I write to you from the wet freeze of the upper Midwest. I would much rather recall my adventures this fall in Eastern Europe. This is the first part of my account of Bulgaria.

Travel teaches lessons that could never be taught in a classroom. I had one such experience when I ventured southeast from the Czech Republic to Bulgaria, to visit my uni partner-in-philosophical-crime Kiril, a young man whose mind is as sharp as his humor is dry. He was staying with his family through the late summer, and being that I was in Europe and freshly free of coursework, I bought a ticket to the Balkans.

When Kiril collected me at the Sofia airport, he could not stop chuckling. I too was grinning ear to ear, despite the crying baby brigade on the flight over. He shook my hand heartily and said, “Welcome to a weird place.” I was not in Illinois anymore.

His family has held their apartment in the city since the Soviet era, a time that is not far removed. “Everyone older you meet, they are Communists,” he said. “Back then, everyone had a job, there was always food in the fridge.” The transition into capitalism has been difficult for Bulgarians, and it was extreme in the mid-90s, when thieves would take the engine out of your car and bombings punctuated daily life.

A derelict playground sits beside the apartment building, rusted and covered in leaves, naked of signs of use. “That would be a great modern art piece,” he said, referring to a would-be photo of the haunt of childhood recreation. “Before capitalism, it would have been used.” I didn’t get the shot; my camera needed batteries. I would have to buy some.

Communism has a leveling effect on society, as my (Eastern Europe scholar) girlfriend Nicole would later explain to me. In a country like then-Czechoslovakia — a fledglingly democracy with a growing economy — communism had a stifling effect. However, in poorer Bloc nations, such as those in the Balkans, communism raised the standard of living. Growing up in America and being educated out of biased history books, I thought of Communism in the caricature of the Red Menace. Seeing how functional communism was in Bulgaria pierced that bias. Simply put, there is no universal best form of government. But I digress.

From the apartment we set out on a walking tour of the downtown. Sofia has a certain interstitial charm: ruins are discovered when subway stations are being dug, chic stores face Soviet statuary, and Lenin-laden flea markets set up paces away from gleaming churches, like this one:

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

Late afternoon light and gold form a delicious combination. The Cathedral in question is surprisingly new — less than a hundred years old — and is one of the largest Eastern Orthodox churches on the planet. The structure soaks up the sun.

From Sofia we headed to the Staikov mountain home. We road the train. I wrote a poem.

10/11/09

We enter into foothills
Kiril across from me, thinking
The train lumbers through tunnel
And country

Two bottle blondes and a pair
Of police cavort beside us
The younger one blares gypsy
Pop and rattle of train
An aural defense

Outside the fall piles up
The foothill green turning
To yellow and amber

A man in cotton pants and a
Geometric-splattered shirt
Flirts with flirting but cannot

The heavy power of police
provides an threatening peace

Flowers grow beside the tracks
dispersed with other human debris

The blonde and I connect eyes
Once, twice. There is attraction
Buried deep under make-up.

Into town

We hopped off the train, ready to head into the mountains.