One other funny thing about Bulgaria was that Bulgarian tastes in pop music tend toward raspy voices. Almost every singer on the radio sounded like a chain smoker, whether they were singing in Bulgarian or in English. I joked to Stefka, "I bet Bonnie Tyler would be really popular here." And Stefka responded in earnest, "Oh, yes. But she was popular in the 80s." Once I was paying attention I started hearing Bonnie Tyler ballads everywhere, more along the lines of "It's a Heartache" and "Straight from the Heart" than "Total Eclipse of the Heart" or "Holding out for a Hero."

They also played this one Celine Dion song in French in heavy rotation--"Pour que tu m'aimes encore." I know it well, because I own the CD, and because it's an especially useful song for teaching the subjunctive while reviewing the future tense, because half of the song is constructed as [future+"pour que"+subjunctive]. ("Je m'inventerai reine pour que tu me retiennes./ Je me ferai nouvelle pour que le feu reprenne...) My background in foreign language pedagogy tends to ruin French pop culture for me, because I'm always noticing how teachable it is. Oh, well.

The "Grand Tournoi de l'Histoire" was entertaining. They had four categories of entrants: high school students, students at the Grandes Ecoles (sort of the French Ivy League), telespectateurs (i.e., viewers), and Celebrities, which was a very inclusive category that happened to include a playwright and filmmaker named Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Schmitt wrote a play about Diderot called "Le Libertin," which was later turned into a film. The film is hilarious and delightful, but not easy to find. My advisor had us watch it in his class after we read Les Bijoux indiscrets, Diderot's novel about a magic ring that makes vaginas talk. He also thought it would be a good idea for us to read Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's master's thesis on Diderot. I can't say I remember much of it. But I did like the movie a lot.

Anyway, there were video segments where the spokesmodel hostess gave voice-over while curators of various French cultural institutions discussed the historical relevance of, say, Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, which led to a series of questions about Marie-Antoinette. It was all very edutaining, as are most shows on France 3.

I am back from Bulgaria. I had a great time. Stefka’s family and friends took very good care of us. We did so much that I kind of feel like I need a vacation from my vacation.

Day 1: As in Poland, my arrival was hampered by fog. I had flown from Paris to Frankfurt, and was dutifully waiting there for seven hours until my flight to Sofia. I kept checking the board to see if the gate had been assigned yet, and eventually I saw a notice that said “Annulierien” or something that I inferred to be the German word for “cancelled.” So I marched up to the Lufthansa counter and said, “My flight to Sofia is cancelled.” And the woman said, “No, it just hasn’t been assigned yet.” And I said, “Are you sure?” And she said, “Oh…yes, it’s been cancelled.” So I said, “There’s another flight at 6:30. Can you get me on that one?” And she told me I had to go to a different counter. So I went there, and told the woman there was an earlier flight to Sofia, to which she responded, “Not on Lufthansa.” And I was like, “Duh.” But she got me on the Bulgaria Air flight. It was diverted to Plovdiv, which meant we had a two-hour bus ride to Sofia. Mind you, I had no idea this was going to happen until it happened, because they announced it in Bulgarian and German. On the bus they showed the film Little Man. I had avoided seeing this movie because it looked terrible. And in fact it was quite awful.

I eventually made it to Stefka’s parents’ apartment and drank lots of whisky with her father, who appreciated having a willing drinking partner.

Day 2: Jesse and Stefka and I went to the Archaeological Museum to see ancient gold artifacts and medieval icons and some Greek statues. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called “The Three-Legged Chicken.” In the evening we had tickets to a concert by an Italian ensemble specializing in medieval music. And after that, we went out for drinks with Martin. He talked me into having rakia, a Bulgarian liqueur made from grapes. Martin and Jesse had a big argument about some intellectual problem.

Day 3: We did some shopping in the morning, then met Stefka’s friend Elitza and had lunch at a restaurant called Mamma Mia. We all had soup, because we figured it would be fast. We were meeting Sophie, a religious art expert, to take tours of churches. Apparently Stefka had already shown some churches to Jesse, but was unable to answer all of Jesse’s questions about Eastern Orthodox iconography and so called in Sophie. It was interesting. When we went home, Stefka’s mother had made stuffed peppers for dinner. Bulgarians eat a lot of peppers. My father would either starve or have indigestion all the time. Emily would also have trouble eating, because there are nuts hidden in almost everything.

