Bulgaria in photos #1

I think this is going to be the most effective way to capture those days in Bulgaria. Thank you for being patient!

On our way:

At the Lion Bridge. There's also an Eagle Bridge on the other side of Sofia, but we didn't get to that one on foot. This Lion Bridge is an anchor to all of my trips to Sofia because it's such an easy landmark so close to the hotel we have stayed at during our adoption visits.

We rented a car to drive to Lukovit, Bobbi's old town. The drive through the mountains is breathtaking every time, and the photos are NOTHING!! So you'll have to just use your imagination, prompted by the photos. Here you can see a glimpse of some sunflower fields running up in between the trees.

Our first evening in Lukovit was the night to have dinner with Bobbi's precious teacher - the biology tutor who came into her home over the last two years she lived in Lukovit, and became a tremendously important person in Bobbi's life - seeing this woman was the single largest motivator to Bobbi to get back to Bulgaria. I wrote more about it in this blog post: Bobbi's Teacher. I intentionally don't have many photos of her because I try to limit whose pictures are up on the blog unless I have their permission first!

A beautiful tree at that restaurant. Little did I know what a big part of our trip these would become. These "junki" are everywhere! We did some research, and apparently they're "cherry plums" (cherry because of their size), and they apparently grow self-seeding, and are quite tasty. Sweet flesh with a tart tang in the skin, and just the right size to pop in your mouth whole.

The next morning we went to visit the cave that I've already posted about here: Eyes of God, and here: A few more...  The drive out there was really something. You leave the small town of Lukovit, and are immediately in the middle of nowhere:

...and then you turn off the road onto a gravel drive which also looks like it goes nowhere, and then there you are!! If you didn't know where to turn, you'd have no idea the cave was practically underneath you!

And heading back into town.

That afternoon we went to visit Bobbi's old home and the kids (young adults!) who still live there. As we were driving through the little "city center" we saw two of her friends taking a walk on the sidewalk...in the wrong direction! So we stopped the car, and I ran back and in my broken Bulgarian tried to tell them who I was. They've both met me twice, and seen me in pictures, and knew we were in town, but still, it took a moment for them to figure out what I was saying. They came over to say hi to Bobbi, and then we drove and they walked (quickly!!) back to the home.

A familiar view to me: the large building is the activity building shared by all of the homes. The red and yellow gate matches the red and yellow building for the younger children, and the building way in the back is Bobbi's old home. Pretty crazy to be here again!

I've blurred out their faces for privacy reasons, even though all but one of them are over eighteen, so it's technically fine for their faces to be up in public, but I prefer to ask permission before I post other people's pictures, so this is what you get! 😊

A photo of the larger house across the street. The building methods are so foreign to me.

[After we visited Bobbi's old home we drove over to her teacher's house for tea, also in that previous post.]

And the next day, here's Bobbi sporting a new look with a scarf her teacher gave her. Boriana was her stylist!

 Heading out of our hotel for the last time. The ramp is steep (but exists!) and the elevator was small (but if she flipped her footrest up, she fit!)

 Another beautiful junki tree. Mmmm. Tasty!

The roses. Wow.

We started our day Saturday with a visit to the other group home in Lukovit, as there were people there that Bobbi knew as well from her old-old home before they built the smaller style group homes. Then, after a number of people recommended it, we went to visit this still-under-construction house that is being built by the same man who built the restaurant that we did many of our meals at while in Lukovit. It's quite the fantastical place!

A little owl sits up on the vegetation-covered roof.

A cute little chimney cap:

Another owl, this one with glasses:

And inside - it's obviously still under construction - what an unusual blend of large stones, small stones, tree parts, etc. I'm curious what the place will look like when it's finished!

This "floating house" that's part of the complex was mentioned by quite a few people.

An interesting view - in the center is an old, old tower that's part of a bridge (dam?) over the river. On the right is the house from a few photos up, and on the left is a path down to a building that gets you down to the floating house. My American eyes are continually challenged to tell the difference between "falling apart" and "being built" because the methods are so different from what I'm used to here.

A handful of junki.

We left from this place to drive back through the mountains to Sofia. Again, the photos can't capture the beauty of approaching those distant mountains.

More sunflower fields:

And more:

Curving roads finding the best path up, over and through.

A few times literally through the mountain.

