From our hotel room.

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Bill, Julia and I walked around looking for someplace that didn’t require a cover and would let us in with the dinner leftovers Julia insisted we take. We eventually ended up at Flannigan’s where I had my first Guinness in 5 months. The price was a whopping 8 leva (as opposed to 2 leva for any other decent import), but I justified it by making it part of my holiday treat. In reality 8 leva is less than $6 so, really, I’d pay the same price in the US.

Bill and I split from Julia and ran into the British girls from the night before in the street. We first tried one bar, Blaze, but it was too crowded and eventually ended up at a bar that I believe used to be called Poison, but I don’t know the current name. Anyway, we basically just hung out and talked to them for a couple hours about all kinds of random stuff. We probably broke off from them around 3am and headed home.

The 3rd night started at Babbles, a loungy/house music bar. Babbles was pretty dead so we left and tried Blaze, the bar that was too crowded the night before. As an aside, of personal name for Blaze is, “The Smoke and Mirrors Bar.” We call it this because everyone there smokes like a fiend (no different I suppose than the rest of the country) and the bar is full of mirror – hence, “Smoke and Mirrors.” I think Paris was the first to coin the name. Anyway, the bar wasn’t so crowded this night and it didn’t take Bill long to enter himself into conversation will a table full of women (and one guy). It turns out all the girls were school friends from the same neighborhood in Sofia, but now all lived elsewhere (except I think for one). One was going to school in Holland and was there with her Dutch boyfriend. One was working at an embassy in France and another was going to school in France. We talked to them for quite a while until a drunk guy sitting next to us (wearing enormous and ridiculous looking glasses) started getting drunk and slightly belligerent. At this point we decided to call it a night.

The last night was Bill’s last night in Sofia. We had to leave to catch his flight at 5am, so we just decided to stay out all night (not a big stretch considering we hadn’t gone to bed before 3am all week anyway). We started at the Hash House Harrier gathering. Over the summer we had a lot of fun at Cabaret for their “Oriental Night” and I wanted to take Bill to check it out. At the Hash we met up with Niltay, one of our Turkish friends who was with us during our Cabaret visits several times over the summer. She and a couple others joined us after the Hash at Cabaret. The music was the same, but most of the “usual” crowd had moved on to some other bar so there weren’t many people there. Despite there not being any prime targets for Bill to hit on, I still had a good time. After Cabaret we went to a club called Double Vision. There weren’t many people there either, but there was at least some nice 18 year olds Bill could talk to. We closed down Double Vision, which was about 4am and we headed home to get Bill ready to head home.

We made it to the airport with plenty of time, but as soon as we go there Bill realized he forgot his computer, so I had to pay for a taxi back to the apartment, pick up his computer, pay for a taxi back to the airport to deliver his computer. Luckily, I made it on time. I was slightly nervous about Bill getting through customs because technically I am supposed to register all visitors with the police. This, however, would have required dealing with the police station – something I was loathe to do after my 5 trips there over the summer to get my ID card. As it turns out, no one hassled him and he made it out ok. I promptly went back to bed and slept most of the day.

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We started at the Alexander Nevski Cathedral. This is a large orthodox church in the middle of the city. It is on most of the postcards, visitor brochures, etc. It is also very run down and dirty. The walls have never been cleaned (as far as I can tell) so the frescos underneath are barely visible because of years of candle smoke (and probably smog) covering them up. Some of the chandeliers look like are going to fall out of the ceiling at any moment. It is, however, very big – especially when you look up at the ceiling.

Underneath the cathedral is a nice museum of orthodox religious artwork (re: icons). Obviously the museum underneath had been renovated because it was new looking. We walked around for a while, but quite frankly, icons all start to look the same after a while.

The next stop was the St. Sofia Church, right next to the Alexander Nevski Cathedral. The St. Sofia Church has been around in some form since the 5th century. A few years ago the country spend some money to renovate the church so it is a quite nice attraction now. Currently they are renovating the catacombs underneath the church to allow visitors to walk through them as well. Unfortunately, they weren’t open when we were there. Unlike several other museums I have been to in Bulgaria, this one had descriptions in English.

The next stop was the Ethnographic museum. Not many people visit the ethnographic museum. I know this because the museum employee would walk ahead of us to turn on the lights, then turn them off after we left each room. There was an interesting exhibit on masks and costumes that is part of a traditional celebration in Bulgaria (well, traditional in the country because several Bulgarians from Sofia I asked had never heard of it). Basically, on New Years Eve people will dress in scary looking costumes and go around and scare off evil spirits or the like. My friend Paris actually experienced this as he was in a small Bulgarian town for New Years and a woman broke into their party wearing a crazy costume and starting beating people with branches. The tradition is that you give this person some money. Odd, but interesting.

We also went to another church – the Svetna Nedelya Church. This church is interestingly located in a pedestrian underpass at a major intersection downtown. It was very small and not terribly interesting inside.

That made up most of our daytime activities. Of course there were night time activities as well.

The first night we met up with Joel at Ugos (a popular pizza chain), but he wasn’t looking too well and split off from us after dinner. We then went to a pub known for their beer selections and met up with Julia. We had a few beers there before heading to a bar the The Apartment. The Apartment is interesting in that it actually looks like a big apartment. There are different rooms with couches and chairs in each room. Some rooms have a computer where you can surf the internet. If you want a drink you go into the kitchen and they sell you one from the fridge. Really cool concept, in my opinion. We met the owner and talked to him for a while. Apparently he lived in NYC for about 6 years before returning to Bulgaria. He also convinced us to try some of his homemade pudding (also for sale at the bar). The pudding used honey instead of sugar and I’ll have to say it was pretty good.

At this point we broke off from Julia and went to Hambara. I may have described Hambara before, but basically it is an old barn. You have to walk down a side path and knock on the door to get in. There are no lights, only candles. And, now that it was winter, there were also some very dangerous heaters that shot flames out – great heating system for a wooden barn. Again, thank goodness Bulgaria is fireproof.

While there we heard some English speaking voices from the table behind us. There were 2 girls speaking English with British accents. They were talking to 2 guys speaking in English with Bulgarian accents. We didn’t think much of it until we heard one of the guys say, “Wouldn’t you like to come cuddle on my pillow.” At this point Bill and I both laughed out loud and turned around to talk to them. Apparently, one of the British girls lived here and owned a bar – the other was her friend. The two guys were just annoying. One of them got very upset with Bill because he though Bill was a Bulgarian who was pretending not to be. He repeatedly told Bill how much he hated when people did that. Now if you ask me, Bill looks about as Bulgarian as a Chinese looks African – but that’s just me. The guy would talk to me in English, then turn to Bill and talk in Bulgarian. Eventually after a bit more rambling the two girls decided to leave and (thankfully) the annoying guys followed them out.

After they left we moved to the bar and started talking to another two girls and a guy. The two girls were fairly arrogant – claiming to be the two smartest girls in Bulgaria – and I think they meant it. One was a lawyer in Germany and I don’t remember what the other one did. Regardless, Bill and I weren’t impressed. The guy was apparently a famous Bulgarian theater actor. He looked and acted pretty gay so I cam believe he was a theater actor. He was pretty nice though. After a while of talking to these three we noticed at was now 5am so we thought we should head home for a bit of sleep.

I’ll continue the week of nightlife in my next posting.

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