Day 4: We got up early on Sunday morning and went to Rila Monastery with Stefka’s parents. It was a very nice trip. The icon gallery had separate prices for Bulgarians and non-Bulgarians (or maybe Bulgarophones and non-Bulgarophones). Stefka told me and Jesse not to talk, so we could just pay the Bulgarian/Bulgarophone price. After seeing the monastery, we drove a little further up the mountain, from whence we could hike up to the cave of the hermit John of Rila (aka Ivan Rilsky). Once you go into the cave, you have to climb out through a tiny opening. Local legend has it that if you make it through the opening, you aren’t sinful. We all made it through. Apparently Bulgarians are particularly concerned with the sin of gluttony.
To celebrate our purity, we stopped for lunch at a cute restaurant. Stefka’s dad ordered buffalo yogurt with honey for dessert, and I tried a taste of it. It was a little too rich for me. In the evening we went to a restaurant called “Romance,” known for its cakes. I tried the “Éclair cake,” which was tasty.

Day 5: In the morning, Stefka had a dentist appointment, so Jesse and I stayed home and watched Star Wars with Bulgarian subtitles. In the afternoon we went ice skating. I am pretty sure I was doing that for the first time in my life. It was pretty fun, but I was worried about crashing into someone and not having any language to tell them to watch out. Fortunately, I only fell when there was no one nearby.

Kornelia had invited us to dinner, and that was lots of fun. We took a minibus to get there. The Bulgarian term apparently translates as “People’s Taxi,” because even though there are specific routes, you can ask the driver to stop anywhere along the route. So it’s a shared taxi. Very crowded. Kornelia also offered rakia for me to drink, which I was happy to accept. The highlight of the first course was quail eggs, but there were also several delicious salads and some nice mackerel canapés. For the main course, Kornelia had made delicious chicken with a kind of blue cheese sauce. And there was an ice cream cake for dessert.

Day 6: We got tickets to a performance at the Bulgarian National Theatre. It was in Bulgarian, but it wasn’t too difficult to follow. The play was an adaptation of the novel Couchove (“The Exiles”) by Ivan Vazov. It was the story of a group of 19th-century revolutionaries living in Romania and plotting to assassinate the Sultan. (Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1878.) It was very impressive visually, and many moments were very moving even without being able to understand the language. The adaptor/director is named Alexander Morfov. Keep an eye out for him. Mostly he directs classics in Bulgaria and Russia.

Day 7: We took a trip to Plovdiv, which I had seen briefly on the night of my arrival. It was a rainy day, but we were not deterred from our quest to see Plovdiv’s Ancient Theatre, a second-century Roman affair with stone benches and a few surviving statues in the scaenae frons. It’s interesting to see how the city has grown up around it. You can watch the traffic go by on the highway below. Apparently the Ancient Theatre is still used for operas in the summer, which would be cool to see.

Other highlights of Plovdiv included a lovely sculpture park and the Ethnographic Museum, which was fairly similar to the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. I highly recommend these Ethnographic Museums in Europe. The first floor mostly displayed tools for weaving, locksmiths, and agriculture. The second floor had furniture and clothing, arranged to give a sense of how people lived in the mountains and in the cities. The one in Krakow had slightly larger collections on its first two floors, and it also had a third floor with contemporary folk art. The museum in Plovdiv was clearer about its narrative; you had to go through the more informational rooms to get to the more eye-catching stuff. The Krakow setup is more like, “Wow! Peasant costumes! Ooooh, look at that. What’s that? It’s so colorful! Oh, look at all these Easter eggs! Hmmmm, Polish Easter rituals. Oooh, what’s that over there? A Nativity scene? Oh, interesting…”

Day 8: On Thursday, Stefka hung out with Elitza in the morning while Jesse and I stayed home and watched The Lord of the Rings with Bulgarian subtitles. (This was not so helpful for the scenes in Elvish, though it was otherwise fun to read the name “Frodo” in Cyrillic letters.) We had lunch with Elitza, then we did more wandering around Sofia and had dinner with Viktor and Diana.

Day 9: It was my 30th birthday. We had the same tasty breakfast we had every day, bread with cheese and sausage. Then after breakfast Stefka and her Dad brought out this enormous cake and they all sang “Happy Birthday.” It was very nice. Then it was time to go out and meet the translators at Stefka’s old translation agency. They gave us wine and cake and lots of other food.

Stefka had spent much of the week planning an outing for her name-day, which is December 27 (the Feast of St. Stephen). Since she was heading back to Chicago on the 25th, she decided to have it on the 22nd. So my birthday coincided with Stefka’s big reunion with all her Bulgarian friends. And some of them brought me presents. Kornelia’s gift was particularly thoughtful. She gave me a book on French Theatre. I remarked that I was surprised, and Elitza explained that birthdays are very important in Bulgaria. She posited that this was because religious holidays were not allowed to be celebrated under communism. Martin bought all my drinks. It was a very nice birthday.

