city. We found a bell attached to a tree because the church it belongs to does not have a bell tower. We furthered our knowledge of European history of WWII, and the Communist era that followed.
Then a bunch of us from the tour went to a place that Boyko recommended. And he joined us as well. There we got to hear a lot more about the company that he is running and met a couple who runs the tours in Bucharest (Mikhael and Georgina.) We also met a guy from SF (Mark) who is a marketing consultant. Naturally, he and I had a lot to talk about. And he made a grand gesture and paid for lunch for all 12 people who were there. So we all agreed to meet again in the evening and pay him back with drinks...
I want to remind you guys that this was our last evening in Europe and we wanted to go out and make it memorable. I don’t think we could have found a better crowd to do it with. About 8 people from the tour showed up. Also Boyko showed up with his girlfriend and then had some of their friends join us. So we had a great mix of tourists and locals and had a ton of interesting conversations. And in the meantime all of us were trying to get Mark drunk.
The highlight of the evening was when we were talking to the locals (a lovely couple of Boyko’s friends whose names we do not remember) about how they view foreigners. I was telling them that in the late 80s and early 90s when American tourists just started to visit Russia, we not only were able to recognize them on the street right away, but also thought that they looked stupid. In response one of them smiles and says, “We STILL think they look stupid!” :)
No offense to our American readers, please let me explain. The way any Russian (or in this case Bulgarian) can tell an American apart from anybody else is by the fact that they smile as they walk down the street. It’s completely natural that they may even say hello to a passerby. From the perspective of a Russian (or a Bulgarian) this just looks odd. We also talked to some Americans who have traveled to Russia or Ukraine. Their perception was that everyone looked mean and angry. They didn’t see one friendly face anywhere on the street. Oh in that same conversation, we found out that we look American at this point as well ;)
A side story about Levka: Last time that Levka went to St. Petersburg (his home town), he went into a coffee shop and ordered his coffee (in Russian of course without any accent). After taking his order the barista inquired where he was from. He responded, “I’m from here. Why do you ask?” She said, “I can tell you are not from around here: you smiled when you entered, said “hello” and “please” when ordering a coffee” :)
I guess the American culture has rubbed off on all of us!
And so the night ended and so did the first chapter of our trip. It is hard to believe that one third of it is already over. It seems like we only just started.