Discovering Cultures

I just said goodbye to Sofia and hello to Targovisthe, let me fill in the gaps!

I arrived in Sofia on Sunday quite late, so it was just a quick trip to the hotel, where I could enjoy a big ass room just by myself. I mean, there is nothing wrong with sharing rooms, but sometimes you need some quiet instead of snoring people around you.

Next morning was our arrival day at our accommodation for the week, so I packed my backpack and took the metro to the National Training Center for Olympians. It was basically a catered hostel, with all the facilities we needed. I arrived a little after 12:00, and some people were already there, most of them Spanish. We welcomed each other and the following volunteers with open arms, and showed each other around the building. When we realised it would take a while for all of us to arrive, Kristaps, from Latvia, Sofia from Italy and Joaquin from Spain and me, went for a little walk to explore the neighbourhood. We found a big park, which was more a small forest in our eyes, but since we were hot and out of snacks, we made our way back quite quickly. When most of us had arrived, we went out for dinner in the city center. There are also some Bulgarian people who joined the project, so they can help us with translating when necessary, but fortunately most people in Sofia speak English. We ended up in a traditional Bulgarian restaurant, with authentic Bulgarian dishes, to get our first real experience. The food was amazing, simple but delicious, and after our meals we called it a night and went home.

Our schedule this week would be full of training in teambuilding, getting to know each other and the programme and the project, so we woke up and had breakfast around 09:00, to start our day easily at 10:30. Pepa, one of the co-founders of the project, officially welcomed us in Bulgaria and in the project, and off we went with the games to remember each others names and more of the like. Luckily, we had dinner at the hostel, and when some of the people, by the way, there are almost 50 of us, from 12 different countries, went out for a drink in the park, but I needed some rest so I went to bed early.

During the days, we did more of training and games, but in the evenings there were some other activities, either arranged by Pepa and the organisation, or by ourselves. On Wednesday, there was a jazz concert in the park some of us went to, and after listening to the jazzy tunes, one of the Bulgarian girls, Sveti, took us on an evening tour through Sofia. Quite nice to follow a person for once instead of a digital app on my phone. Our evening ended in a different park, where another concert was happening in front of the National Palace of Culture. Thursday, our training was taking place outside of our facilities, and Pepa and the others took us to Kambanite (The Bells) Park, where bells from different countries are displayed. We had lunch somewhere near the park, and some more training about time and money management.

When we were on our way for dinner with the whole club, we walked by a Dutch bakery, although besides the klompen, or wooden shoes, there was not much Dutch about it. Our trainers promised us that they would tell us during dinner where we would go to the next week for our excavations, and everybody was exited to find out with who and to what town we would end up in. But sadly, they were not quite ready yet to tell us, since there happened to be an “issue”, of which apparently I, among others, was a part of. To soothe ourselves from this disappointment, we went out to a club to dance. It was Friday after all. But, our week of trainings wasn’t over yet, and Saturday morning, I pulled myself out of bed, not in the mood to do anything. They finally did tell us where we are gonna go, and together with Kate from Greece, Ivanna from Bulgaria/Italy and Rūta and Andrey from Latvia, I will be staying in Targovisthe for the next few weeks. We found out what the issue was as well, because we won’t be really helping with an excavation. Something went wrong at the last minute with permits for the third excavation site, so they split that group into two, one to go to Preslav, and us, to work from the office of the museum and to be busy with activities around the excavations. It was a little bit of a mind switch, since this was not really what I signed up for, but nonetheless, I’m with nice people, and the PR team is also located in this town, so we are not completely alone and we will get to do some cool stuff anyways! Our week of training was finally over, and the only thing I wanted to was get to bed and sleep, so that was exactly what I did.

Sunday was the day to do some more exploring! Kate, Kristaps, Andrey, Janneke from the Netherlands, Milo from the USA and me went on our city tour. We started with breakfast, and made our way towards some archeological sites in the city. We visited some churches, one of which my grandma went to many years ago, to sing there with her choir. I wasn’t officially allowed to take pictures, but it felt to special to be there, so I took some sneakily. Afterwards we went to the archeological museum, and with history and archeological students, it was amazing, you can just follow along and listen to their stories. When we left the museum and were on our way home, we stumbled upon some people on the square casually doing traditional dances, so of course we had to stop and admire them. All of us, almost 50, went out for dinner together, and even though it was fun, it was a bit much so we went home after our late dinner.

Monday morning, the ones who wanted to go, were invited by one of the archeologist of the project to visit the history museum of Sofia. A lovely elderly woman awaited us to give us a tour of the museum, in English. She had so much knowledge, but stopped at every single artefact there was, so my focus span was quite quickly gone, and me and some others went outside for a lunch snack and to enjoy the amazing views of the mountains. As a few of us went for dinner later that day, we got stuck in the city center, as there was a demonstration happening in front of the court of justice. We had a small dinner, nothing too fancy, accompanied by some gelato. Yesterday morning, we could sleep in, because our bus would pick us up around 13:00. So we could take our time packing our backs, have some breakfast and chill before our 4,5 hours drive to Targovisthe.