Българската коледа

so, there was a little change of plans: i am not going to istanbul tonight but tomorrow night, meaning i will arrive there on saturday early morning. same difference :-P
actually, the reason for this postponement is twofold: firstly, i don't wanna go alone on the train all by myself as there are some stories making the round which make me prefer having company. since marko (--> friend from belgrade) doesn't get his passport back from the greeks (visa troubles) until today, he will only start his trip tomorrow morning. thus, when he then arrives in sofia in the course of the evening, i will join him in the train and we'll travel the rest of the way together. this will not only make the trip a bit safer but - more importantly - also a lot more enjoyable (cause i will be able to talk marko's ears off while he's trying to sleep in the most comfortable train seats *lol*)
secondly, i decided it would be better to recover completely before starting the party time in istanbul during which i don't expect much time to rest ;) yesterday was the first day since last thursday that i felt more or less well again. i had first thought that i only caught a slight cold and tried to rest as much as possible before going to stara zagora with rozi. however, once there, i realized that the cold wasn't that "slight" after all. shortly after our arrival at rozi's parents' place, i started to feel dizzy and preferred to stay in bed the rest of the day. and the following, too. and the one after that....well, also for the most part, at least. as far as i know i didn't have a fever, but was shivering for hours and felt that my head was going to burst into a million pieces any second. so i was more than glad that i had a wonderful bulgarian mom taking care of me. poor rozi's mom: she thinks her daughter brings home a guest for christmas and instead there arrives a patient. well, finally some homemade medicine and a few pills brought me back to normal and i was fit enough to take a long walk in the "famous" park of stara zagora on our last day there. yesterday, rozi and i hitchhiked back to sofia and here i am, taking a last short rest before leaving for turkey :)
besides the negligible fact that i was not blessed with perfect health during the past few days i had a really nice christmas. the pre-holiday time in bulgaria seems to be not even half as imposing/annoying as in germany. supermarkets started comparably late to put christmas chocolate into their shelves; the glittering, shiny and kitschy decoration in the streets was easily bearable, while the decoration in private peoples' homes was even kept to an extreme minimum. what a difference! you could really go around town for the longest time without being shown from all sides that you must be happy now 'cause it's chrismas... i liked that :) in bulgaria, christmas eve, is traditionally the last day of a period of fasting. thus, on the 24th a variety of vegetarian food is served - either 7, 9 or 11 dishes, one of them being a delicious home-made bread with a baked-in coin. whoever gets the coin will receive luck during the next year.
by the way a bulgarian wishing merry christmas will say весела коледа (vesela koleda), happy holidays here are весели празници (veseli praznitsi) and the new year shall be a честита нова година (chestita nova godina). during the communist times christmas was rarely celebrated here and дяадо коледа (dyado koleda), the bulgarian santa clause, had quite a hard time in these regions. i was told that new years was a lot bigger instead. however, those times are over, capitalism is getting bigger and even in bulgaria you can more and more often see one of those life-sized plastic santa clauses dangling as if strangled from the walls of some of the bigger autohauses :-P
so, now it's time to get ready, go out and buy a return ticket for the bus from istanbul to sofia on january 1st so that i can welcome eike at the airport on the 2nd!
i wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! see you/talk to you/write to you in 2008! :D

Raben(enkel)tochter

ja, ja, ich weiß, ich bin wirklich enie treulose tomate - hätte mich längst mal wieder melden sollen bei euch, ruth, peter, oma, großvati, liebe familie! aber wie die zeit so vergeht....ist ja auch so: keine nachrichten sind in der regel gute nachrichten :)
ich werde morgen früh - am samstag - mit meiner freundin rozi zu ihrer familie nach stara zagora fahren, wo wir gemeinsam weihnachten verbringen werden. am 25. oder spätestens 26.12. geht es jedoch schon wieder zurück nach sofia, von wo ich am 27.12. abends den nachtzug nach istanbul nehme (keine sorge, auch darin werde ich nicht alleine sitzen). meine rückkehr ist nach sylvester für den 1.1. abends (nachtbus) geplant, weil ich am 2.1. nachmittags mal wieder besuch erwarte ;)
also, ich wünsche euch allen ein frohes weihnachtsfest und einen guten rutsch in das neue jahr!!!!!

seid allesamt herzlich umarmt,

eure indra

how good it is to be vegetarian!

