Much of what I saw in Bulgaria was shabby and not in a chic way. It was shabby in an unkempt, paint-peeling, windows broken, "what happened to this place?" kind of way. There's graffiti, cracked sidewalks and renegade gypsy camps. Lots of buildings are blocky and gray and worn, some with exteriors that seem to house the remnants of a horror story inside. (The country has a fair share of stunning buildings, too, I should say.)
Vratsa
I saw lots of people who were noticeably hardened -- not
mean but hard, haggard, perhaps struggling and losing. There isn't the brightness, the carefreeness, the "let's grab a beer and work later" mentality that's so classically Spanish. For the 20 percent of Bulgarians who work for the equivalent of 1 euro an hour - minimum wage - it's about
surviving. People sell tarnished coins and animal pelts and treasures from Grandpa's attic at makeshift markets to make ends meet. (Bulgaria, of course, isn't the only country where people do that.)
Even so, Bulgaria is an eclectic, endearing, intriguing ex-communist gem - nothing like the traditional European beauties of Vienna, Venice or Prague. I adored it and would love to go back someday. It's unconventionally beautiful, like a guy with a gap in his teeth or a crooked nose -- you have to look past a superficial flaw or two to see that he's peculiarly handsome.
Sofia
Vratsa
Veliko Tarnovo
Vratsa
Veliko Tarnovo
Veliko Tarnovo
Sofia
Bulgaria has plains, hills and mountains, green in summer and white in winter. It's got charming medieval towns that have endured centuries of Ottoman rule and later, communism. It's got what I'm told is an awe-inspiring Black Sea coast on its eastern side, which I sadly didn't have the good fortune of visiting.
Vratsa
And goodness, the food. MMM, the food. It was the most glorious sort of hearty and heavy - think meats, bread, potatoes. Even the salads alone were enough to over-stuff an empty stomach. Eating our three- and four-course meals was like de-layering those Russian dolls; when you think you've reached the end there's yet another surprise. And all of it was guilt-inducingly cheap: You can get a delicious meal with way too much food for the equivalent of five euros or less.
Is it lunch time yet?
Typical tomato and cucumber salad with delicious Bulgarian cheese.
Mix of veggies with chicken and pork
Potatoes and more of that delicious cheese
Pork and more delicious veggies
This was a starter...for one person (served on traditional Bulgarian ceramic).
Bulgaria may not have the Statue of David, the most well-manicured face or the most notable European architecture (we've got Churchill to partially blame for that. Sofia, the capital, lost something like 12,000 buildings when he ordered the city's bombing during WWII). But sometimes conventional beauty is boring.
**I've added a couple of gems since I posted originally.
1.) When you venture into the bowels of Spanish bureaucracy, you lose.
Getting my foreign identity card was the disasterous, mindblowingly inefficient process I was warned it could be. The workers were incompetent, and the "rules" were nonexistent at worst and fluid at best.
We Americans were each given different "official" forms to fill out. The workers told us it was OK we all had different ones because it didn't really matter anyway. Some of us were told we needed to get a verification from the town hall that proved we did, in fact, live where we said we did. Some of us weren't told that. I was told twice that I needed three passport-sized photos. Ultimately, I needed two.
But the kicker was when my American friend told me that her American friend had gone to the station, and a worker told her that "she and her friends" needed to bring in a copy of every page of our passports. Is that really a bit of information that should be given to someone I don't know and then spread through the grapevine?
If you don't believe me, watch this hilarious-but-sad-because-it's-so-true video about Spanish red tape.
2.) The travel gods like me.
I arrived at the airport in Mallorca at 6 a.m. for a 6:25 departure. And they let me on the plane with only a minor "you should really be earlier next time" scolding. I have twice had mishaps with trains in Merida, a city more than 30 miles from Don Benito. And twice, the train company paid for me to take a taxi from the Merida area to Don Benito. No official form asking for my name or an explanation of the situation. No money out of my pocket.
3.) Don't speak too soon.
I wrote this post and saved it as a draft. Then I went back to Mallorca and got my iPhone 4S and my wallet (with that hard-won foreign identity card inside) stolen.
4.) If you're going to get robbed, don't let it happen in Spain.
Because replacing a stolen phone, canceling bank cards, dealing with police and applying for new identification is best done in your native language.
5.) Always carry coins.
Spaniards really, really prefer not to have to make change.
6.) In Spain, you arrive late, leave late, plan late,stay out late, eat late, wake up late, be late.
Puncuality just isn't a big deal. I think you can tell that from #2.
In Spain, lunch at noon is blasphemous. Going to the club before 2 a.m. is social suicide. Waking up at 10 a.m. on a Sunday is absurd. And being early is sooo foreign.
7.) The siesta is still alive and well in southern Spain.
It's a ghost town around here between 2 and 5 p.m. Don't plan for midday productivity.
8.) "Customer service" is more like, "Wouldn't it be better for both of us if you just did this yourself?"
One day at the bus ticket window, the worker was on a personal call. I waited a few minutes, growing evermore impatient. Then I enlisted the classic American/British foot-tapping tactic. All in vain. Then she pulled out a tin of orange tobacco and started ROLLING CIGARETTES while I waited there.
A different day, I was having beers with my roommate, and I asked for the bill. Ten or 15 minutes later, I still hadn't gotten it. Then the waitress came out, sat down at the table across the way and had a beer with some friends.
I laugh only because it makes me cringe at the same time. Source
9.) Official timetables are really just general approximations.