And sometimes raised up on incredibly high piers - you can see in the background where this road is heading, but you CAN'T see how very tall the bridge piers are, nor that the stretch of road we're currently on is also that high above the valley below.

For all but our last night in Sofia, we stayed in the small apartment of someone who used to work at Bobbi's old home, and she and Bobbi have stayed in pretty close touch since finding each other on facebook. This is my favorite way to stay in a city - much better than a hotel because you get to live a little bit more like a normal person. She even cleaned our her refrigerator and put in a bottle of water and two chocolate bars just like our "real" hotel did!

Our first adventure Sunday morning was to get to Boriana's church. She attends an international church that holds its services in English, which meant we got to understand what was going on. It was neat to get to meet her family, and we also met a couple who was originally from the Twin Cities!

Boriana's family is quite large by Bulgarian standards. She is the oldest, and then have five younger brothers! Her youngest brother is just a few months younger than Eben, and Bobbi thought he was pretty sweet.

The church meets on the second floor of a building with a VERY SMALL elevator. I took the stairs, and someone Dad managed to wedge Bobbi in such that the door would close. Yikes.

One of the things we'd wanted to do while in Sofia was meet up with someone we've known since Krassimir's adoption. She and her family live in Texas, but spend their summers in Bulgaria. (She is also the friend who helped us get a Bulgarian Bible for Bobbi two years ago.) They joined us at Boriana's church, and then we meandered our way via the tram and some walking to one of their favorite restaurants where we spent a delightful leisurely afternoon eating and talking. This place has the BEST ice cream I've ever tasted, by the way. If you're ever in Sofia, go check out Confetti.

Because we're crazy, we decided to try walking back to our apartment just to see if we could. One thing that I find challenging about finding my way around Sofia is that there aren't street signs (or at least there aren't signs that I can find like there are here!) So even if you know you need to turn right at the second street, and you know what it's called, it's still tough because you're not sure if that thing there is a street or a driveway or an alley or ??? and so are you now at the second street or only the first? But that's part of what makes the challenge exciting! We did some sight-seeing right in the Center since we were so close...

The sun was really bright down by the Serdika ruins.

There. That's better!

"Hey, Bobbi, see if you can pose just like this grumpy couple!"

The photo can't quite describe how steep that incline is!! But it's still easier than stairs!

Training my eye again: this is a new building under construction. This is not an old building falling apart.

The next morning (Monday) we met up with Lili (whose apartment we were staying in - she stayed with a friend of hers while we were there, despite our insistence that she didn't have to go elsewhere!) and she walked with us to a small park nearby where she likes to sit and watch the kids and feed the birds. Here we are walking back to the apartment before going off on our adventure for the day.

Today's task was to see how hard it was to walk to the nearest metro station, because we were hoping to not take a taxi to our hotel for the last night of our stay. Along the way we passed this yellow junki tree, which became our good friend over the next few days.

Really neat painting on the end of this building!

And there's the Metro line! In most of the city it's underground, but at a few stations further out, it's above ground and covered by this translucent panel.

And here we have a true juxtaposition of the new skyscraper/office towers on the left and an old abandoned building on the right.

Walking back - the large mountain to the south of Sofia is ahead of us.

Funny story here. On our way out, we're about ten minutes into our walk when Bobbi yells, "Snake!!!" and sure enough! There's a dead snake, maybe five feet long, laying on the street RIGHT in front of me. I scream. It's dead. We laugh and continue on. And laughed over it quite a few more times on the way. On the way home, it's still there, so we take a photo so we can always remember.

We stopped through the large grocery store before heading back to the apartment - with as cheap as things are here, eating from the grocery store is still more cost effective than restaurants, and just as tasty in many ways. I'd been wondering, in a metric society, do you still go to the store and buy a dozen eggs??? Turns out the answer is no. And yet, yes. See - the main packages have ten eggs each, but you can buy a half a dozen eggs! I guess six is just easier to package than five.

This was the night that we got back to the apartment to find that...the elevator was broken!!! Um. Not so nice. Did I mention that we were staying on the seventh floor? I was glad that we hadn't gone with our original travel plan, which is that Bobbi and one of the other kids and I would go and Matt would stay home. He's better at carrying a one hundred pound young lady up six flights of stairs than I am! The light-weight titanium wheelchair was sufficient for me!