today is the last day of the seminar "bringing europe closer to young citizens" in which i - more or less - participated this past week. it was one of those international seminars funded by the EU this time with participants from bulgaria, lithuania, romania, moldova, greece, italy, france and germany. well, actually i am a bit disappointed regarding the content of the lectures/working groups during the seminar, therefore i've stopped going to most of them after half of the week was over. however, i regularly followed the rest of the programme - lunch, dinner, free time ;)
thus, i experienced once again how much better it is to be vegetarian:

firstly, because you will almost always receive better (tastier and healthier) food

secondly, because you receive your food usually before the others - at least in bulgaria *lol*





the seminar definitely proved to be a perfect way to get to know some more restaurants around sofia - some of them serving excellent bulgarian food :)

my favourite part of the programme was however our excursion yesterday, first to boyana church, where we could admire some beautiful frescos from the 11th and 14th centuries and then to winter wonder land on vitosha mountain, where i spent more than one hour on the back of a horse - the first time after more than seven years! and i couldn't have had more luck with the horse: "magiya" was so wonderful and had a beautifully smooth gallop ;)


due to the seminar i didn't do much more since last wednesday. no university - the only class i should have had besides bulgarian was cancelled for whichever mysterious reason 15 minutes before it should have started - nothing uncommon here, at least i received the message before i arrived there and not hours after the class should have finished (which happened to me a few weeks ago with another class). thus, my highlites of the week consisted of a visit to swinging hall to see the band "ostava" perform live --> some kind of bulgarian britpop made in sofia :D and, of course, of last friday. it was the xmas party at zedes (zentrum für deutschlandstudien - where i have some of my classes) and afterwards hrissi and i went to a karaoke bar until...well, quite early *lol*

as i had my camera with me most of the time lately, i would like to provide you with a few more visual impressions of sofia. on the left you can see some of the most prominent buildings of this city: the national theatre and the court of justice - the latter is situated on vitoshka, a major shopping street, and a quite popular meeting point.

on the left you can see exactly the same bulevard (vitoshka) with view towards vitosha mountain on a typical cold winter day.








the corridor is in the bulgarian parliament. i took the picture last thursday when we had a small tour through the building with the group from the seminar...









this is inside the synagogue. my grandmother and i visited it together when she was here. the chandelabrum weighs more than 1000 kg.










this beautiful man holds his head up just around the corner from my work, so i see him quite regularly :-P


the yellow bricks (right) are quite characteristic for sofia as they are laid out widely in the center. so to say the city's special exhibit, which actually proves to be quite annoying and dangerous in snowy weather, since it then turns into something even more slippery than ice!



finally, the remains of a bulgarian spring tradition: on the first of march bulgarians give each other these red-and-white luck charms which they then to keep until they see the first storck or certain trees in bloom. then they take the "martenitsa" off and hang it in a tree or bush - where some of them remain until next winter and longer...... (btw a more detailed description of this tradition you will either receive from me in march or you have to look it up yourself, but i think xmas is not the right time for going into detail ;))

23

so, i'm again a bit older. and i dare say i quite like being 23 - so far ;)
though, i first didn't feel much like celebrating my birthday - i never do - i eventually decided to ask some friends to come to a pizzaria with me. and some short text messages later i reserved a table at "krivoto" for the evening. i had a wonderful time with some of my bulgarian and international friends, eating, drinking, laughing a lot....after that chrissy and i went to a karaoke bar around the corner. it was completely empty, but she still gave me my private little birthday serenade *lol*. altogether a wonderful start into the 24th year of my life :-P
after weeks and weeks of doubts that any of the mail sent to me by friends and family from germany, i finally received my first package. a friend had advised me i should simply go to the post office and ask, since i couldn't be sure that they'd actually provide me with one of thos little slips saying that sth has arrived for me and i should come pick it up. anyway, i did so and have now a huge supply of "vanillekipferl" made by my grandmother (vielen dank liebe oma! deine kipferl sind einfach die besten!). anyway, just two days later i received two notifications that another package and also a letter have arrived for me. i couldn't pick them up yet, because of the weekend, but i will go tomorrow. i just thought it was kinda cute how on one of the paper slips the mailman indicated some of the information in english and german as he must have figured that if the letter came from abroad and my name sounded rather foreign bulgarian might be somewhat difficult for me to understand :-P such nice gesture - and quite uncommon as that :)

Bulgarian pogo

yesterday, my friend dessi asked me whether i'd like to accompany her and her boyfriend to a punk concert. a german (!) punk concert in the middle of sofia :D i had never even heard the name of that band - "stoned age" - nor did i really know what would expect me music-wise. however, i decided to go and thus experienced my first underground punk concert. actually, i liked the support act - a bulgarian band called "remont" - better than the german main act, but it was definitely quite an interesting performance. all of the band members had covered themselves in mud and fake blood and two of them wore some of the most beautiful mohawks i'd ever seen *lol* in the end, i really enjoyed it, although i did not join the pogo dancers or screamed along with the songs ( i still wonder, how the rest of the audience could distinguish one word from the other when i didn't even realize that there were "words" in the songs at all).

anyway, this was not the only concert i went to last weekend: rihanna gave an open-air charity concert last friday. unfortunately, the square was way too small for the huge audience (mainly consisting of teenaged girls yelling "rriiii-haaaaa-naaaaa" all the time. besides that the acoustic was bad and the music itself not much better. okay, okay, what else should i have expected, it was a concert by rihanna after all - nothing for which i would pay money, but intersting enough to take a look at it. in the end we didn't stay much longer than for three or four songs and then went to have "perzheni kartofi ses sirene" and some beers instead.

