Treasures, treasures - revealeved by me

I had a nice meeting with my friends today after work - yeah, although it is Saturday, we work to compensate one of the days the government gave us around May 1 - 6th long holiday. One of my American friends who we all know and have not seen for 2 years is back to Bulgaria for 4 months on a program with the US Embassy here. In a nutshell, nice to have him around - he is a cool guy!!

Once our sweet almost dinner time shakes and cafes, we headed towards the nearby Sofia City Art Gallery. Meanwhile, I got it is the Night of the Open Museums in Sofia. WoW! What a pleasure! Only was I to such an event once I was Berlin two years ago! Aww what a midnight late afternoon's stalk I had with a Uzbek friend! But that is another story!

Let's turn back to the current!
We did not enter the art gallery because were attracted to the Balkan beatbox music coming from the corner of the gallery. It is located in a beautiful garden in the heart of the city so people who gathered had space to cram in. And there were a lot of people actually! Either it was a working day and everyone took a break by walking in the warm and welcoming weather, or they knew it was a special evening! Well, I was of the first but never mind did I enjoy Karandila - this is the name of the brass band - a very famous gypsy band who plays Balkan music! We took our places on the grass as everyone else and listened , moved in in tact to the music and me precisely even was whistling to myself part of their songs - it was a nice time!! They continued with the open air concert but I moved into the nearby Archaeological museum - one of my friends dragged me there to have a look of movie costumes from the whole past century! And since it is the Night of the Open Museums you can get in as many as you can from 7 pm till the next morning for free. Furthermore, there are additional special short feasts you can watch too - for example, there was another band playing on xylophones the same music the guys out were - it is good to hear different interpretations, followed by a folklore performance.

The National Archaeological Museum is a cool and humid place esp in summers I have never before been to, a miss I consider! "It occupies the building of the largest and oldest former Ottoman mosque in the city, Büyük camii ("Grand Mosque"), built from stone around 1474 under Mehmed II. This is the oldest museum in Bulgaria (thank you wikipedia)" There are so awesome stuff in - starting from stones, pottery, pikes, armours, jeweleries either made of rock, brass, silver or pure gold to large authentic icons of different saints. (to get an idea of all the Roman jeweleries - i enclose a link here http://romanart2.hit.bg/index2.html) One of them I really liked - the icon of St Dimitar - this looked more or less like a mural and it was so old that part of it was missing, just was lost in time. All the things displayed (not the icons though of course, but they were pretty old too - like from 5 - 8 centuries ago) date back to the VI, V, II or so century before Christ - I felt in awe! I was so much fascinated by the icon by one more reason, I remembered when we, the stuff of my company, were on our way to Halkidiki, Greece and passed for several hours through Thessaloniki. I together with some other friends had the chance to go to probably the most famous church in the town, named after this saint - a crowded place where I had the chance to write a wish note and place it in a big box to come it rue! It came!

In front of one of the halls on the second floor was a big line - that was where Bulgarian gold treasures were. I queued! It took me a while to get into a medium-sized circular room where most of the silver and pure gold excavations from different epochs are . I had seen most of these on the TV only, that made me tremble. It is really worth seeing - I do recommend it to anyone! Another good side I saw in that was the educational part - seriously, young people, among whom small children as well, we lining to get in, fathers or grandparents were reading and explaining to their boys and girls all the side notes to each precious stone or jewelery. And jewelries were really beautiful and some of them even big! I thought of all the searches it took to archeologists to excavate them, how fine and noble objects are and what they tell us for our ancestors!

Although I was left with some incomprehensible unanswered questions, overall I feel in awe of the seen! This spontaneous visit worthed my time there!

flowers today - a crazy week

I am still pretty frightened and worried to walk back home alone late in the evening. HE did not manage to steal anything but the deep worry he left in me is more than enough.

So I was pretty gloomy this morning, both from the not able to spare a wink last night and for the mugging adventure that happen to me, when my telephone just rang. The girl at the reception informed me to go downstairs because there was a package FOR ME. I was pretty suspicious - this was the first time I received something personal to my business address.

Once down, they handled to me a BIG 1 meter high box! It said flowerstobulgaria.com. I was astonished! The next moment, I could hear and feel the tittle-tattle around me while I was going back to Earth!

