Into the city: Metro & Rakiya

After a lazy day on campus spent recovering from jetlag and months of general insanity, Shannon and I went into Sofia proper (we are about 5 miles from the center).  We went with veteran teacher Sarah (she taught geography and biology last year, and will teach biology this year) and met up with Garth, a new English teacher. Garth has been in Sofia for a few weeks already, and took quite a few Bulgarian lessons (many more than us) from the same instructor we were using for the last few months.  He can actually speak some, whereas we are barely able to sound out words. Oh well...we'll get better.

Above: Walking to the Metro. Here is a busy Sofia street in our neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, known as "Mladost." This is also a good example of Soviet-era apartment blocks.

Above: Looking south back towards campus and Mt. Vitosha, the mountain on the edge of Sofia. The geography reminds me somewhat of Pasadena, actually, with a big, gently-sloped mountain adjacent to a sloping plain.

 

Yes, that is indeed the Golden Arches, open 24 hours even. That is the Cyrillic transliteration (in italic script, which is quite different than regular script) of "McDonalds."

We walked about 30 minutes to the brand-spanking-new (opened in April 2009, I think) metro station. It was probably the nicest subway station I've seen, which was in contrast to the actual subway cars, which appeared to both be new while also being 1970s Soviet surplus. Kind of funny. I'll have to get a photo later to post.

 

On the Metro...on an above-ground portion.

 

Sarah and Garth, on the Metro

Dinner was at Pod Lipite ("Under the Linden Tree") a nice restaurant that served traditional bulgarian cuisine. We all had yummy bread and a shopska salad (a tasty Bulgarian standard, made primarily of tomatoes, cucumbers, and a feta-like cheese). After we ordered the salads, our waiter, who speaks American English after living in the US for several years, suggested that we really needed to have rakiya with our shopskas to make it more authentically Bulgarian.

Ah, rakiya.
Rakiya is a brandy, usually made of plum or grape, that is often homemade and is considered the national beverage of Bulgaria. It is also considered the national beverage of several other Balkan nations,  but saying that out loud (especially after much rakiya has been imbibed) might be enough to start another Balkan land war. Andris and Prairie tried to convince to drink some of their clearly-homemade rakiya that they had brought back from Bosnia, but I managed to decline, expecting I would be in for plenty of rakiya merry-making in Bulgaria.

As the waiter was challenging both my manhood and my level of cultural experimentation, I figured I had to try. Garth also took up the challenge. I expected it to be terrible. It was...much worse.  The nose was like a fine plastic-bottle tequila, like Pepe Lopez mixed with an equally-refined vodka such as Wolfschmidt. Not so bad. But the body...Drain-O with hints of Windex, I'd say. Horrid. Luckily, they don't serve it as a shot or in a tumbler with ice, but in a little bottle like a airplane wine bottle, forcing you to sip, and thus truly savor, these fine flavors. If you start with some shopska salad, do a rakiya sip, then immediately replace it with more shopska, the burning in your eyes isn't so bad. Apparently rakiya is an acquired taste.

 

Our first rakiya sip...

 

After...ooh, it burns. Notice the grimaces.

I only had a single serving of rakiya, and about 1.5 glasses of wine with dinner, but this morning I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, tired and sore all over. The rakiya seems a somewhat improbable culprit, but considering I didn't really do anything yesterday, I'm not sure what else to blame.  Not looking forward to more rakiya anytime soon.

-Jeff