Dress-up Tuesday

Tuesday morning we went to a conference at the Hilton—which by the way is very nice, and like the American Embassy, can make you forget you are in Bulgaria (except that most of the event was in Bulgarian—we listened to the [barely tolerable] simultaneous translation on cordless receivers [IR, not RF!] The occasion was the launch of CEED, an organization conceived to educate Bulgarian executives/business owners, but that’s not really important; I was told that basically the same people show of to all these type conferences regardless of the topic.

After an excellent (free) lunch at the Hilton and obligatory jokes about Paris (poor guy, after living down that name throughout childhood, this silly hotel heiress had to go and ruin the name), we still had to go to language class that was postponed from for us.

Andrew and Maury had invited us to go with them to the opera that evening, and one by one, we had decided to join them. You know I’m not a big fan, but for 10 leva ($6.20) I couldn’t say no—besides I was already dressed up, and what else would I do: watch TV & surf the Internet.

The opera house is relatively small and quite dusty, but I fully enjoyed the experience. The opera was Puccini’s Tosca. I should have found a quick summary about it first on the Internet, but between the Bulgarian translation and Andrew & Maury’s quick explanation I was able to follow the story.

Foretaste of Winter

Yesterday, and even more today, the weather has turned noticeably colder—not freezing, but certainly a hint of what is to come. Leaves are already turning colors on some trees. It is unmistakable where this is all heading…brrr!

Below: Ryan snapped this picture in Assenovgrad on Saturday. How confident would you be taking a taxi service called Titanic?!