I went up to my floor and my colleagues all gathered around getting excited too! They were impatient to see what was in the box. Me too! So I just opened it a astonishing big spring flower bouquet. With a mini card! So cute! andrew had ordered it online in the morning to cheer me up a little he has been out of the town till the end of the week and as he told me that was the only tiny thing he could do in this situation!
I took pictures of it with my telephone camera but since i do not have the software to download them, I can;t share them! :(

He made my day! That really was touching of him! Furthermore, right before several minutes he just wrote me back he is coming back to the town tomorrow rather than at the end of the week! He wants to escort me from the university to home every night! My brother just called me to advised me to buy a spray from a shop for weapons. This at least give me some solace! I am really grateful of the care and pieces of advice everyone offered!

Blessings to all of you! ~

i got mugged on the street....

What a nightmare happened to me this evening! I was walking home after the lectures at 9:30 pm when a man did a mug attack on me! Srly! I am sooo scared! :S

I was wearing the really precious jewelery Andrew brought me from Switzerland last summer - the beautiful silver multi-faceted SWAROVSKI earrings and necklace. Since it was really warm my jacket was open so they were available and apparently had attracted my non-goodwiller's eye!

I noticed there was a person walking after me at some point and stopped to take a deliberate look at a shop window for a while to notice that he took a break too at the bus stop nearby. Since it was lit around and there were many people he did not dare and waited for me to go on. I passed by a fast food shop that was just closing and was coming nearer to my place when I felt a hand curling up around my neck! At first, I thought that it was a friend but the moment later I realized how hard he pulled my ear - I really thought he tore it! Actually he just managed to tear apart the earring from its back part and it fell apart - I still have the precious stone part but the back part is gone forever. He tried to steal my necklace and purse but he could not so he ran away with nothing. The boys nearby ran after him and caught him up - they started to kick him until all his face and hands were in blood. He was crying and apologizing but that was just nothing in comparison to me yelling at him and trying to get the rear part back. I could not! He ran away! I was scared enough to get home alone so I called my apartment mate and she immediately came together with her boyfriend to pick me up.

Now I am drinking tea and after an hour-long talk on the phone with my sweetie I am going to bed! He was so worried as well but since he has been out of the town for the whole week, we cannot do anything more, though he was ready immediately to drive 2 hours road through the mountains back to Sofia. I just figured out that it would be a lot more scary thinking of him crossing the mountain pass by car at night so I asked him not to come!

I will be very worried about ever coming back home after lectures late in the evening but I have to overcome it somehow. That is life!

Hallo [ha.loh]; Dag [dakh] - or the way to say 'hello' in Dutch

We have been in the Netherlands for seven days today and tomorrow in the morning we are flying back to Sofia, Bulgaria. We have had a blast, as you can judge from the pictures I uploaded in my profile on facebook.com.

We have been out and around every day, although it has been showering from time to time mixed with gloomy, windy and cold weather from Sunday on. By then, however, we got really sunny and spring weather and took wonderful photos. We were not only in Amsterdam, where we spent our first day - Queen's Day Apr 30th, 2009, but also spent a lot of time in the near countryside where my brother lives actually. He lives 15 min away by train in a small picturesque town near the mega polis Amsterdam. He encountered a family from Bulgaria that moved to the other town 9 years ago- actually I have to say that it is only the road sign that separates both places; place is really appreciated here ;-) -so we were stopping by their house on Sunday and really had a nice time together.

The interesting part you are waiting for though is how my mom and dad experienced the flight, right?! ;-) Well, I have to admit that it was flawless, my mom took the seat next to the window, now on our way back it is dad's turn! ;-) They are so cute!!! They look around from the window to see if they can differentiate anything from Sofia and Amsterdam and were disappointed to be surrounded by clouds most of the time - he he he! I even do not spare a thought which side to take, whereas they had already shuffled the places even the night before the flight. One of our suitcases was lost when we arrived on Schiphol airport and had to wait for another hour to have it found but... sigh!! - all's well that ends well! Hopefully, we won't have any problems on the return flight.

P.S.: And these are the word(s) that I could already differentiate from my one week long stay! ;-)