Whaaaa...

We took a trip to Greece this weekend, and saw some amazing sights. We'll write about that later. Most of our posts thus far (and hopefully into the future) have been about fun adventures and occasional misadventures, but still fun in that "isn't Bulgaria zany?" kind of way. But please don't get the wrong impression: this transition has been hard, and sometimes you just want to scream with frustration. Since no one would likely even notice me screaming here, I'll have to do it online. Hopefully this will be a rare bitchy post, as we're trying to keep a positive attitude both in our lives and on our blog. Still, maybe it's good to vent.

Things that suck (in no particular order):

1. Crappily made Chinese* crap is much more crappily made here. Who knew? I always get the generic product of most everything in the US, but here I've learned that, say, generic "Scotch" tape (not that you could find the 3M brand) is really quite terrible. I bought some house slippers today (our tile floors get really cold) at a street market for the equivalent of about $4, and I think I may have to give them away. I can't get the awful chemical smell out of them, even after washing them. I left them outside to air out...maybe a feral dog will rid me of them.

* Some of the crap could actually be Bulgarian made. Hard to tell. If so, my sincere apologies to the Chinese.

2. Customer service. This is so hit or miss. Some places (certainly in the minority, but they exist) have someone interested in helping you, or at least trying, even if they don't speak English and my Bulgarian isn't adequate for the situation (which it pretty much never is). More often, either I am completely ignored or am followed around like a hawk by a gang of 4 or 5 surly employees, who apparently are convinced I am desperate to steal a roll of their miserable "Scotch" tape. Today we tried to buy quite a bit of Bulgarian pottery (it's quite pretty...expect to get pieces of this as gifts in the future) at a street market. 4 women in side-by-side stalls were selling nearly identical pottery at similar prices. We chatted a bit with the first saleswoman for a while, then said we'd be back after looking at the selection in the other stalls. She cheerily said she would be there for several more hours and was friendly about 20 minutes later when Shannon returned to buy some items from her. A few stalls down was a woman who spoke nearly no English, and charged a little more, but seemed friendly and had an interesting inventory. We poked at stuff for quite a while, and were in the process of buying a significant quantity of her pottery when Shannon went back to the first stall to buy a few other items (that the second woman did not sell). The second woman got mad, told me to go home, and wouldn't sell her stuff to us. Really, she would not take our money. I will blame communication errors /language barriers for some of this, but really, why wouldn't she sell to us? Later we tried to buy ice cream near the subway, and couldn't get the woman behind the desk to get off the phone to take our money, which we were prominently displaying trying to get her attention. We walked away after she sold ice cream to someone else (though she never got off the phone) who just walked up and ordered.

3. Not being able to communicate. This sucks. It was even worse in Greece this weekend, where I realized that I didn't even know how to say yes or no (I discovered to my horror that the Greek word for "yes" is pronounced the exact same as the Bulgarian word for "no." (it sounds like "nay.") I somehow doubt this is completely a coincidence, given the centuries of rivalries between the two nations. Still, the language barrier makes everything SO HARD. I can't talk to the guards or the maintenance guys on campus, and sadly, often some of the Bulgarian faculty. I can't explain to the surly bag check lady at the grocery store that I want to add one bag to my pile, not retrieve them all, so when she figures it out she gives me an extra-big surly eye roll. I can't read the newspaper. I can't figure out how to cook anything I purchase, unless I get lucky and can find some instructions in German and I can make out enough to be useful (rare). Going to the grocery store is an ordeal in figuring out what might be available, where it might be, and what they could possibly call it here.

4. No place to run that doesn't have an excess of scary dogs, scary traffic, or scary people. This really bothers me, as running is the best way I have to both let off steam and explore the area. Most other faculty just do laps of campus (1/2 mile loop), but that's not really much fun, and we're already in a bubble enough here without spending all my running time on campus too.

5. Smoke. Going out to eat means coming home and taking a shower to get rid of the cigarette smoke in my hair. Thankfully campus is smoke free.

6. Isolation. It's easy to feel isolated, both in time and space. I've been surprised at how hard the time difference makes it...when I want to call friends and family is when they are sleeping, or at work. I am so thankful for email, this blog, Facebook, and Skype, but it's still hard. We're also physically isolated on campus. It's nice in many ways, as we feel secure and don't have many of the annoyances of city life, but it's also isolating, especially without a car or a bike. Going anywhere involves a 15 minute walk minimum, and most places involve an additional 30-50 minutes of walking/bussing/subway-ing to get. It's sort of how I lived in college, but I forgot about the inconvenience of it.

7. Not having a better answer to "Why did you move to Bulgaria?" The usual answer is still "Why NOT Bulgaria?," and I think it's still a good one. There are a lot of great things going for Bulgaria, including the beautiful mountainous countryside and the great neighbors (Greece, Turkey, etc). I wasn't that surprised when I heard confused questions about this back in Montana. What gets me down is when I hear it in Greece, or often even Bulgaria, and often with an incredulous tone. "Why would you possibly choose to come here? I'd leave if I could," is the barely unspoken sentiment. As our taxi driver said, though, "Bulgaria is a little bit shit," and it's hard not to let it get you down. I have been in some other poor/developing nations before (granted not this intensively), but never felt this level of general despair. "Why aren't things better?" is a question that everyone asks, but no one seems to have an adequate answer to.

8. Mold/sewer smell. Our apartment (and several of the other newly renovated apartments, which are otherwise really nice) seems to have been blessed with some creative plumbing that allows odors (varying from "sewer" to "black mold") to seep from sinks, drains, and toilets. If you come home after a day away with the house shut up it can be rather overpowering. I'm afraid it will be intolerable once it's too cold to leave the window open all the time. The school maintenance guys are looking into it, but I'm not so hopeful.

9. Being ungrateful. This is perhaps the hardest thing of all. As obnoxious as many of these things are, I try to remind myself of how good I have it. My housing and wages are much better than most of the population, and I'm likely only here temporarily, on a "vacation" as it were. I feel bad about feeling bad. Oh, it's too meta...suck it up. This is regular life for most people here, and it's hard (and of course it's all relative...I can intellectually also know how much harder it is other places besides here...but it doesn't make it feel a whole lot better about being here, really). Makes me miss a lot of things about the US, even things that I recognize intellectually as environmentally/socially/economically unsustainable.

Thus ends my rant. More zany adventures to follow...