oh, yeah, and there was yet another "concert" that i saw this saturday - please note the wonderful decoration:

as the german embassy had orgnized some kind of "christmas bazar" on its premises, some of the other german erasmus students and i decided to take the chance and visit some familiar grounds. oh my, the german embassy must be one of the ugliest ones in all of sofia! anyway, it was kinda weird to listen to so much german being spoken around me - i hadn't imagine there'd be THAT many germans around. hahaha. well, at least the amount of germans could remind me of a real christmas market - the rest of the setting (glühwein, candles, leberkäs and sauerkraut) didn't really succeed in setting me in the right mood.

hmmm, we didn't stay in the embassy too long, but continued our evening with some "moving pictures". i'm slowly getting the idea that bulgarians are either ignorant of the cold or they are simply a tiny bit insane with regard to the weather. seriously, first, there is an OPEN-AIR concert on the last day of november - okay, okay, such things can happen, especially, since there is more space outside than in some kind of hall, and who would have expected it to be cold AND rain at the same time? - but then, who gets the idea of showing short films on public walls OUTSIDE on the first day of december?!? whereas i have to admit that i was one of the crazy people who went along with the shivering group. so maybe it isn't such a stupid idea after all. in any case, i had fun and the cold was a wonderful excuse to warm up in a bar afterwards :D

Belgrade - "White City"; smelly fog and my first guest!

after almost three continuous weeks in sofia, it was time to get of town again. so i got my stuff together and bought myself a train ticket to belgrade. i went there during the night from friday to saturday last week. i stayed two days, one night, and came back by train early on monday morning. okay, i have to admit it wasn't the best time to visit the city given the weather forecast promised lots of snow. but who could have known that the snow would be accompanied by so much fog? well, anyway, this way i got to know belgrade as a really "bel" (= white) "grade" (=city) :-D my wonderful serbian guide - marko from couchsurfing whom i had met in ohrid at the CS-balkan meeting - picked me up from the train station in the wee hours of saturday morning and after a short break in his residence, he showed me to this park, where you usually have a great view over the rivers. danube and sava. well, in this picture you can see the gorgeous view that i had *lol*
but please don't get me wrong: i still had a wonderful time. okay, that time did involve some wet feet and cold nose and ears, but also some really nice people, serbian coffee and a palacinca (=pancake) party ;) all that already convinced me that i HAVE to go back whenever the city itself is also more inviting. the people were already!



coming back to sofia, i also found a snowed-in city once again. but the next day was sunny and really nice.
<-- aleksander nevski cathedral covered in snow ...BUT THEN...
there came the fog! no, i won't post any pictures of sofia sunken in in the fog here. first of all, because it doesn't look any nice and there isn't anything to see; and secondly, because i didn't take any :-P
just this much: the fog is not just fog. it smells bad. it makes your throat itch if you breathe in too much. and it is kinda annoying b/c you don't see anything, especially when you have a guest and wanna take a look at the city :(
so, PLEASE! whenever you come to sofia, leave your car at home. and if you move here: sell it! don't take it here!!! ;)

this saturday - 24th of november, one week after belgrade - came my grandmother to visit me. just me! whoohoo, my first guest!!! considering the above mentioned smog, the best we could do was to escape it at least for one day. thus, to vitosha we went. vitosha is the mountain right by sofia. one of the lifts going up there has closed cabins in which one can ride quite comfortably to aleko peak (hight ~1200m).
surely, i didn't have to organize this excursion myself, nor had my grandmother and i to go there by ourselves. hristiana was a perfect great and wonderful company. thanks again, dear! it was really a great idea to go there and with you together it was at least twice as much fun :o)

i hadn't seen the blue sky for at least half a week, we had a sunny bright day. hadn't it been for the chilly breeze, we would have been sweating up there. it was definitely a lot warmer than down in the center of sofia.


by the way, the following day, monday, the fog lifted a bit, but it started to rain instead. also not perfect for sightseeing. yet, my grandmother and i enjoyed our time a lot. and if anyone else feels like visiting me here: now i know a few really good places to have delicious bulgarian food ;)

Highlights

sooooooooooooo, i guess it's time to write a bit again ;)

actually, i didn't feel like there was too much going on lately, so i decided to wait until a few things would have accumulated and i'd have more to tell.

my personal highlights of the past two weeks:

well, let's start with uni - last week on monday i had my last day of the handelsrecht (german commercial law) course and finished it successfully the following tuesday with a short oral exam. the same day i started another german law course - verfassungsrecht (constitutional law) - which is mostly repetition for me, but still interesting enough and after all i have wonderful classmates ;) that make up for any minute of boredom that might come up. besides, i need to complete a few law courses during my stay here as this is a requirement from the erasmus programme/my home university... i also started and finished another intensive course - "international conflict managemen and mediation" taught in english at the political science department. actually, it was a course designed particularly for erasmus students - i'll take part in two more courses like that (also political science) - and it's only a few germans, dutch and polish taking these classes.

