Christmas holidays

I would expect this time of the year to be lazier than it actually was. Some trips were made, cultural events visited, part of my Diploma Thesis written..just a perfect holiday without waking up „early“ in the morning to get to school on time. All in all it was one of the best Christmas ever.  

The Christmas atmosphere started in Shivachevo (definitely must-to-see in Bulgaria), where local school gave performance of Christmas Carol by Dickens in Bulgarian. Who has never lived in a town, where cultural events are rare, can never understand how exciting it was to go to the theatre to see a play, even though it was in Bulgarian. Although I picked up only some words, the play was so well done – Matt and Pavlina – good job!!!

After that, we went to visit ICT teacher thanks to which I got to know that Bulgarians have a special TV channel only with Bulgarian traditional/folk music. Pretty crazy! It was a really nice visit and it was pity we had to leave so early to get a train back home. Sliven welcomed us with its famous winds. Cold and windy, what one could wish more? :-D So we ran back home. 

The last weekend of my Christmas holidays (honestly I am sure that teachers love the holidays more than the kids) we took a trip to Plovdiv, second biggest town in Bulgaria. It is also said that it’s one of the most beautiful ones in this country. I think Viktor and me together must increase somehow the possibility of getting lost (see Istanbul trip;). Being saved from not-very-safe looking part of the town by an Armenian woman who could speak Russian, we checked in in our family-sized hostel and went to see the Old town. The houses in the old parts of Bulgarian towns start to look all the same, so the most interesting part was getting over the thorny fence to the antique theatre where we took some unique pictures. To get from the theatre, we needed to use different way out (another thorny fence, narrow path on the edge of the roof and some jumping down) because a suspious man with a label of security seemed to be watching us from behind the fence.

In the evening, we went to the Mall Plovdiv (who has never lived in a big town without a shopping centre or cinema cannot, again, understand how exciting it was) to the cinema to see Avatar. Unfortunately it was sold out. Well, ten minutes before its beginning, there were some free seats, but obviously we were in the wrong queue, so somebody from another one bought all available tickets. Interesting was one man who was totally angry and arguing because, as he said, it was not fair. Maybe it was not, but very probably he was from Plovdiv and could see it any other time whereas WE were there only for two days and it was a unique possibility to see it.

Anyway, we managed to see Avatar the next day. It was a great experience, not only because I haven’t been to the cinema for several months. For example, the scenes were breathtaking, but on the other hand the storyline was predictable and it was a bit too long. Once I’d like to write about Americanism in this movie, let’s see if I have time to do it.

Being too cold for waiting for the right bus, we took a wrong one. It can sound stupid or ridiculous, but after some minutes on a windy place where a bus stop was supposed to be, one would do anything to get out of there. Getting off the bus somewhere out of the map wasn’t very encouraging, but we managed to get to the railway station on time! Well, but we had almost missed our train because our train departed from
a „hidden“ track.

We arrived safely home and I went to sleep with the thought that I didn’t want to go to school the next day...