One Week and Counting: Thanksgiving

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend at school. I know, I know… it’s a few days early but what’s a girl to do? It’s a serious tradition at ACS–the international teachers make Thanksgiving dinner for the Bulgarian teachers at school. So the cooking starts tomorrow after school and we eat (and drink) on Saturday afternoon.

It’s a group thing which is good because we’re cooking for probably 140 people.  I am signed up to make stuffing.  I volunteered to do this because I’ve got an amazing recipe that I am going to make. But when I signed up, I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that I’d be making stuffing for over 100 people.

Honestly, I’ve never ever cooked for this many people.  I love Thanksgiving but what was I thinking?! Stuffing for 140 people? Luckily there will be moral support from the other international teachers and I am pretty glad that I am not making pumpkin pies for 140 people.  That seems like a ton of work.  Especially because we don’t have cans of pumpkin puree here in Bulgaria. You’ve got to make the puree and then make the pies.

So tomorrow after school, I’ll be found in our school’s basement kitchen cutting bread, roasting it until it toasty and putting together my awesome, awesome stuffing recipe.  I am trying me best to get pumped up about this. I mean the stuffing is really tasty and I am excited about this. 

28 & 1/2

Today is my 28th and a half birthday.

I am generally not the kind of person who counts halves.  Sure when I was little it was really important for me to be 5 & 1/2 or 6 & 1/2 years old but these days time passes so quickly I don’t see the point.  I mean it’s only six months. But at some point this week I realized that my half birthday was coming up.

It’s been pretty uneventful.  And frankly, that’s okay with me. I’ve had a busy week.

I was struck by the fact that to be 28 & 1/2 means that you’re 28 years old.  As funny as it may sound, I don’t think I really got that I was 28 until today. And when I finally got it, I realized that I’ve only got six months left until I am 29 (how’d that happen!?).  Then at one point, I wasn’t even sure that I had done the math correctly.  What if I was only 27 & 1/2? Also, how is it possible that I am not even sure of my age?

Well, I did the math in my head and don’t worry: I was right the first time.

So that’s that for today.

Pizza in Sofia

Walking home from school this afternoon, I found myself thinking about pizza.  I was dreaming of my old-roommate Nick’s mashed potato pizza.  Then I started thinking about all of the different pizza I’ve eaten in my day. I’ve eaten a lot of pizza–pizza for dinner, cold the next morning, or late night slices in Adams Morgan.  In the past, I even drove from my neighborhood in Washington DC to Northern VA to buy pizza (for the record, it’s a drive but not really as far as it may sound).

The as I passed Pizza Ugo I thought about what a cruel and punishing thing it is to lust for a pizza that is impossibly unattainable.  And so instead of obsessing about past pizza I cannot have I started wondering: where is the best pizza in Sofia? I mean Ugo pizza is good but I am not sure it’s the best.  One problem I have is that the many of the pizzas have surprise ingredients–things that I think I should like on pizza but which I still haven’t gotten totally used to.  It’s the slices of hot dog, corn and pickles that trip me up.

Of course not every pizza has these ingredients and if you don’t order when your not paying attention usually you can get a decent pizza there.  But I am not interested in just a decent pizza.  I’m looking for the kind of pizza you’d drive across town for.  I am looking for the kind of pizza that you daydream about and then find friends to go there after work.

I haven’t had this kind of pizza in Sofia yet.  I’ve eaten at Don Domat, Pizza Victoria and I think it would have been nearly impossible to make a year in Sofia without eating at Ugo.  But none of it has been wow.  So it makes me wonder where’s the best pizza in town?

Koprivstitsa Fall 2009

Koprivstitsa House in Red

I went to Koprivstitsa a few weeks ago with friends from school. This is the town where the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876 started and it’s well known for its classic architecture of the Bulgarian National Revival.

Koprivstitsa is like a right rite of passage.  All Bulgarians tell you that you must go (and you must) and then they want to know what you think of their town.  The only proper answer is that you loved it (and you will).