and nightlife - yep, i finally did go out in studentski grad (in short "studgrad" which often sounds like "stuttgart"). for all who don't know what's so special about it a short explanation. studentski grad means "student city". it is the district at the outskirts of sofia where ALL the student residences are located. that means that there are living 20'000 students all in the same area and everything there is of course made to fit the average student's needs: bars, student restaurants, clubs, 24/7-shops and more bars, bars, bars... i went on friday to catch up with manolo (spaniard) whom i hadn't seen for a long time and two of his friends, ignacio (also from spain) and tuba (a really pretty turkish girl). we went first to one bar, then to another and simply had a good time :) i went again on saturday as rozi had asked me to come along to a concert of a group called P.I.F. - pretty good bulgarian rock! rozi, i and amélie who had joined us once again had a great time there. however, we didn't stay until the end as at 3'30 am we were still waiting for the band to come on stage for a third time that night (they started quite late and took kind along breaks inbetween) and we were all really tired ;) this week on tuesday, i went to studentski grad for a third time. this time i followed two of my class mates from the german law courses to a karaoke bar. don't worry, i didn't sing myself (so it's safe for germans to keep coming to bulgaria - at least it isn't my fault if bulgarians have a bad impression of germans :P ) but i did enjoy listening to some of the others interpreting bulgarian and international songs. especially hristiana: you've got a beautiful voice, girl!

and finish with so much more - first i've got to dedicate some photos to my dearest LeLe! also spatz, schau dir mal mein weißes sofia an ;) weißt ja, dass mir das gar ned gefällt, aber für dich musste ich das doch trotzdem festhalten.










well, at the moment the snow is gone again and i am quite happy about that. when i woke up last saturday and found studentski grad covered in snow it was somewhat of a shock, though ;)
anyway, besides the snow, i also received some good news last week: i finally got my erasmus money - that tiny scholarship from the european union - and as i got the whole amount for all of the ten months at the same time, i actually am "rich" enough to travel around again without too many worries. that's great! you can imagine that i've already planned my next trip: tomorrow night i'm taking the train to belgrade :o)
AND i also received an email from the person responsible for my bafög (money the german government half loans/half gives to students whose parents don't have enough, but only after a huge amount of completed paperwork). after more than half a year i have managed to send them all the papers needed and by december i should receive the first payment (covering the three months from october to december). that's great news although i don't yet know how much that money will actually be :P
to conclude my little story, a really nice highlight from last night ;) kalina, member of my former moot court team and a bulgarian freiburger, came to sofia to visit her family for a week. and yesterday she invited me to celebrate her birthday with her and her friends. it was kind of strange to see faces (kalina's and that of her boyfriend, or should i say fiancé?, henning's) that i only connect to freiburg in the middle of sofia. but much more than strange it was of course really nice to see someone whom i've known before my life in sofia - and i'm looking forward to see a whole lot more people who shall come round to visit and are always welcome to be my guest ;)


und hier noch etwas für deutschsprachige leser. ich habe diesen artikel heute während meiner arbeit bei der kanzlei gelesen und diese beiden sätze beschreiben ziemlich gut, was ich an berlin so schätze: es ist eine absolute multi-kulti stadt und JEDER kann berliner sein, egal wo er/sie geboren und aufgewachsen ist. und korrigiert mich, wenn ich da falsch liege, aber ich meine, dass ist in deutschland sonst an (fast) keinem anderen ort möglich.

http://www.spiegel.de/reise/staedte/0,1518,517166,00.html

Die Karl-Marx-Straße steht gleich für einen ganzen Stadtteil, denn Neukölln ist mit 163 Nationen einer der ethnienreichsten Orte der ganzen Republik. Das Patriarchat dominiert, und wenn man in den Geräuschfetzen andere Sprachen hört, dann sind es keine Touristen [...], sondern eben ganz normale Berliner.

