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