A Tornado, A Snack

After watching a commercial for the ump-teenth time for time Tornado chips, I saw them at the store today and decided to buy them.  I have this problem. I watch a commercial or see something advertised on every billboard around town and if/when I actually see the product in person, I decide I have to try it.  I know that this is what advertising is for but I hate that I have such a hard time resisting it. I am better in the States at resisting.  I am not sure why.

But a snack named after a weather pattern like a tornado–how’s a girl to say no to that? Doesn’t that imply powerful yet scary flavor and crunch? The kind of snack that sneaks up on you, grabs a hold of you and then spins you around and around? I mean this is how Dorthy ended up in Oz…  so I gave it a go.  My review: ho-hum.

Tornado Paprika Chips!

So I bought these chips that are aptly named Tornado because guess what shape they are!? They are like little tornados. I had two choices: paprika or original.  I bought the paprika.  I was looking for some flavor.

The thing is I am not sure what flavor paprika is supposed to taste like but these didn’t taste like much.  I imagined that paprika would taste either peppery and spicy or smokey with a hint of sweet.  In fact they just looked red-ish and tasted like an overgrown more airy handful of corn chex cereal. Whatever flavor paprika is I wasn’t blown over by it (get it?! that’s a tornado joke.).  But this does bring up an interesting point of difference between American and Bulgarian culture.  Paprika is not a flavor that stands alone in the States. Sure we have paprika but you sprinkle it on deviled eggs or you add a dash or two to soups, stews, beans or maybe chicken.

Flavor aside, the packaging is pretty hip–with the name in a spray painted graffiti style and like a CD there’s a parental advisory in the lower left hand corner for explicit taste. It kind of makes you feel young to buy them. But these things don’t really make up for lack luster taste.

Oh and after eating a few I was reminded of the American snack: Bugles.  Hum. Sneaky.  The shape isn’t so different. The corn flavor is about the same and they crunch the same.  Only these Bulgarian snacks (if they are in fact Bulgarian) aren’t made by General Mills.

One Blond & A Light bulb

I’m having visions of every blond joke I’ve ever heard running through my head.  (And being blond my whole life, I’ve heard a few.) I’ve just had a hell of a time changing a couple of light bulbs.   So of course the joke that is playing on repeat is the one about a blond and a light bulb.

The troublesome light fixture

Q: How many blonds does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Five. Two to get a chair, one to get drinks, one to get a radio, and another to call daddy for help.

A: One. She holds the bulb and the world revolves around her.

A: One. All she needs to do is ask the first guy she sees to change it for her.

A: One. But she has to be pro-conservation and willing to exchange her old, energy-guzzling regular bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. Who said blonds are stupid?

Well for this blond it took: me, the internet and some major minutes standing on a chair.

Got It!

I got my Bulgarian Type D–Long Stay Visa today! Phew. I can cross that off my to do list.  It’s nice to have the visa.  First, it means that I can say past next Sunday which was going to be the date that my 90 days as a tourist expired and second, it means that after I apply for my lichna karta I don’t have to worry about my status in country for at least a year. Super.

I made to and from Thessaloniki in two days. Just barely. I thought I’d missed my bus this afternoon (or gone to the wrong station).  I waited in a parking lot for over 90 minutes for my bus.  In a sort of gray parking lot.  But I got to see lots of people coming and going from the bus station. I also got to tell plenty of people that I don’t speak Greek.  The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about this phrase: it’s all Greek to me.  Luckily my bus came and I got home tonight just a few hours later than I thought I was going to.

Any how, I am back now! Hello, Sofia!

Nostalgia and Ostalgie

My recent posts about the Berlin Wall, Communism, kitsch, history and Bulgaria have given me an opportunity to think seriously (and not so seriously) about Bulgaria. Today it’s about nostalgia.