Shout out to #4 up there.
My 10:15 a.m. bus to work showed up at 11 o'clock once, without explanation. It generally rolls into the station around 10:30. Not once have I been in a plane, train or automobile in Spain that left on time, which has led me to change my arrival approach. I generally add about five minutes to established departure times and show up then. Turning up seven minutes late would be moderately risky, but three minutes would leave me with too much spare waiting time.
10.) Spain is a time warp.
Where did the past 5 1/2 months go?
11.) You can send used underwear to Spain, but don't try to send new ones.
Or detergent to launder them. If you send anything new from the U.S. to Spain (you can send used items without issue), you risk having it detained in customs in Madrid. They can slap you with hefty import and sales taxes on the goods and then charge freight costs to send the goods to their final destination (even though you already paid for them to be sent to their final destination).
I didn't actually learn this lesson from a shipment of underwear, but it makes for a more sensory example, eh?
12.) There are five requisite words/phrases to rock at Spain Spanish.
Dime - literally means "tell me." This is an acceptable greeting on the phone and at customer service counters.
Vale - means "OK."
Venga - generally means "c'mon" but can also be used as a sort of "ok" or "yeah, right."
Vamos - generally means "let's go" but can also mean "enough already."
No pasa nada - means "it's OK," "everything's all right," "don't worry about it" or "no problem."
13.) It is possible to have an entire phone conversation using the terms listed above.
I've heard it done.
14.) When out and about, it's not ideal to go more than a few hours without a coffee or small beer.
That's just the Spanish way. It's as much about rest and refreshment as it is about socializing and seizing the day.
15.) Sharing is caring.
Be careful with what I like to call the "American food and drink faux pas." If you're buying something at the coffee vending machine in the teachers' lounge, you should offer to buy coffee for everyone in the room. (I learned that one in the teachers' lounge after seeming like a real American you-know-what for months.)
And if you go out for dinner with Spaniards, and you order the cheapest platter while your friend gets the most expensive one, the bill often gets split evenly in the end. (That's assuming they actually let everyone order individually instead of ordering a few plates and sharing it all, which is what I often see.)
16.)So just order the big beer and some filet mignon and see what happens.
I may complain about inaccurate timetables and the siesta. And sure, I inject a lot of sarcasm into my posts because I really do see some things that are just outright ridiculous, in my opinion. But I've chosen to live here. I've chosen to subject myself to inefficient public transportation and mindblowing bureaucracy so that I can bask in the general gloriousness that is my life in Spain.
And you know what? I´m having the time of my life. I love Spain, Spanish and the Spanish people. And I don't regret a thing.
So, if you're not aware of the general dismal economic state of things here in Spain, you should be. Read a newspaper, dang it. Let's just say this wonderful part of Europe - and many other wonderful parts of Europe - has seen better days. For lack of a better adjective, Spaniards are pissed about the situation and the government's "solutions."
Everything that's bad here is "por la crisis" (because of the crisis). Seriously, everything is attributed to the crisis. Today at school the water jug was empty, like it has been a lot lately, and one of the teachers noticed and grumbled about the damn crisis. But really, the crisis has had real effects on schools. The government can't afford to hire more teachers. Classes are larger. Teachers aren't getting bonuses. The public school I work at didn't have money to turn on the heating last week.
Like it or not, Spaniards are showing their dismay via strikes. In October, students in Extremadura went on strike to protest education cuts. Some students from my school participated; for some others, it was a nice excuse to not show up for school.
Flier for the student strike. It says they want to stop the People's Party's attacks on public education.
Today, there was a general strike across the country. Apparently in some areas it got pretty intense (read my fellow auxiliar Alia's post about fires and violence in northern Spain). Things were pretty calm in my area, from what I saw, but I read in the paper that trash services were more or less halted in several cities in Extremadura today, and most of the workers at the post office in one city were on strike. Thousands of people have reportedly participated in street demonstrations throughout Extremadura.
"Huelga" means strike. This poster was in the teachers' lounge at school.
From what I could tell, a lot of the teachers from my public school didn't participate in the strike. I talked to two of them at length (in Spanish even!) about why they weren't on strike. Two frequently used words during the conversation were "disillusionment" and "manipulation." They feel disillusionment regarding strikes' ineffectiveness and they feel manipulated by politically motivated labor unions. The unions are reporting a 45 percent participation rate among education workers, while the government is reporting 26 percent.
MADRID — For the first time since the start of the euro crisis, labor
unrest took on a European dimension on Wednesday as Spanish and
Portuguese workers coordinated a general strike while unions in Greece and Italy also planned protests and work stoppages.
...
The Spanish strike was called by unions after (Mariano) Rajoy presented a
tough austerity budget for next year but it also comes after the
country’s jobless rate recently reached a record 25 percent.
...
While about 700 flights in and out of Spain were canceled Wednesday,
Madrid and other airports were still functioning. The strike coincided
with growing uncertainty about the future of Iberia, the national
airline, after management announced this month that the airline needed
to lay off a quarter of its workers to survive.
Ignacio Fernández Toxo, the head of one of Spain’s two main unions,
Comisiones Obreras, said that the coordinated strike action across the
Iberian Peninsula, as well as work stoppages in other parts of Europe,
amounted to “a historic moment in the European Union movement.”
However, support for trade unions has dwindled in recent years because
of their failure to prevent the surge in unemployment and controversy
surrounding the unions’ reliance on government subsidies rather than
contributions from members. In Spain, only about 16 percent of workers
are unionized.
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