H·A·L·L·O·W·E·E·N

i know halloween was already a few days earlier, but it was still enough of a reason to party and so i went. i was invited by one of my work mates. her boyfriend is american and workst at the american embassy in sofia so most guests were people connected somehow to the embassy and they kept asking me what i was doing there. well, in the end they still accepted me into their party crowd and we all had a lot of fun.
figuring out a costume for the party was quite a difficult task for an uncreative person as i am, especially because i didn't have many clothes and accessories to create something. a friend then gave me the idea of making a type of toga from a white bedsheet. so, i went to a second hand store, got a big white bedsheet and an old golden tablecloth and turned myself into an ancient greek...hmmm...something ;) at the party i even found my counter part in an ancient greek warrior - named tom - and i have to say, i was really satisfied with my outfit.

just a normal day

so what did i do today? what does a regular day of my erasmus student life in sofia look like? and anyway, what is a normal day here?
this morning i got up around half past eight. i had meant to be up earlier, but i just couldn't get out of bed :-P so, i dragged myself out of bed -- bed? well, i'm actually talking about a sofa here, since for the first few months in our shared flat the living room is "my" room and so i am stuck with a sofa as bed until february. then i'll move and the next one will be the "lucky" one finding out how it is to crash on an extremely ugly sofa ;) in any case, i got up, took a shower, had a quick breakfast...just the typical things you do before going out of the house. and then i headed towards CMS for yet another day of work. today, it was the day of education or something like that, which means that NO educational students are opened for the whole day. no classes meant more time on my internship. most of the morning and part of the afternoon today i did some research on tax law. how and what kind of taxes does a german company pay if it is the owner of 100% of another bulgarian company? uff, not too interesting really, but i at least learned something and i know now: in the end you might be left with less than 50% of your gains before you paid taxes. inbetween in proofread a german text. actually, it was a text that i had written and two of the lawyers went over it, made some changes and prepared it to send it to a client for approval. wow! i didn't think that i'd really do useful work like this! i don't mean the proofreading part, but that my original text had barely been changed. ready to be a lawyer??? i don't think so, but it still feels great to do a useful job. i also found out today how much i will get for this job. and...well, after all it's not a real job but just an internship so i should really be happy about any cent. still, when i heard the sum, i kind of thought, i could just as well not receive any kind of salary: i will get 3 bulgarian lev per hour! that is less than 1'50 €. ridiculously little, but hey, this is the salary of someone working at mc donalds here in bulgaria. so, i guess it's not too bad :-P
around 5 pm i decided that it was time to go. i've had done enough work for the day and i wanted to meet dessi (the first bulgarian hospitalityclub member i met in sofia) at 5'30. well, she was late but her boyfriend wasn't and on the way to a café she eventually joined us. in the café we chatted about this and that, i had a cinnamon latte and it wasn't long before i had to go again. as it was the first thursday of the month there would be a german "stammtisch" meeting at a german bar/restaurant this evening and two of my colleagues had asked me whether i'd like to come along. hm, there was quite an interesting and diverse crowd at the stammtisch. many bulgarians that spoke german, one half spanish half english guy who didn't speak either german or bulgarian, and then of course a bunch of germans that are currently in sofia for different reasons. at the other end of the table i saw the german ambassador and i even shook hands with his wife -- she actually came round to greet everyone at the meeting while his husband kind of seemed to ignore everyone except for the ones immediately around him. but i might have gotten a wrong impression, after all i only saw him from the distance.
eventually, i didn't feel like staying much longer and i left to meet yet another friend of mine. a bulgarian girl, who had spent two years in germany (in the first year she learned german and passed the german as a foreign language exam that enabled her to go to university in germany within only SIX MONTHS), but then she realized that she just wasn't made for life in germany, quit her medicine studies there and returned to bulgaria. good for me, cause back in sofia i've met her and it was really a nice finish for this normal day. we went to a pizzeria and i ate about half of my roquefort pizza (four cheeses with some pizza dough underneath) had "edna zagorka golyama" and walked home afterwards. so, here i am now, still awake though it's already 20 minutes to 2 and tomorrow, i will actually go back to work. again.
good night, folks!

