Those monuments may have been physically puny compared to Sofia’s much larger communist-era monoliths, but they had a dramatic impact on me. They showed me my own country in a way I can’t see it when I look directly at it. They showed me what my own country looks like from the outside.
Later that afternoon, after miles of walking and hours of exploring the city, I decided I could finally show up at the hostel where I’d be staying that night. I headed in its direction, and after a slight delay wandering through the wrong streets, I found it tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac.
I opened a creaky wooden door, stepped into its nice, warm lobby, greeted the manager, filled out some guest registration paperwork, and handed over my payment in Turkish lira. The manager looked at me apologetically and said, “I’m sorry, we only take Bulgarian lev, dollars, or euros.”
I felt mildly insulted. “What,” I thought, “my money isn’t good enough for you? You’ll take your own little podunk currency, but you won’t take the currency of your much larger neighbor to the east who, by the way, used to own you?” I had only been in Turkey for 3 months, but I was already feeling a sense of its prickly national pride.
For a week I had been wearing my most composed, most stoic game face, but the truth was it wouldn’t take much to send me spinning off into the lost confusion that had caused me to blow up at that beggar kid back in Istanbul. So instead of starting what I knew would quickly become a ridiculous argument, I simply smiled and said, “Certainly, of course. Can you tell me where I can get some local currency?” He directed me to a cash machine nearby, and I came back a few minutes later armed with a fistful of Bulgarian lev.
Having paid the manager with a more desirable currency, I dropped my things off in my room, smiled warmly at my bed, and thought, “I’ll see you right after dinner, that’s for sure.” I turned and headed out for a bite to eat.
I walked to a nearby restaurant and picked out a small, sheltered table shoved back into one of the corners. I was feeling a little raw and worn at the seams, a lonely, disoriented foreigner who had left one foreign country to seek momentary solace in another foreign country. I ordered a plate of pork strips in cream sauce with shallots, something I could definitely not get back in Turkey, along with a little taste of “home,” a Turkish-like Shepherd’s Salad made of diced cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions, with a little feta cheese sprinkled on top.
By the time I finished eating it was barely 7:30 pm, but I had started the day early and walked 20 miles exploring the city in sub-freezing weather with a pack on my back. It was time to call it a day, so I paid the check and walked the short distance back to my room. The next day I would get up early to hop a bus back to Istanbul, but in the meantime I would sleep. I set my alarm, collapsed into bed, and fell into the deep, dark, needy sleep of the desperately tired.
[This is an excerpt from the chapter “Escape to Bulgaria” in A Tight Wide-open Space.]