Day 2 – How the heck does this washing machine work!?
It’s Tuesday night and I’ve been in Sofia for a little over 24 hours. Our trip from the hotel to the airport in Washington DC was relatively uneventful. Several of my Corps-mates had to pay additional fees for baggage weighing over 80 lbs. Luckily, all my stuff was less than 50 lbs. It took Manish a while to get through security as he wasn’t a US citizen, had a one way ticket to the UAE (he was going home for a week before continuing on to Kazakhstan) and had a ski mask in his baggage (Kazakhstan, specifically the northern part, gets to -40 degrees Celsius in the winter). Eventually we all made it through security and split ways to our separate flights. The four of us going to Bulgaria were on the same flights through Frankfurt and on to Sofia. Sofia is located in a valley so the scenery flying into the airport was beautiful. There is a very large mountain, Mt. Vitosha (see picture at left) just outside the city. Sofia’s elevation is ~600m and I think Mt. Vitosha is around 2000m high. Another distinctive feature, from the air anyway, is about 20 or so large concrete apartment complexes which were all designed from the same set of blueprints. They were probably 20-25 stories high. If someone threw out the term “communist housing complex” these buildings are probably pretty close to the image that would pop into your head.
Customs in Bulgaria was surprisingly easy. They checked my passport, I picked up my luggage, I walked through the declaration area without any questions, and then I was outside. The weather was nice – probably 85 degrees, although a bit on the humid side. We were picked up by two of the VEGA (Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance) staff members. They were Doriana, whom we had met in DC, and Deltcho a young (~25 years) guy who started working there only a month ago. They had vans waiting for us and whisked us to their office in downtown Sofia. The office is quite easy to locate since it is right across the street from the national football (soccer) stadium which seats about 27,000 people. From there we split up to meet with our landlords, sign the leases and see our apartments. We all have separate apartments in different locations of the city, but all the apartments are 500 euros (~$600) a month plus utilities. Since the apartment is in euros I’m rooting for the dollar to rise so my rent will go down (since I’m paid in US dollars).
My landlord and his wife seem very nice. George (my landlord) doesn’t speak a lick of English ad I don’t speak any Bulgarian. We were able to have a conversation about football which went something like this:
George: “football?”
Me: “Yes, I like football”
George:
Me: “I follow the English Premier League”
George:
Me: “Really?”
George: “Manchester United”
Me: “No I don’t really like them – I prefer Chelsea”
George:
It was my first conversation with a Bulgarian other than the Vega staff (who all speak very good English). I suppose it could have gone better, but it also could have gone worse. Fortunately George’s wife was also there and she speaks a bit more English than George. She had no problem speaking broken English with me because she told me all about her son, who apparently speaks very good English, but lives in China. After the lease signing at the VEGA office we all went to the apartment to check it out.
My apartment is a big pimpin’ bachelor pad. I feel like I should be in MTV cribs. Then again, to put that first statement in context, I have never lived anyplace very luxurious, and have spent the last 3 months living on a porch so really it doesn’t take much to improve on the past apartments. My apartment is fully furnished, right down to the forks and knives. I have a large living/dining room with a window the length of the room overlooking the street. The living room also has a functional fireplace.The furniture in the living/dining room consists loveseat, two comfy chairs a kitchen table with 4 chairs, a coffee table, an entertainment center with a ~27” TV and two bar chairs at the bar which separates the main room from the kitchen. The kitchen is small but functional. It has a small fridge, a microwave, a small oven and stove with two burners. I also have a dishwasher which apparently is quite rare. The lardlord’s wife also decided to give me the water cooler from their office (which is right next door). The bathroom is sort of split in two separate rooms which is a bit odd. Off the foyer is a room with a toilet and a washing machine. The washing machine is definitely not of American origin. You open the top and inside is a circular metal case which you open to put in your clothes. The whole thing probably has the capacity of one half a typical American washer despite being plastered with various logos containing the phrase “extra large capacity”. I’ve actually spent the last two hours or so trying to figure out how to use it. I finally got it to make some loud washing machine-type noises which it continued for about an hour without any advance in the circular timer. I went back a few time and “helped” the timer moved forward. After about 2 hours of this the cycle finally completed. I opened the machine to find my clothes completely dry and none of the powder detergent used. With a bit more investigating I found out that the water to the machine needed to be turned on. I continued the whole cycle again with the water one – still “helping” the timer forward and my clothes came out as I would expect them. I’m not sure if they are clean, but at least they smell ok.