Lake Ohrid - Езерoтo в Охрид

Beautiful Macedonia :) - my stay there was very brief but lots of fun and likely to be repeated. last weekend in rila, rozi mentioned that the only neighbouring country she's never visited is macedonia and thus gave me the idea to go. unfortunately, rozi ran out of money and couldn't come as well, but amélie and i still got our things together and took the bus last friday to go to from sofia to skopje and then on to ohrid in the south-west corner of the country very close to albania. it is a beautiful - though very touristic - town right besides a huge lake. this very same weekend there happened to be the 2nd CS Balkan Meeting going on, which, of course, we joined. more than 100 travellers from the balkans and some more distant regions of the world got together to have fun - attending the meeting as long as one could any time between friday morning and sunday afternoon. as the bus ride from sofia to skopje takes somewhat like 6 hours (including one hour waiting time at the border) and from there another 3 and a half hours to ohrid, amélie and i only arrived in the early evening. in the bus from skopje we stumbled over another three couchsurfers and all five of us arrived well in ohrid where we quickly found the rest of the couchsurfers in their various houses serving as quarters for the whole crowd. somebody must have invested a huge amount of organizational skills to get all of us together. so many people arriving at different times from different places. but in the end, i'm pretty sure, all of us had a wonderful time. there were couchsurfers from all over. all types of people between the age of 19 and something around 50 years. the biggest group came from greece (thessaloniki is after all only about four hours away), but then there were bulgarians, macedonians, serbians, austrians, italians, germans, french, americans, brits, turks, a canadian, a senegalese, lithuanians, a swiss and....probably some more that i can't think of right now. in any case, you can imagine that i liked it a lot and i hope that the next balkan meeting which shall take place in sarajevo will be still within the time of my stay in this amazing region.
from ohrid itself i have actually not seen too much. at least not during the day time. on friday we arrived too late, on saturday we spent most of the day in st. naum (a village with a bunch of churches about one kilometer away from albania) and on sunday it rained all day. still, i have enjoyed it a lot and i have seen what's most important: the lake.
our trip back to sofia turned out to be somewhat more adventurous than we had planned. until skopje amélie and i could ride together with a greek-serbian couple in the car of a macedonian. there, we still had a long time to wait before our night bus/train would leave, so we decided to have something to eat in the center. and, of course (!), we had only been walking for 5 minutes, when we saw 5 other couchsurfers in a restaurant doing the same (well, one of them was actually from skopje, so she didn't wait for any transportation, but the rest of us did). at 11 pm, amélie and i wanted to take the bus. we had bought an open-return round-trip ticket and this was the last bus leaving that day. at the bus station we even met yet another two couchsurfers who'd be on the same bus, so we prepared ourselves for a night on the road, when.....we found out that we didn't have the right tickets. for some reason this last bus of the day was of another branch from the same bus company and our tickets weren't valid. besides that, the bus was full and....shit!!! but, uff, we were a little bit lucky at least and still managed to get into the bus. don't ask me how, but the macedonian from the information office at the bus station organized us even two adjoined seats in the bus and we arrived back in sofia at 6 am on monday morning (local time -- there is one hour time difference between macedonia and bulgaria). we had an awful night in an uncomfortable bus full of people (one hour waiting at the border in the middle of it), but at least we arrived back home safely. and i even had another two hours that i could sleep before getting up again and ready to go to my "job".

oh, yeah, that's actually, something else i still haven't written about. i managed to get an internship at CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz, the austrian branch of a big international law firm, which has a small office in sofia. i had an interview last wednesday and could start right away. "whenever i have time" i am there, i have my own key card, my own space in the office with computer and everything else i could need and within the next days i should even have my own email address :-P i am even supposed to get paid, but i haven't found out how much that will actually be. anyway, i am happy to have the place, cause it is something else to do besides visiting the few classes i have here. the people there all speak good german except for two or three who "only" speak english. they're all bulgarian lawyers but half of them have studied in either austria or germany. and they are really nice! i really enjoy going there so much that i don't even mind to have a quite stressful week: 9'30-13 h at CMS and 14-20 h class (this week i have an intensive course in commercial law). instead, i plan on going there the whole thursday when i don't have classes because of some kind of educational holiday.
yep, as you can see, i keep myself busy - but only in a positive way ! and i really love being here :D

Kleine Bäume, grüne Steine

ja, es gibt mal wieder was neues zu erzählen. und soooooooo viele atemberaubende fotos, die ich leider ned alle hier hochladen kann. ich war letztes wochenende nämlich im rila nationalpark. zusammen mit rozi (die bulgarin, die uns bei der wohnungssuche so geholfen hat) und meiner mitbewohnerin amélie bin ich am samstag einer umweltschutzorganisation nach rila gefolgt. dort wird nämlich ein neues skiresort geplant und schon mit dem bau begonnen, obwohl die nötigen genehmigungen natürlich fehlen. protestierender weise haben wir also ein paar kleine bäumchen dorthin gepflanzt, wo die unterste station des skilifts schon gebaut wird, obwohl doch da eigentlich bäume hingehören. tja, sieben kleine bäumchen sind's geworden und ich bin mal gespannt, wie lange diese dort noch bleiben dürfen. anschließend an die aktion sind wir drei in begleitung mit noch ein paar anderen der protestierenden im schlepptau auf den berg hinaufgestiegen. es war ein langer weg nach oben, was jedoch hauptsächlich an unserer arg langsamen fortbewegung lag. trotzdem haben wir es bis zu der allerhöchsten berghütte/herberge hinaufgeschafft, wo wir dann auch die nacht verbracht haben. oh, es war ja soooooooooo kalt dort oben. die letze stunde unseres aufwegs wurden wir dann auch noch schön von schneeregen berieselt und....ach, ich hasse kälte, ich hasse schnee und nass und überhaupt, aber trotzdem: ich bereue keinen schritt, denen ich dieser atemberaubenden umgebung getan habe! in den fotos ist das leider nur schwer zu erkennen, aber die steine sind tatsächlich günlich-türkis!
die berghütte, in der wir übernachtet haben wird von einer alten bulgarin geführt, von der ich leider kein foto gemacht hab, dabei sah sie so niedlich aus mit ihren spängchen in den haaren. sie hat uns am nächsten morgen auch zu sich in das einzig wirklich warme zimmer eingeladen und von ihrem frühstück gegeben: haferbrei *grins*
ach, ich könnte so viel erzählen, aber worte beschreiben das alles eh nur schlecht. unser abstieg ging etwas schneller. innerhalb von drei stunden waren wir wieder dort, wo wir die bäumchen gepflanzt hatten und von dort mussten wir nur noch wieder nach sofia gelangen. leichter gesagt als getan. in dieser abgelegenen berggegend ist selten viel los und bei schlechtem wetter noch weniger. wir mussten mehrere kilometer laufen, bevor uns ein paar nette bulgaren mit in ihr auto gequetscht haben und in den nächsten größeren ort gefahren haben. dort sind wir zum ortsausgang gewandert und sind zurück nach sofia getrampt. wir waren nach weniger als 15 minuten erfolgreich und wurden bis nach studentski grad mitgenommen. dann ab in den bus und um 19 h am sonntag abend waren wir wieder zu hause. puh! ein langer tag. ein langes wochenende! aber vorbei war es damit noch nicht, aber dazu.....vielleicht ein anderes mal!


