Palm Sunday in Bulgaria

For much of the world this was Easter weekend. However, the Orthodox Church still uses the Julian calendar to calculate the day of Easter so it is often off from those crazy Gregorian calendar using westerners. If you ask me, both methods are equally confusing. What all of this means is that next Sunday, not this, is Easter in Bulgaria.

The Orthodox believers have got a leg up on the western (at least US) counterparts. They (at least the Bulgarian Orthodox church) have made the Monday after Easter a holiday. You need that day off to recover from all the hard core Easter partying that goes on, right?

So, since next Sunday is Easter, that means this Sunday was Palm Sunday in Bulgaria. I had a walk around downtown to take in some of the “Palm Sunday excitement”. First off, there are no palms. Palms must be hard to come by in Bulgaria so they use weeds instead. Well, at least they look like weeds to me. This makes more sense to me because I’ll bet Jesus saw at least as many weeds during his life as he did palms – probably more. I lot of people buy flowers as well. Around Alexander Nevski Church there was quite a brisk flower trade going on. It actually got a bit annoying because people were bothering me to buy flowers every couple feet. I don’t want any of your flowers! Can’t you see I already bought a handful of weeds from your counterpart down the road?

The line to go in the cathedral was long so I didn’t see the inside. I was able to peek in and see they had a couple spotlights brought in to light up the inside. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church service is different from the western Christian service. Basically, the people meander in, hang out for a bit, light some candles and then head out. All the while the priests are singing/chanting and carrying on a service. There’s no (from what I can tell) official start or end – just a nonstop parade of people passing through. I actually like this method because if you get bored you can just take off and no one will care or even notice.

The church service was important enough to bring out the Bulgarian National Television station in their “get the hell out of my way” TV truck. The truck is actually a military truck – a huge one. I didn’t have my camera with me, but imagine a really big armored military troop carrier painted military green with “National Television” etched on the side. I don’t know what the National TV needs that truck to film, but I don’t think I want to be there when they film it.

The day ended with me watching “Gladiator” on TV. There’s nothing like watching Russell Crowe kick ass to remind me of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the days before his execution.

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