Sofia, Bulgaria

Arriving late put a bad taste in my mouth for the city because unfortunately the night highlights the negative aspects of a city just right and as you all know, first impressions mean everything, even for a city. On my first real day here in the city, I wandered around trying to find cool things to look at. I of course tried really hard to avoid any museums or churches that required money.  Which by now most of you know that I am fairly good at it. I wandered to one of the grandest churches in the city, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and I saw St. Sofia Church, the Russian Church “St. Nikol” and I saw a government area which is the administrative headquarters for Bulgarias presidency, every hour on the hour the guards changed. I was very hungry walking around and wanted to find some food, unfortunately the alphabet here is Cyrillic which I of course do not understand, at first I was a bit worried that I was going to have to point to something in the middle of a menu and hope that it was good. But at a stand selling kebaps and burgers I met a man who spoke English, he gave me a hambuger type thing. There was a lot of stuff on it, and it was amazing! It was like a cross between a Burger, a Gyro and a Turkish Doner Kebap, there were french fries on it, taziki sauce, mayonnaise, meat, ketchup, more mayonnaise cucumber, chili powder/sauce not sure which, and some other stuff, it was amazing.

I walked back to my couch surfers apartment, which I found after wandering through some neighborhoods that looked a bit sketchy. I finally found the National Military Museum, which is next to his house. Its great, you can wake up and look out the window and see a Mig, or a tank looking at you, or trucks with rocket launchers on them.

After Simon returned home we went out for a bite at a local ale house, it was very clever in that they had poor spouts for the beer at each table with a meter that measures the amount you drink in liters, at first we thought it was measuring in money, so we were mislead and unfortunately did not enjoy the end result of that. The food was great! Fairly inexpensive but delicious. Later we took a crazy cab (the driver must have been from India, because he had a total disregard for the lanes) to a student area of the city where after a while we went “cosmo” bowling, it was a lot of fun, bowling in Bulgaria. After bowling we walked by another stand that sold the crazy burgers, I of course needed to get one of them and man was it good!