Thursday, May 29, 2008

Bulgaristan

Menus in Bulgaria have entertaining English, here are some of the delicacies we came across (all quotation marks from the original menus):

Wolf Bites
Platter "Wolf's Hunger"
Wolf Salad (a dish of various meats and some cheeses, as well as the interesting inclusion of "homework dry")
Fillet "Minion"
Liver in a Hunter's Way
Mushrooms in a Shepherd's Way
Sauce "Tartar"
Salad for Drinking "Fox"
Big Sandwich with Forcemeat
And many many things in earthenware pots.

The food overall was fantastic, lots of salads and vegetables. Many salads include heaping portions of yoghurt, which frightened me at first, but now I'm having trouble going back to "normal" salads.

The three hostels i stayed at in Bulgaria were the best three hostels I have ever stayed anywhere. I feel bad for my friend Marya, because this is her first time staying in hostels and the rest of her hostelling life will just be a disappointing search for one like those in Bulgaria.

Marya and I went to a bookstore in Veliko Tarnovo, the first city in Bulgaria we visited, because she didn't have a novel in English and wanted to get War and Peace. I was looking at postcards and she said to me from a shelf: "Oh, hey, they have books in English." I didn't hear, but a middle-aged guy standing her near goes: "Yes, they do, and they can read them too." Poor Marya was so stunned she couldn't get any good retort out and just sort of stuttered "Uh...I didn't mean...I was just..." They didn't have War and Peace, so we just awkwardly rushed out of the store.

The Lonely Planet has been wrong about many things in many cities. The locations of several places have changed. This has led to very sad problems, but despite the fact that my friend speaks far better Arabic than I and is rather smarter; I have discovered that I am FAR superior at reading maps and navigating than she is. This has brightened my spirits in those difficult times of being lost.

Hungarians really don't seem to like me at all. I don't much care, because I love Budapest more than anywhere else and I'm going to move here someday and learn Hungarian and be rude to them back.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

very fun post...and just for the record, I don't like them either if they don't like you....mum

Mari said...

budapest, dude, budapest. we will learn the magyar (remember that night of trying to learn it over the phone? i don't know if i've had a funnier conversation since...) and throw it in their faces. hah!

Anonymous said...

Actually bulgarians are very sensitive about their culture and they generally suffer from an inferiority complex, because of their low standart. Clever people, though.