{"id":811,"date":"2015-07-27T10:58:43","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T10:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=811"},"modified":"2015-07-27T11:36:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T11:36:36","slug":"sofia-give-me-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=811","title":{"rendered":"Sofia, Give Me Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nostalghia\"<\/a>\"Boy<\/a><\/p>\n

Traveling reminds me of how little I know. \u00a0 I went to a country admiring the soft, beautiful name of its capital city –\u00a0 Sofia, Greek goddess of wisdom.\u00a0 But what else?\u00a0 I had to add wisdom in bits, little by little.\u00a0 The Cyrillic alphabet spells out Bulgarian language, which resembles Russian.\u00a0 When on the Black Sea, eating in tavernas shaded by grape arbor, I felt like I was in\u00a0 Greece, which is to the south.\u00a0 Bulgarians have a blood hatred of their historic enemy, Turkey, another neighbor to the South, but as one Bulgarian girl said, the Ottoman influence thankfully improved their food.<\/p>\n

The Black Sea is their gem, their source of fish, of sun-splashed resorts, of rocky coasts that Greeks reached to establish towns.<\/p>\n

Being a former member of the Soviet bloc, Bulgaria now sells old relics of Lenin and Stalin in antique stores, along with American flag and Orthodox icons.\u00a0 Whatever the educational and geopolitical opportunities in the past, \u201cSoviet\u201d is synonymous with large, gray, lumbering, official.\u00a0 Still, Russians come to their beaches in droves – three generational travel, mom and dad, kids, babushka grandmother, maybe grandfather.\u00a0 These are solid family vacations.<\/p>\n

Bulgarians are worldly and skeptical by nature, the wisdom that comes from being a small country on the receiving end of history. As a crusty old fisherman said in international sign language: \u201cAmerica.\u00a0 Russia.\u201d\u00a0 His hand gestures waved about for the large, windy braggart countries. \u00a0\u201cBulgaria.\u201d\u00a0 His gesture shrank to a small silent fish.<\/p>\n

With that appropriate level of skepticism, Bulgaria has joined the EU without accepting the euro. \u00a0 In return, they show off their new black hardtop highways and restored Orthodox churches, which are many and lovely.\u00a0 There are anti-NATO demonstrations, and people have set themselves on fire in protest of global capitalism\u2019s shock therapy.\u00a0 There is no shortage anywhere of misery.\u00a0 But on the whole, Bulgarians seem, as the French say, bien dans la peau,<\/em> good in their skin.<\/p>\n

Knowledge accrues.\u00a0 Sofia knocked me out with another piece of complicated information.\u00a0 The history of the Balkans can never be reduced to short packets. \u00a0More in the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traveling reminds me of how little I know. \u00a0 I went to a country admiring the soft, beautiful name of its capital city –\u00a0 Sofia, Greek goddess of wisdom.\u00a0 But what else?\u00a0 I had to add wisdom in bits, little … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[278,276,279,275,271,277,280],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-black-sea","tag-bulgaria","tag-greeks","tag-sofia","tag-sozopol","tag-travel-writing","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-d5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}