Published in the Livingston Enterprise the week of September 22nd, 2008.<\/p>\n
Bulgaria Spans Spectrum of Benevolence<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>With Netzy in tow, my bike group raced across Bulgaria.\u00a0 Our style is Americans don’t need a visa for Bulgaria.\u00a0 Nakia, our lead vocalist All the time in Istanbul proved in vain, however; her visa application However, when Nakia arrived later that week, the consul proved much We had never crossed a country in less than two weeks.\u00a0 When we biked At first, Bulgarians did seem stand-offish.\u00a0 They gave directions We unpacked and started to prepare a vegetable soup for dinner, when We sat down at the table and offered our soup, the simple fare of Before we had begun to drink the beer, another bulky Bulgarian man A woman arrived with a bowl of honey.\u00a0 A man who looked seventy, but Another woman carried a puppy into the dining room.\u00a0 My mother cooed We stayed up late, feasting on honey, mutton, sausage, soup and beer We woke up the next morning, a bit groggier than usual, perhaps, but Published in the Livingston Enterprise the week of September 22nd, 2008. Bulgaria Spans Spectrum of Benevolence With Netzy in tow, my bike group raced across Bulgaria.\u00a0 Our style is usually more relaxed.\u00a0 We like to take our time to absorb the sights and sounds of places through which we bike.\u00a0 However, our visa situation permitted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-here-you-will-find-the-posts-that-jim-wrote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nusually more relaxed.\u00a0 We like to take our time to absorb the sights
\nand sounds of places through which we bike.\u00a0 However, our visa
\nsituation permitted no lolly-gagging.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand only female when Netzy isn’t there, is from the Bahamas.\u00a0 As we
\nquickly learned, carrying a passport from a small country isn’t
\nhelpful while traveling through Europe.\u00a0 Nakia’s disturbing odyssey
\nbegan at the Bulgarian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.\u00a0 She spent days
\nin front of the consulate with other frustrated Bulgarian visa
\nseekers, but couldn’t even gain entrance to apply for a visa.
\nFinally, she got in line at 1:00 AM, nine hours before it opened and
\nspent the night on the pavement.\u00a0 Even then, she only entered after
\nthreatening to request a refund of money she’d already submitted to
\nthe consulate.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwas rejected.\u00a0 In Edirne, a Turkish town on the Bulgarian border,
\nNetzy and I tried to do some groundwork at the Bulgarian consulate
\nthere to assist Nakia in her second effort at getting a visa.\u00a0 With
\nher gift for nagging pursuasiveness, Netzy talked her way past the
\nsurly guard and all the way in to the consul himself.\u00a0 She grilled him
\non Nakia’s situation in between friendly inquiries about his family.
\nShe left with a guarantee of Nakia’s speedy visa delivery.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nworse than his word.\u00a0 Only after repeated visits, phone calls, and
\npaying another exhorbitant fee, did he agree to process her visa.\u00a0 She
\ngot it back to find he had given her a ten day transit visa.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninto Bulgaria, we were resolved to travel as far as possible together
\nand then send Nakia ahead on a bus.\u00a0 Given our experience with the
\nBulgarian consular system and our impending deadline, you must fogive
\nus if our attitude towards Bulgaria were less than positive.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhelpfuly enough, but I thought I detected a dirth of happy faces.
\nJust as we began to suspect Bulgarian consular officials represented
\nthe whole of Bulgaria, we met Dmitri in the small mountain town of
\nGabrovica.\u00a0 Dmitri works on he railroad.\u00a0 When we paused near the
\nstation to buy groceries, he offered to let us sleep in the break
\nhouse for railroad employees.\u00a0 Delighted to have shelter, we readily
\nagreed.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nDmitri communicated that he would bring some beer.\u00a0 Even better, we
\nthought.\u00a0 Soon a young man lugged in an entire case of Bulgarian beer.
\n\u00a0Dmitri pointed to his junior collegue.\u00a0 “Room service,” he explained.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntravelers on a budget, to Dmitri.\u00a0 He turned up his nose, yelled out
\nthe door, and smiled, saying “Room service,” again.\u00a0 Soon the young
\nman was back, with a prodigious amount of sausage, cheese, and a raw
\nleg of lamb.\u00a0 Dmitri gestured to himself, “meat, cheese, beer, no
\nvegetables,” he explained.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nshowed up with a plastic bottle full of a clear substance.\u00a0 Dmitri
\ntook it and held it up with a proudly.\u00a0 “Grappa!” he announced.\u00a0 The
\ngrappa was, as I had feared, homemade distilled liquor.\u00a0 It’s as
\nstrong as rubbing alcohol but doesn’t taste as good.\u00a0 We all did a
\nshot in between soup and sausage.\u00a0 Dmitri even convinced Netzy,
\nusually a staunch prohibitionist, to have a sip.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nclaimed to be forty, joined us.\u00a0 He had apparently enjoyed a bit of
\ngrappa before his arrival, and demonstrated a much greater fondness
\nfor Nakia than had the Bulgarian consular officials.\u00a0 I delicately
\nplaced myself between them.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nover it.\u00a0 Dmitri rolled his eyes.\u00a0 “Puppy, soupa,” he said, suggesting
\nwe spice up the soup by the addition of puppy meat.\u00a0 Netzy and the
\npuppy owner joined forces to chide Dmitri.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand suffering through shot after shot of grappa.\u00a0 Occassionally,
\nDmitri would stumble outside, signals in hand, at the sound of an
\napproaching train.\u00a0 We finally escaped to an unoccupied room of the
\nbreak house.\u00a0 Long after we retired, we could hear our hosts carousing
\ninto the night.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwith our opinion of Bulgarians changed irreversibly for the better.
\nI’ve met many people a long the way who were angry at the U.S. for one
\nreason or another.\u00a0 However, none of them ever held my nationality
\nagainst me.\u00a0 Thanks to Dmitri, I won’t make the mistake of judging the
\npeople of an entire country based on the actions of their goverment or
\ntheir consular officials.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"