Crossing borders

For the first time since arriving in Macedonia over seven months ago, I got my Peace Corps passport stamped, and headed into Bulgaria for a weekend in Sofia. It was the natural first choice because it's cheap (only about 10 dollars one way via 15 passenger van) and close (from the border town of Delcevo only 2 hrs to Sofia). I went with a good friend and fellow PCV who lives in Delcevo, and we stayed at a hostel called Hostel Mostel that is a short 10 min walk from most of the main sights in Sofia. Naturally, the first thing we did after arriving at the hostel was go here:

We couldn't help it. We were both hungry and wanted some reliable American fast food. Sure, Macedonia has a few McDonalds' and other unpleasantness, but no Subway. Heck, I don't even prefer Subway when I have the choice between that and Quiznos back in the states. But for whatever reason, Subway was the perfect way to start our trip. After that we decided to wander the streets in search of some of the well-known cathedrals and churches scattered around the city center. 

Sveti Georgi Church

Ivan Vasov National Theater

Russian Orthodox church

The colossal Aleksander Nevski cathedral, built as big thank-you to Russia for helping liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the 19th Century. 

 

As we wandered around, we definitely noticed several similarities and differences between our experiences in towns/cities in Macedonia and Sofia. For differences, we noted that Sofia is not lacking municipal funding for public cleanliness and trash clean-up. A lot of the city streets were completely devoid of trash and even graffiti. Also, we saw roughly 3 stray dogs over the course of 2 full days in the city of 1.2 million. Next, Bulgaria's EU membership creates a whole different range of choices in stores, restaurants, etc. that we haven't seen in places like Skopje. This is not always such a good thing. While seeing Subway for the first time was a welcome sight, it was on its way to the American model of having one every 1-2 city blocks. McDonalds already achieved that in Sofia. Not welcome. I'll take a banichka or pleskavica over that any day. 

Benefits of EU membership. I appreciated it. 

However, the similarities were obvious as well. From the standpoint of language, Bulgarian is the closest to Macedonian of any language in the Balkans. This is result of a lot of shared culture, tradition and history, and I'll spare the lesson on that (and spare myself screwing it up and pissing off either a bunch of Macedonians, Bulgarians, or both). Regardless, the language similarities helped us get by a little easier, but we also found many people in the city spoke English, not unlike Skopje. Our food choices for "Bulgarian cuisine" were basically identical to what we'd normally find in Macedonia. Their version of a shopska salad (probably the most well-known Macedonian salad) just includes some sliced green pepper in addition to everything else. I didn't get to try any Bulgarian rakija, but I do know that it wouldn't be domashna (homemade) due to EU regulations so I don't think I missed much. Then again having homemade alcohol in a big city like Sofia is a recipe for hospitalization or losing a kidney. 

After spending most of Friday walking around, we ran out of things to do and decided to book a day trip for Saturday through our hostel to the famous Rila Monastery in western Bulgaria. We were pretty beat by the evening and planned to just crash at the hostel early so we'd be well-rested for the long car ride to the monastery the next day. Instead, we found ourselves walking into a nightclub with some new friends from the hostel at 11:30pm where we paid the equivalent of $10 for open bar all night. 

The club. What could go wrong with open bar all night and a tour the next morning?

Fortunately, the next day we managed to wake up in time for our tour and we were off on the road to Rila Monastery. It is located in the middle of the highest mountain range of Bulgaria and was built in the 14th Century, named after Sveti Ivan Rilski. Near the monastery, we visited a church and the cave where Sveti Ivan lived in solitude for roughly eight years. 

Ivan's cozy cave dwelling.

Church next to the cave.

After the cave we arrived at the monastery and had a few hours to walk around. Unfortunately, we had no tour guide, so we missed out on some of the historical vignettes. I found out today from the owner of the burek shop in my village that at one point the monastery itself was divided between Bulgaria and Serbia, or at least between the two Orthodox churches. But regardless, it was beautiful and well worth a trip even without a tour guide:

The mountain backdrop was pretty stunning.

Eventually we made our way back on the road to Sofia, but not before a few photo opportunities worth sharing: 

Looking back towards Rila.

We made it back to the hostel and decided, for real this time, that we were going to take it easy for the evening and just go get dinner at a place called the Ale House. All I can say is, go there. The food was great, they have beer taps at your table (refill yourself), and it wasn't overly expensive. For example, my friend got a delicious wild boar for about 10 dollars. 

Good beer. 

On Sunday we were scheduled to take a bus back to Macedonia at around 8pm, so we decided to walk to the bus station in the early afternoon to get our tickets and just take it easy after then. Well, we found there was no bus to Macedonia at 8pm. Somehow the Macedonian bus system managed to screw us over even in Bulgaria! With no other real option, we got bus tickets to Blagoevgrad (the closest major city to the border with Macedonia) and hoped to find a cab driver to take across the border to Delcevo. We found a cab driver, no problem. But he neglected to mention that had no green card to cross the border until we actually got to the border. With no ride on the other side, we were basically going to have to walk 10km to Delcevo and dodge random wild animals and crazy drivers on the main road. But by blind luck, a cab driver was waiting on the Macedonian side of the border after just dropping off someone from Skopje. And the best part is that he recognized me because I had taken a cab with him before in Obleshevo, and he yelled over to us to come with him. So essentially, all it took was for us to cross the border into Macedonia before everything was right with the world again. I don't know what that means or whether it makes any sense, but I definitely have Mite the taxi driver's phone number saved now. 

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