Day 10: Stefka had suggested we go hiking one day, and Saturday was to be the day. She had invited other people to join us, and Viktor had accepted. We took the ski lift part of the way up the mountain, but as we headed to the trail there was a guy who warned us that it was too icy. Apparently we looked a little too citified for the rugged mountain trails. He suggested we take the second half of the ski lift up to the easier trail. So we did, and it was very nice. We decided to hike to the chalet at the top of the mountain. It was going well for a while, but then the snow got really deep and the going got a little tougher. Jesse was blazing a trail with the serious hikers, and the rest of us were very far behind her. But we all finally made it to the top. We ordered some tripe soup, which was pretty good, especially with lots of red pepper. I don’t think I would order it anywhere else. We had to run back to catch the lift, which was supposed to close at 4:00. We made it.

After hiking, we were invited to Viki’s house, which had a nice warm fireplace. His mother had made a very good Romanian dish with cornmeal and cheese and some kind of hot sauce. And we drank red wine.

Day 10: Because we had not gotten through all the churches in Sofia on our first trip with Sophie, she met us on Sunday for the follow-up tour. We saw the Russian Church, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and Saint Sophia. We had coffee afterward, then went back to Stefka’s parents’ house for Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Eve in Bulgaria calls for a feast of seven vegan dishes. We had bread, beans, dolmas, fruit compote, sweet rice, and two other things I can’t remember right now. All were delicious. A coin is baked into the bread, but no one found it in the first go-round. Then Stefka and her mother suggested that I check my bread again, and I found it. So I’m supposed to have a good year fiscally. Sounds good to me.
After dinner, we were invited to Stefka’s cousins’ house. They were very amused to have to Americans over. They were even more amused that we had picked up Bulgarian phrases for “Thank you” and “Good-bye” during our stay.

We were supposed to go to bed early, because Jesse and Stefka had to leave very early in the morning. But Jesse and I stayed up pretty late talking.

Day 11: I got up at 5:00, when everyone else was leaving for the airport. My flight was not until 3:20, and Stefka’s dad was going to drop me off in the afternoon. So I went back to bed. I had a dream that Jesse woke me up and told me that their flight had been cancelled. Then I had another dream that Jesse and Stefka were both talking to me. Stefka was saying, “This is just a dream. Our flight wasn’t cancelled. Go back to sleep.” And Jesse was saying, “Our flight was really cancelled. Get up and socialize!” Anyway, I got up around 10:00, and Stefka was sitting at the dining room table. So the first dream was actually not a dream, but the second dream was. Lufthansa had just cancelled the flight because there weren’t enough passengers for it to be profitable. I guess Jesse and Stefka had to spend the night in Munich, because they missed their connection to Chicago. Apparently Lufthansa was going to pay for their hotel and offer some sort of compensation once they got back to Chicago.

My trip back to Paris went pretty smoothly. The Frankfurt airport was even more boring, because I was in Terminal A, which has fewer shops than Terminal B. And most of them closed early. That was the worst thing about traveling on Christmas Day. I mean it was a little sad to drink beer in the airport bar by myself, but it was really sad when the airport bar closed at 6:00 and I had to kill two more hours until my flight. But the flight from Frankfurt to Paris was fine, and I managed to catch the RER back to my apartment. I was glad I had bought a round-trip RER ticket when I left, so I could just get right on the train without dealing with buying a ticket.

And now I’m back in Paris. This is the first time I haven’t spent Christmas with my family, and I miss them very much. So today I did some laundry and cleaned the microwave and watched my favorite French game shows. There was a commercial on for the “Grand Concours de l’Histoire” (The Great History Competition), which is on tomorrow night.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holidays.

I am heading to Bulgaria in the morning and will be there until December 25 (it was cheaper to travel on Christmas Day). There are lots more Poland stories to tell, and some Paris stories since my return from Poland. I hope to be able to catch up when I get back.

In the meanwhile, here is a Paris story. I went to the craziest event at the Sorbonne on Saturday. It was a professor's "habilitation" to become a "directeur d'etudes," which I understood as akin to being promoted from Associate Professor to Full Professor. A jury of six professors spent five hours publicly responding to his scholarly portfolio and then left the room to vote. Since all six of them had told him how great he was, it wasn't very suspenseful. But there was lots of pomp and circumstance.

While chatting with some people afterward I used my phrase that every French person seems to love: "On ne fait pas comme ca aux Etats-Unis." (We don't do this in the United States.) I'm no't sure if they appreciate the lesson in cultural exchange, or if they read me as a wide-eyed "We're not in Kansas anymore " type.