It’s apparently gotten my readers thinking as well. Yesterday I quoted from my graduate school friend Robyn’s blog about kitsch and communism in Budapest and Berlin.  Today it’s my dear friend Bridget who spent hours upon hours with me in German classes in college (for the record, her German is better than mine but I have a hunch my Bulgarian is better than hers).  It’s as if she read my mind. Yesterday I said to myself: hey, you need to write a post about nostalgia in the post-socialist block.  Apparently we’re on the same wave length because this morning when I was reading my blog comments I was pleasantly surprised to read her comment and realize that she’s written the perfect introduction to my newest post.  So, Bridget lived in Germany for two years after college and wrote this thoughtful comment on my post Communist Kitsch:

I think, for (East) Germany at least, it’s a mixture of kitsch and actual nostalgia for the era that is past. The younger generation idealizes a time period they never experienced, with the Trabis, Ampelmaennchen, Spreewald pickles, etc. And of course all these things are marketed in various forms, as capitalism has emerged from the wreckage of the GDR. But some people who remember communism had it much better back then (or at least think they did); they remember a time when unemployment was practically zero, all their needs were basically taken care of, and maybe they didn’t have a choice of products in the supermarket but they had enough. So the German concept “Ostalgie” is a combination of imagined and real nostalgia, I think.

I agree. Actually, I couldn’t agree more.  Bridget’s comment catches the push and pull between kitsch and nostalgia.  The current hipness and cool of the Trabis and Ampelmaennchen these things–Eastern chic–seem to represent a glance backwards while also a push forward into the capitalist 21st century.  Not everything from the socialist past is bad.  There’s a layer of gray being introduced into a dichotomy that at its most basic was once something like the west is good and the east is bad.

That’s the problem.  Right? This dichotomy between good and bad, west and east, democracy and socialism–there’s no room for gray. 

Communist Kitsch

Kitsch is cool.  But I wonder: what kind of a sense of humor do you have to have to laugh at communism? What kind of perspective do you need? What kind of space and time is necessary for communism to become kitsch in Bulgaria?

My friend Robyn (a former Fulbrighter living in Budapest) wrote this yesterday and she got me thinking about Bulgaria.

As an American in a post-Communist country, I got plenty of cheaper prices and Commie kitsch: you could enjoy Trabi-spotting in my Budapest neighborhood (or sit in one at my favorite bar) or buy candles in the shape of Lenin’s head at Statue Park. When in Berlin last March, tour guides dressed as East German soldiers sold visas with faux GDR stamps and Sometimes, it all felt a little slimy: are we laughing at what happened? But then, another part of me wondered if the “laugh” wasn’t a good thing: doesn’t the fact that people have turned the oppressor into kitsch become an act of defiance and freedom from the old order?

It got me thinking and asking myself lots of questions.  Where is the kitsch in Bulgaria? Why haven’t we comodified communism yet? Could it be that communism isn’t cool or chic enough to be kitsch yet? What does it take for the transition to happen from fact to frustrating to creepy and then to kitsch? Isn’t 20 years enough?

Okay, we don’t have the East German Ampel Mensch, Lenin, Aeroflot, Marx, Red Square, or any major popular (but failed) uprisings but this doesn’t mean Bulgaria should be left out of the “post-communist county capitalizing on communist chic/communist kitsch” market.

But I don’t see it. I can’t think of any place in Sofia that is marketing kitsch.

Twenty Years

The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago today.  I was 8 years old. (I am 28 years old now. Go figure.)  I heard about the wall.  I knew that it was important.  I saw it in the newspaper, on tv and I heard people talking about it.  But to me at that moment it was like magic.  It seemed to have just happened over night.  One day there was a wall.  The next it was coming down and people were jumping on it.

What's left of the wall today

At eight years old, I didn’t get that it was a process.  No one said to me: Carolyn, there have been signs that something like this was going to happen for a long time.  No one told me about the East Germans crossing to the west through Hungary. No one talked to me about glasnost and perestroika. I didn’t know about Reagan’s demand: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

All I knew was the wall that had divided Germany since the 1960’s had come down.  My eight-year old self was relieved that these people who spoke the same language, shared the same culture and had once lived in the same country were reunited and free.  But the freedom thing was secondary.  I really liked that they were reunited.  These lucky Germans.