Bulgaria Trip

Well last week Eleanor and I had a much deserved vacation. We took five days and shot off to Sofia, Bulgaria. Well, it was really only three days vacationing because all day Monday and all day Friday were taken up by the 10 hour bus ride - but it was fairly comfortable and only cost 80TL round-trip.

We did lots of cool stuff: visited the Rila Monastery in the mountains near Sofia, went to an awesome Indian restaurant, went to a great bar, drank lots of good beer, ate at lots of other good restaurants, saw the archaeology museum which had some awesome Thracian treasures - including a gold burial mask, went to the Nevsky Memorial Cathedral, visited the ancient Boyana Church, took a 30 minute gondola ride up the Mt. Vitosha. Yeah, lots of cool stuff. We even went to the Mall of Sofia and saw Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. They also had a supermarket where we could buy some Belgian beer. Mmm. I also enjoyed a Cuban cigar and some fine Bulgarian wine.

While we were visiting one of the churches they had an orthodox Christian baptism ceremony, which involved three members of the clergy, lots of singing from them, and some chanting from a choir hidden somewhere in the back. We also visited the only mosque in Sofia, since we don't get enough of those here in Istanbul, and visited a beautiful synagogue with a 2 ton chandelier.

Eleanor managed to find out about this free concert on the internet, which was on Thursday night at a enormous concert hall. It turned out to be a bunch of community members who were putting on the show, a bunch of amateur groups. It was laid back and really fun - the audience was mostly made up of the friends and family of the performers. There were tons of acts and it went on for three hours. It started with some ballet and little kids dancing and singing. In the middle there were some older kids 12-17 singing American pop songs karaoke-style while other teenagers did some dancing in the background: very strange. We almost left at one point, but then the last 40 minutes turned out to be a bunch of Bulgarian dancing and singing complete with traditional outfits, so we were glad we stuck around. At the end, the lights came on, the whole crowd stood up, and a professional opera singer led the whole crowd in singing the Bulgarian national anthem. Quite a slice of Sofian life.

Here are some pics (if you click on them they should send you to our Flickr photo stream where we have lots more pictures and even a 1-2 minute video of some great Bulgarian dancing!):


Traditional Bulgarian dancers.


Mt. Vitosha from the gondola.


At the Rila Monastery.


Eleanor is passing through a hole in the roof of a cave where St. Rila (Bulgaria's most revered saint) once lived. It's said that if you go through the hole you'll be cleansed of all your sins.

A Running Tour

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since our last post! A lot has happened, but I won't try to catch you up all at once. Eleanor's position at her school has changed a lot and now she's also teaching high school freshman half time. I'll let her tell y'all about that stuff later.

I'm planning a trip to Bulgaria at the end of this month. A short trip: just five days in Sofia, the capital. It has lots of nice parks and I'm hoping to do some jogging to explore.

We also have some friends coming to visit next week! Shelby and her boyfriend Andy. They'll be staying with us in our apartment for about a week and we're very excited to share our new home with them.

I've also started training for the Copenhagen Marathon, which is on May 23rd. Last week during a beautiful sunny day, I took my camera with me and stopped to take a bunch of pictures - it was a very slow run! This is a route that I run twice a week, sometimes more. I put all the pictures in our photostream on flickr, so if you want to see more hopefully you can just click on one and it'll take you there. It's a nice running route - it takes me over the Ataturk Bridge (which goes across the Golden Horn) and then I run up the shore of the Golden Horn. It goes pretty far inland. Hope you enjoy!


These are some people fishing off the Ataturk Bridge. When the set their poles down to put on new bait, I sometimes have to do hurdles!


These are some boats docked on the shore of the Golden Horn and an early blossom!


A picture of my nice running path through some parks. To the right side you can see some Turkish people using the strange exercise machines that are in all the parks here.


This is on the bridge with a mosque in the background. Next to the minaret you can see the Galata Tower sticking out - which is, of course, right next to our apartment.

More blog posts to come, we promise!
-Mike