and now in english: "small trees, green stones"

so, once again only a short version for the non-german speakers. last weekend i spent in the national park "rila". together with rozi (the bulgarian girl, who helped us find the flat) and my house mate amélie i followed a small environmental organization to the national park, where we planted a few trees in order to protest agains the construction of a ski resort in the area of the national park. afterwards, some of us climbed the mountain, while the rest of the group drove back to sofia. rozi, amélie and i spent a wonderful though awfully cold time in the mountains. we hiked up to "the seventh lake hut", where we stayed for the night. on sunday, we got up quite early, had breakfast with the old lady, who kept the hut (and attended to the guests whenever there were some) and then started our way back down. actually, we arrived back at the place where we had planted the trees a lot faster than we had thought. the next problem, though, was to get back to sofia. we hitchhiked, but of course, in the mountains there aren't too many cars around, so we had to walk quite a few kilometers before somebody took us into their car and brought us to the next bigger town, where we soon became lucky and got a ride back to sofia. after this last weekend, i can't wait to get out of sofia again - maybe already next weekend - and discover more of the beautiful country side! words can hardly describe this beauty and the pictures don't even show half of the amazing nature that i have seen. but you'll at least get an idea...

Hot Water and Internet

wow, everything seems to be happening at the same time. last saturday, two french girls (amélie and stéphanie) moved into our new apartment in the city center, less than 10 minutes away from the university. it's really a nice place, furnished and with everything we'll need to feel at home for the next months....everything...well, after we'd moved in we had to learn that there were some kind of reconstructions going on for 10 days and so we wouldn't have any warm water. sh*t! i had so wanted to take a nice and hot shower the first morning in our new home, but.... oh well, no hot water until today. i can't believe that they would be doing such kind of reconstructions exactly when it's about to become winter and then not only for 2 or 3
days, but even 10!!! ha, now, finally we do have hot water and at the same day, our internet provider has opened our access to the www as well. how great! and as if this weren't enough good news already, our central heating also started working this morning. yeah! now, we are cozy and warm at home. we're only still lacking some nice decoration and a few covers to hide our
ugly couch and armchairs. but there's no hurry, we've only just settled in, after all.

Plovdiv und mehr

PLOVDIV

rock city - zweitgrößte Stadt Bulgariens - sonnig, schön, entspannt - 2 1/2 Stunden Zugfahrt von Sofia - am 29./30. September - mit Jamie, John und Arnaud - tolle Innenstadt, mit teilweise westlichem Flair (soll nicht heißen, dass Osteuropa nicht auch tollen Flair haben kann) - leckeres Eis nicht unter 300 gr in einer Waffel, geniale Falafel für unter 80 cent - angenehme Unterkunft in Jugendherberge - lange Spaziergänge durch die Altstadt - Amphietheater, Pflastersteinstraßen, grüne Parks, viele Statuen (Bronze. Poeten? Philosophen?) - Antiquariate fast schon wie Museen - Tourireisegruppen aus Kanada und Griechenland - Fußgängerzonen und Pflastersteinsträßchen - McDonalds in Kyrillisch - mein erster Restaurantbesuch in Bulgarien (hier werden die Portionen in Gramm angegeben) - viele Hügel, langer Fluss, nette Menschen, schöne Häuser und hässliche Häuser - viele Häuser von berühmten (?) bzw. historisch anscheinend wichtigen Persönlichkeiten (beschildert und teilweise sogar zu besichtigen) - nachts nicht viel los im Zentrum, tagsüber mehr: trotzdem Beschäftigung durch Kartenspielen - zurück zu Hause, ab ins Bett.

saturday through thursday...

so, my first week here is nearly over and i have already done and seen quite a few things. however, i have only been to the centre of sofia twice -- and getting there still proves to be some kind of adventure...