The thing that amused me the most was that in the Ascoli Library at the Sorbonne, above all the shelves of books, the words "Ne Pas Fumer" (No Smoking) are painted on the wall in a very neatly stenciled font that is vaguely suggestive of the 1970s. So when I got bored with professors telling this guy why he's so great, but that he should use more iconographic evidence, I kept looking up at the "Ne Pas Fumer" sign, because I just found it hilarious.

November 29-30: Because of the travel nonsense, I had missed the first day of the conference. Apparently a lot of people did. I had sent an email to the conference organizer. He had said only to call his cell phone if there was an emergency, and I didn’t really see my missing Wednesday afternoon’s sessions as an emergency. So I sent him an email, but I doubted he would get it. In any case, Jenn was there to tell everyone that I was on my way, taking the train through the Polish fog that was conspiring to keep sex researchers from reaching Krakow by plane.

When I got off the train into the waiting arms of the gypsy caravan (as Meghann dubbed our happy trio), I was very hungry. Meghann tried to take us to a basement-level restaurant, but we were denied, so we went to a similar restaurant that was not in a basement. We browsed the menu. I had decided on the variety bowl of pierogies when I saw the page of seasonal dishes and figured out that it was mushroom season. So Meghann and I ended up splitting the pierogies and a plate of mushrooms in a lovely sauce. And it came with lovely bread that had two spreads. And we drank beer. Afterward we went to Camelot for another beer. The bar in Krakow, as opposed to the congenial spot for happy-ever-aftering. Though it was rather a happily-ever-after occasion.

We took a cab back to Meghann’s digs in Polish student housing, and I was very sad when we got up to the room because I had forgotten my wonderful Monoprix gloves in the cab. It was very fun to stay in the dorm. Apparently Jenn and I were there illegally, which turned walking across the lobby past the registration desk into an adventure every night. My favorite part was walking down the long hallway once we got to Meghann’s floor, because there were makeshift ashtrays every ten feet or so. Sometimes we came across groups of students smoking and chatting in the hallway, but more often it was just the evidence of their having been there. As Meghann liked to say, “You can just feel the socialism.”

In the morning we took the tram to the Pugetow Hotel for the conference. Meghann facilitated that entire adventure, and she planned to pick us up at the end of the day. The conference was good. It was billed as an Interdisciplinary conference on Sex and Sexuality. Mostly the inter-disciplines were sociology and literary criticism. According to my participant-observation in this situation, sociologists and literary critics seem to have trouble talking to each other. Jenn’s paper was the highlight of the first day. She had enlisted me to help by unfurling a poster of an erotic painting at a strategic moment during her talk. Her presentation went over very well.

At 5:30, Meghann was waiting on the steps for us, doing her best street urchin impersonation. She took us to Wawel Castle and told us the story of the dragon whom no one could kill until some wily citizen filled a sheep with sulfur and set it out as a trap for the dragon. The dragon at the sheep, got a stomachache, drank some water, and exploded. Meghann tells the story much better, so I hope I haven’t ruined it for future visitors to Krakow. Then we walked through Rynek Glowny, the market square, which was all decorated for Christmas. There were a lot of angels. The angels that were facing left looked like Minnesota. Seriously, it was like someone had taken a cutout of Minnesota and stuck an angel head on the northwest corner, and the tips of the wings were the northeast and southeast corners.

Anyway, Meghann took us to this great bar, and she got a mischievous smile on her face as she went up to buy the first round of drinks. She came back with “tatanka”—buffalo grass vodka (zubrowka) and apple juice. They were tasty. We drank a lot of them during the course of our stay.

Thursday night was also our trip to “Cocks,” the Polish version of Hooters. There were leggy, voluptuous blond waitresses in skimpy outfits. Jenn claimed that she spied one brunette waitress. We had cheeseburgers. I had not had a cheeseburger in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed mine. There were a lot of televisions playing sports and Polish advertising.

And then back to Meghann’s. I think we were early enough for the tram that night.

I just got back from my whirlwind trip to Poland. It was a lot of fun, after an inauspicious beginning.

Last Tuesday, I got up to get on the Metro to Porte Maillot, where I was to take a bus to the Beauvais Airport to catch my flight from Paris to Katowice, followed by a bus from Katowice to Krakow. Well, I got on the Metro and there were huge backups on line 1, so I was almost late for my bus. But I made the bus and arrived at Beauvais in plenty of time to check in with Wizzair (cheapie airline based in Poland) and have a snack before going through security. Once you get through security, the Beauvais airport feels like purgatory. Everyone is waiting, and since a flight to Rome had been delayed, a lot of people had been waiting for a very long time. There is one waiting room, and they only load one plane at a time, so it is very frustrating to wait there.

