Wednesday, June 08, 2005

leaving on a um jet bus

Sofia, Bulgaria

I finally did it, I managed to drag myself away from Istanbul. I just keep telling myself that I'll be back and all of those good byes weren't the forever kind. As mom pointed out though I was lucky that I made friends that I was sad to say good bye to. Well...the adventure must go on.

We spent two hours last night - from about 11 to 1 in the morning crossing the boarder. Two passport checks, a bus check and a bagage check that we weren't included in later we managed to cross. I think we were in no mans land at midnight. They were very confused about how I had gotten into Turkey and had to look through my passport numerous times.

I met two french people - Marie and Matthieu on the bus. They are doing an internship in sofia and living in the dorms and at some point during the long border crossing while we were talking they offered to let me stay with them since they had an extra bed. So when we got in at 5 in the morning after almost no sleep I didn't have to think, I went with them and crashed. But then when we went out to get lunch the door lady noticed that I was there. So I have to pay to stay with them now. And the woman who is in charge of such things is taking me and Marie to the police station tomorrow so that I can register and she can reregister. It's something that they make all foriegners do but if you stay in a hostel they do it for you automatically.

So bulgarian is a very weird languague. I feel like if most languages (like turkish) are codes then bulgarian is a double code. I keep thinking that if I could just read the letters than I would understand what they are saying. But then I realize that I still wouldn't understand. Somehow arabic didn't bother me that much. Maybe it's because the alphabet here looks similar enough to the latin alphabet that I feel like I should be able to read it. They use the cyrilic alphabet here by the way. Getting food this morning was a close your eyes, point at something and hope for the best kind of thing. I ended up with some good food though. Although nothing as good as turkish food. Sigh

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