but let's keep the days in the right order:

SATURDAY i got here around 6 pm local time. vera showed me around a bit and i made myself at home in the room that i am currently staying in. then, vera showed me around a bit more and we (vera, georgi and i) had some vegan apple pie and coffee. then, vera showed me around again a bit more, so by then, i more or less knew my way around. yes, the place is big and if it wasn't for the different colours of the doors, i'd probably still end up opening the wrong ones ;-)

SUNDAY i woke up early, took my shower, went to the kitchen. that's when i got to know jamie. she's from US (oregon), has some cherokee blood in her (from her father's side), is the same age as me and a very good cook. while we were talking, john woke up and joined us in the kitchen. the kitchen is the meeting place for everyone. it's nice and comfortable and in the end of the day we usually all sit around the tables, talking, eating, drinking..... john is australian, a little bit older than me -but not much- he's been travelling around europe for about a year now, i think, and wears a moustache. he's got the typically australian sense of humour (well, at least, it seems typically australian to me though i wouldn't call myself an expert on that matter :-P) and i very kind. so, what do you think, of course i joined the two of them when they went to "nord park" to take a walk and sit in the sun.
It was quite a long walk to get to the park. Once there we walked through a part of it and sat near this interesting speciman of a bulgarian bridge ;)
On the way back, we got nearly lost looking for "fantastiko", the supermarket closest to where we live. We passed a man who was about to kill a sheep in the backyard between two blocks of houses and a bunch of cars. "oh, look, he's gonna shear the sheep" (john), "ah, no, i think he's going to kill it. let's get away, i don't wanna see it" (jamie)...so, we didn't see it, but pretty sure he killed it shortly afterwards.
Next, we went to have a look at the timetable of the trains leaving from "gara sofia sever" (trains station sofia north). you can't imagine how dangerous it can be to get into a train station. on the square right in front of it a bunch of bulgarian macho men were trying to impose a few women by making a little "doughnut contest" with their cars. that's how john called it, at least. they were driving in small circles as fast as they could around the square and i feared that any moment they might loose control of their cars and hit me while we were trying to pass them, as far away as possible.
back "home", we met a new arrival. a frenchman called arnod, who's never had a real job in his nearly 30 years of life and who studied something with agriculture, and is a real good listener.

MONDAY i went into the centre for the first time. the bus 79 leaves more or less in front of our house and it takes about 15-20 minutes to get into the centre. i have found out that it more or less leaves three times per hour, but when exactly is still a mystery to me. anyway, one has to signal to the driver somehow that he really stops and when you want to get off you have to do the same thing. the bus stops about a 10-minute walk away from the university. i can swith there to a trolley bus (mixture between bus and tram, they also have real trams here), but i haven't figured out which which stop is best to switch. it is more difficult than i thought, because the way into the centre and the way back home is not exactly the same route. well, by next time, i'll be smarter, i hope...
in the university i went to the erasmus office and tried to find out when and how i could sign up for my classes, get my student card, take a language course, meet other erasmus students, do the paper work that needs to be done, get registered at the police....well, all kinds of things, but i didn't get very far. nothing can be done before october 1st, so i'm waiting till then. besides that, i learned that there is pretty much nothing planned for the erasmus students. no help to adapt, no erasmus meetings, nothing. whatever, we're somehow gonna find each other anyway, and besides that i prefer getting to know bulgarians anyway, after all i am in bulgaria.
in the afternoon, john and jamie weren't there (they had left in the morning for the mountains close by) and i worked together with arnod in the garden.

TUESDAY i tried my luck once more in university. i wanted to see the dean of the faculty of philosophy where i will be studying during the next semester. he had written me in an email that he'd be there in either room 48 or 52 between 11 and 12 am. well, he was in neither of these rooms and i couldn't find anyone else who seemed to belong to the faculty of philosophy. i returned home, had lunch and worked some more in the garden.

WEDNESDAY i got up a little later. it was the first night i've really slept well and long since i am here. the evening before also dominik from austria had arrived. a friend of vera's from when she was living in austria. he's been here for a while, but had gone to the countryside for a few days. so, wednesday, we were all together and in the afternoon we all worked in the garden. in the evening we ate the "banitza" dominik and jamie had prepared. it's like turkish börek. we stuffed it with brennnesseln (stinging nettles) and tofu and with feta cheese and olives. yummy!

THURSDAY again some garden work. today, i "embraced the roses with small stones" (that's how vera called it. she speaks real good german, but sometimes she uses weird words and often uses cute descriptions ("du kannst die rosen mit steinen umarmen", das hat sie wirklich so gesagt ;))
i've got some pictures here
<-- Georgi and Arnod cut off the sign: "technological institute for furniture and furnishing"

John working and Dominik passing in the background -->







<-- Rosen "von Steinen umarmt" :D

Vera is also working -->