After I had waited until after my flight was supposed to have taken off, there was an announcement that Wizzair’s flight was cancelled. I eventually learned that this was because of excessive fog in Poland. They told us to wait in line to have tickets reassigned or to get reimbursed. I was near the end of the line, behind a lot of angry Poles. One of the workers came out and said that if we just wanted to be reimbursed, she could take our tickets and start that process. I knew that there wasn’t another flight until Thursday, so I asked how long the train would take. She said, “At least seven or eight hours.” And I figured I had already been trying to get to Poland for five hours, so the train was the way to go. And I handed her my ticket.

I then attempted to pick up my bag, but it turned out the airport was in lockdown because someone had left a bag unattended and it had to be imploded. Security guards told us it would only be another twenty minutes, but they kept telling us that for three hours. So clearly they were lying. I tried to find a public telephone and learned that there was one “800 meters” away, across a field. So I went over there, but I didn’t have a phone card. I tried to use my French bank card, but it was rejected. I walked back to the airport and waited some more, then decided to walk past the cabine téléphonique to the town of Tillé. I was hoping to find a Tabac and buy a phone card. (In France, you go to the tobacconist to buy stamps, phone cards, lottery tickets, and all sorts of other things, in addition to tobacco products.) As I walked through the town, I noticed a butcher shop that was closed for lunch. Then I went by a Pharmacy that was closed for lunch. So when I got to the Tabac it was not surprising to find that they were closed for lunch.

So basically I was stranded in Beauvais with no way of communicating to anyone that I was not going to make it to Krakow that day. Eventually they did reopen the baggage claim, and I got on a bus back to Porte Maillot. When we got to Porte Maillot, the American woman sitting next to me said, “Parlez-vous anglais?” to which I responded, “Yep. I sure do.” And she asked me where the Metro was. We walked over to the Metro together. I had the brilliant idea of switching from the 1 to the 6 to the 4, rather than taking the 1 to Chatelet and switching to the 4 there. The 6 is above-ground and usually less crowded than the 1.

I got home, and Laura was surprised to see me. I tried to call Meghann and couldn’t get her, so I sent an email to tell her I wasn’t coming, but that I was going to try to catch a train. I did some online research and discovered that the fastest train to Krakow would get me there in 19 hours, but didn’t leave until 3:30 on Wednesday. But then I figured out that I could take an overnight train to Berlin and then transfer to Krakow, and it would take 22 hours. (In a way I’m glad the Wizzair lady stretched the truth to get me out of her line. I think if she had said “20 hours,” I still would have done the train, but the decision wouldn’t have been quite so instantaneous.)

So I drank three beers and had a quick bite to eat, and I headed up to the Gare du Nord to buy a train ticket. This was perhaps the best customer-service interaction I have had thus far in Paris. I said, “Je voudrais un aller pour Krakovie” (I would like a one-way ticket to Krakow). The response was, “C’est en Pologne?!!?” (That’s in Poland?!?!) He sounded a little suspicious. I said, “Oui, c’est en Pologne,” confirming his geographical knowledge and indicating that I actually wanted to go to Poland. He couldn’t find anything direct, so he said, “via Berlin, peut-être,” and I said that sounded like a good idea. He got me on a train that was leaving at 8:46 PM, which meant I only had to wait about twenty minutes. He also gave me great seats, which may or may not have been intentional.

On the way to Berlin, I read Le Diable s’habille en Prada (The Devil Wears Prada), which I had borrowed from Dominique. He was right, the book was a lot better than the movie. I got to Berlin at 8:15 and had an hour there before my train to Krakow. I was hungry, so I got some apple cake and a large coffee, which was exactly what I needed. I found an internet kiosk and emailed Meghann to tell her I was arriving at 7:15 PM. I bought a salami sandwich, which I meant to save for lunch. But I ended up eating it shortly after I got on the train to Krakow. After that, I slept most of the way there.

When I arrived in Krakow, ten people greeted me with “Are you looking for a place to stay?” and I kind of freaked out, so I left the train platform and went to the station. Then I realized that Meghann was probably waiting for me on the platform, so I went back. I couldn’t remember which platform had been mine, so I just picked one at random and walked up. And I saw Meghann and Jenn on a different platform and started waving at them. Jenn saw me first, and then we all ran downstairs and had a joyful reunion. Meghann’s reaction to my tale of traveling woe was something along the lines of, “Well, if getting to Poland isn’t an adventure, it really isn’t worth it.”

So that is the beginning of the trip to Poland. The rest of it went much better, but I think I will have to write about that later.