Sofia, Bulgaria

May 1st and 2nd were Macedonian holidays. So a friend and fellow PCV and I went to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, for three days. It was about a 6 hour bus ride away from my town (and departs at midnight!), including an hour wait at the border.

Sofia is a beautiful city with lots of charm, and cool, really old buildings and churches. Skopje might have become like this if it hadn’t had a terrible earthquake in the 60’s and most of the buildings were replaced with communist-era concrete structures. We were also hoping to meet up with some Bulgarian PCV’s, but it was not in the cards, not this visit anyway.

I also discovered that things in Bulgaria are cheaper than in Macedonia, generally speaking. We did some sightseeing and did some shopping (I spent all my money) and I went to Dunkin’ Donuts almost every day and had American filter coffee.

Also, the Bulgarian language is very similar to Macedonian (as is Serbian and other Cyrillic languages), so Cheryl and I were able to get by with our Macedonian. However, we found that a lot of people also knew English, such as all the employees at the hostel we stayed at.

One of the highlights was Aleksander Nevski Church, a must-see with beautiful massive gold-domes, built between 1892 & 1912. We lucked out in that there was a service going on inside with a choir and orthodox priests swinging their incense holders and blessing us. The music was haunting as it echoed inside the huge room filled with ancient icon paintings and religious art.

I definately plan to return to Bulgaria, hopefully this summer. I hear that the beaches on the Black Sea are fantastic!