In general, I was advised to wash clothes, turn on the hot water heater, turn on the heat (which is electric), and various other electric intensive activities after 10pm because electricity is charged at a lower rate from 10pm to 6am. The Bulgarians are very frugal. Lucily, living in the Lyford household has well prepared me for frugality. There is no dryer in my apartment, or anywhere in Bulgaria for that matter. I have a drying rack on a small porch off the living room. Anyway, the second half of the bathroom, which is off my bedroom, has the sink, shower and hot water heater. The bedroom is a decent size with large windows in a V shape extruding from the building. Luckily these windows also have excellent shades so I can block the morning sun. The apartment also has an air conditioner, another rarity, in the living room which I have only used long enough to ensure it works.
Anyway, everyone left me to settle in with a map and instructions to be at Yafata restaurant in an hour. The map was marked with my apartment’s location and the location of the restaurant and all the street names were in the Latin alphabet rather than the Cyrillic which I though was a good thing. Unfortunately all the street signs are in Cyrillic so I had to translate from Cyrillic to Latin. Now my translation abilities consisted of about an hour flipping through my “learn to speak Bulgarian” book on the plane trip – no easy task. I would have been better off with a Cyrillic map where at least I could have matched shape and length of the words. Anyway I finally made it to the restaurant where we met up with the rest of the VEGA staff and last year’s MBA Enterprise Corps members – whose tour of duty is up in October. There are three of them currently in Sofia and we met two at dinner. The location was a traditional Bulgarian cuisine restaurant called Yafata. I only walked by it once before I was able to translate the sign. I started with a traditional Shopska salad – which is basically tomatoes, cucumbers and a bunch of feta cheese. The Bulgarians claim the cheese is not feta and is in fact something else, but it looks like feta and tastes like feta, so for the purposes of my writing, it’s feta. The salad was quite good. I then moved on to the main course which was some stuffed chicken dish which wasn’t so good, but others got more appetizing looking dinners so I will try again. I also had a decent Bulgarian beer for dinner. I forget how much it was at the restaurant, but a liter of Bulgarian beer is about $1. The also brew Becks and Tuborg in the country so both of those are fairly cheap – maybe $2.50 for 1.5 liters. They also have Guinness and such, but are much more expensive. We had a bottle of Bulgarian red wine for dinner which I later saw and bought at a store for ~$4 – and that was one of the mid-range priced Bulgarian wines. Local vodkas and liquors are similarly cheap. Even gas isn’t too outrageous at ~$1/liter – similar to Canada. This might explain why taxis are also cheap. 3km costs about $1.50 which gets you most places in Sofia. Those same 3km in Boston would be about $20.
The cars are mostly of the midget European variety. There are still a decent number of late model BMW’s and Mercedes. These, from what I have been told, belong to the Bulgarian mafia. You can also tell because many of the mafia have repeating number liscense plates (i.e. 1212 or 3355) which a) tell everyone they are mafia, specifically the police so the police won’t bother them and b) the different numbers represent different families so the mafias members know whose car is whose.
Anyway, after dinner I went home, though about unpacking and went right to sleep. The next morning we were to meet at the VEGA office at 9:30am. Before leaving I pondered the map to make sure I knew exactly where I was going and found a more or less direct route which took about 20 minutes walking. The morning consisted of registering our address at the police station, a requirement in most European countries. We then walked back to the VEGA office through a political protest, which really was about the tamest protest I’ve ever seen. Today was the equivalent of our primary for a new government and the Nationalist party was – well, not really protest – more sort of standing around listening to loud Bulgarian rock music. On our way back we stopped at Garfield’s Pizza for lunch. The logo was of the familiar cartoon character Garfield, no doubt used without paying United Syndicates a dime for the trademark rights. The pizza was good – I had a large slice of tomato and feta cheese and a .25L coke (in the old fashioned glass bottle) for 1.80lev, or about $1.20. The afternoon was registering online with the American embassy and heading to a “large” supermarket. Their idea of large is really middle to middle-small by American standards. Anyway, I picked up some cleaning supplies, some food and 1.5L of beer. I took a cab home, put the food away, unpacked some of my clothes and ventured out to explore my neighborhood for the first time. It’s mainly residential with, as is prevalent throughout the city, small markets, cafés and bars an each block. I did find a largish (thin 7-11 size) supermarket just down the block from my house. There is also a very nice indoor swimming complex and gym near my apartment but the rates are really high. Membership is about $70 US dollars per month. I’m not sure how any Bulgarians can afford to go there. Probably none do because all their brochures were in English. Tomorrow we have some more procedural stuff, and then language training starts on Thursday. I’m actually looking forward to it so I can at least read the signs!
