Christmas Eve with missionaries
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
102
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Sofia,
Bulgaria
Sunday, December 23, 2007
After dropping my stuff off at their house and putting together a puzzle with Ruth, I headed out to explore the vast concrete sprawl that is Sofia. Jayne and Dennis had warned me not to expect anything special, but I figured there had to be something there. Unfortunately they were right. Sofia must have been the epitome of a communist city in its heyday. It was just more and more concrete spread as far as the eye could see. I keep thinking I would come across a park or a large city square or something interesting, but it was not to be found. Even the Christmas lights weren't very pretty - they looked haphazardly strewn over trees and lampposts by someone who would have much rather been anywhere else.
The most central point of the city is a big Orthodox cathedral, but even that manages to look a bit communist too. Though I did find it interesting how different the inside was to the various Catholic cathedrals I've seen on my travels. The walls and ceilings are covered with intricately drawn icons. I also happened to be there when a group of men were performing some type of religious chant/prayer. The music was beautiful.
After I returned to the Hulletts, I made latkes to go with the dinner Jayne had prepared. During the bus ride we had a conversation about me being Jewish and Jayne had asked about Hanukkah. I explained that Hanukkah had ended a couple of weeks ago, but that I had managed to make latkes, a traditional food, at a hostel. Of course I didn't mind making them again so they would be able to eat them. I got the impression that they've had minimal, if any, contact with Jewish people throughout their lives, so I tried to teach them a little bit about Hanukkah and its traditions along with the latkes.
The next day I walked around and explored more. I visited the Orthodox cathedral again, the Russian church, a mosque, the largest Sephardic synagogue in Europe (which was closed, so I couldn't go inside), the pedestrian shopping street, a massive indoor market with clothes, shoes, trinkets, etc., another indoor market with food, and an outdoor book market. None of the things I saw were all that exciting, but I found it interesting how little of interest there was in Sofia.
That night was Christmas Eve, something I hadn't even thought about when I accepted the invitation to stay with the Hulletts. In the post-communist countries I've been traveling in recently, Christmas isn't a very big deal or super commercial like it is in the US. Most of the people who do celebrate it, celebrate Orthodox Christmas which is on Jan. 6th. From what everyone said, I had no need to worry about anything shutting down for Christmas anywhere in these parts. I probably could have even had a traditional Jewish-American Christmas of a movie and Chinese food if I had wanted to seek it out. Because of the combination of them being away for the week leading up to Christmas and Ruth waking up sick that morning, Jayne and Dennis hadn't made any plans for Christmas Eve, so we had a low-key dinner of spaghetti and shopska salad. I was really happy to discover that their main religious celebration is on Christmas Day so I didn't have to stick around for it. Christmas morning I left pretty early to catch a 9am bus to Istanbul, my final European destination.
I really enjoyed my time with Jayne, Dennis, and Ruth. It was nice to be in a home with a family for a couple of nights instead of the typical hostel dorm room. They were very nice people even though I don't agree with their political and religious views. I was careful not to express my opinions on some of the topics that came up in passing (like them not wanting Ruth to learn about evolution or the candidates in the upcoming presidential primaries) when I knew that my liberal perspective would not be shared. In all, it was a very interesting experience and gave me great memories from a rather boring city.
