Traveling with Chookie: The Past Two Months: Bulgaria

Ahhhh. Finally, I've come to writing about Bulgaria. It's been one hell of a week with mid-terms and essays and all, so I've been very busy. But I'm finally on break (currently on my way to Amsterdam!) and now have an opportunity to write about my trip.

After leaving Turkey, I had high expectations for what was yet to come in Bulgaria and Greece. However, Bulgaria was not an impressive country. The place was cold, deserted, and had a strong soviet feel. The best word to describe Bulgaria is gray. Everything about my stay there felt so depressing and not warm at all. I pretty much spent most of my free time in the beautiful hotel we were staying in in the city of Sofia, which included dinner time (the room service was kick-ass and the wine was cheap;a win win ). But Bulgaria was extremely unique in terms of its history of the Jews there during the Holocaust. Bulgaria's government, community and leaders didn't allow for the Nazis to deport the Jews on the eve of March 10, 1943. The Jews were all forced to pack up all their belongings that morning and had to congregate at the yard of the Jewish school to wait for deportation. They waited and waited, until at around 10pm, and after standing in the cold for hours, they were simply told to go home. It was a serious miracle and this led to the saving of a whopping 48,000 Jews. This story is so unique to communities all over Europe, most of which allowed and even actively participated in the discrimination and destruction of the Jewish people. It's truly a remarkable story. We traveled to Plovdiv for a day, where we met elderly Jews who were saved on the morning of March 10, 1943. It was really amazing to meet people who experienced such a miracle first hand.

We spent a lot of time with the Jewish youth of the community in Sofia at the JCC there. The highlight of my trip was spending a few hours with the children who attended school at the JCC. I was assigned to work with a group of second graders, and they were so adorable. We sang Hebrew songs with them, danced the Horah and drew pictures of a shabbat table. They were so excited to be with us and loved playing freeze dance with us. I love working with children, so this was a really rewarding and fun few hours. Definitely the best experience I had in Bulgaria.

In addition to learning about the Jews in Bulgaria, we spent some time learning about the Christian monks there and visited the Bachkvo Monastery. It was really cool because I believe it is the first monastery I've ever visited. It was somewhat high up in elevation, so the view surrounding the monastery was a mass of beautiful, dark green mountains. I really enjoyed this part of my visit to Bulgaria.

On the last day of Bulgaria, me and my girl AZ hit up the fabulous Christmas market right near our hotel. They had the most amazing holiday treats like hot apple cider, yummy gingerbread cookies, and even bratwurst! I really wanted to buy everything but I had enough money left for one treat, so me and AZ split the sickest caramel bar I have ever tasted in my entire life. Maybe this was the highlight of Bulgaria??

Overall, I probably won't be back there anytime soon, but studying the history of the Jewish people there was fascinating and shed a light on the good that occurred during the Holocaust that people tend to not notice.