Summer Trips: Sofia

The days are getting shorter, the dark is coming earlier – this is the time of year when Hungary starts looking like Mordor, and so my mind goes to sunnier times in the summer.

The glorious Palace of Culture in all its Brutalist glory.

Sofia's mosque

An artsy shot from Sofia's synagogue.

The Russians built St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral to commemorate their liberation of Bulgaria from the Turks.

It was not until I moved to the region that I could tell you what the capital of Bulgaria was. Like so many North Americans, I was blissfully ignorant of the jumble of countries in Central and Eastern Europe – the easily confused names (Slovakia and Slovenia) and names impossible to pronounce (Herzegovina) with the untrained tongue.

Thanks to fifty years of Soviet occupation, it was easy for everyone to lump everything east of the former Iron Curtain into the same culture.

Sadly, that’s the way things are.

And so, we come to Sofia, deep in the old East bloc. Carlos, a Brazilian who’s passed through Toronto before landing in Bulgaria, pointed it out – the language, the cuisine, the architecture is more Greek because they were here in the beginning and their influence has never left this place.

To get to Sofia wasn’t easy on a budget. We had to book a twelve hour bus ride from Budapest through Serbia to Sofia. Due to booking issues, I had to leave a day early on the overnight bus alone.

I grabbed snippets of sleep all night through Serbia, awaking at the border. As dawn came, the fog cleared and I realized I was entering Serbia, but I also way up in the foggy mountains. I crashed for a few hours after checking into my hostel and met Carlos for a Discovery Walk. It was a beautiful day – the only I’d have since it would rain non-stop for the rest of the weekend – and the mountain air felt fresh and crisp.

Carlos took me, and later this rest of the crew, to some of the key points of interests: Roman ruins, the Turkish mosque, a few Orthodox churches, and one of the public fountains that are fed by springs beneath the city. Fifty years of heavy-handed socialist urban planning is also still prevalent, with drab grey apartment blocks, the odd brutalist monument, and the Palace of Culture, in all its concrete glory with its wide, concrete beach surrounding it.

At first it was easy to get lost in all of these outside influences left behind in Sofia from past tenants, but Bulgarian culture is surprisingly resilient and well established. Bulgarian was the first written Slavic language, and their Cyrillic alphabet might look a bit Greek and it might look a bit Russian, but it is very distinct.

Like so many cities in this part of Europe, Sofia is a city on the make. The economy is growing (as there’s political stability), there’s a cool nightlife and a big, beautiful mountain with hiking trails and ancient monasteries just a short bus ride away. But for a city high in the mountains with a dry climate, we got rained on the whole time and never got to see exactly what the city could offer. Maybe another time...

A little bit of old Rome left in the city centre.

In Hungary, it's ok to be mental about your dental

Joe, in chair, with Arnold and I being just a little to mental about our dental.

After Lake Balaton, the beauty of Budapest, the wine cellars of Villany, the affordable dental care available here has turned dentistry into a tourist attraction. In Sopron, a Hungarian city that sits on the border of Austria, the streets are lined with dental offices. This would look strange if it weren’t for all the Austrians driving into the city to have dental work done.

My impression of the inexpensive dental care was not a faltering one. When I heard all of this, my mind lept to that scene in Marathon Man: “Is it safe?”  That admittedly ignorant belief did not waver, even in the face of assurances from Hungarian friends that Hungarian dental care is modern, not medieval.

With a year passing since my last dental appointment, and despite my misplaced misgivings, I began considering a visit to one of Hungary’s dentists. A friend knew just the dentist, so we all went to the office of Dr. Ada. We brought along Joe, a man whose near mortal fear of dentists was being overcome by four cavities.

The dental office was no less advanced and sterile than our own in Canada (I apologize for constantly comparing things to Canada, but I have no other country to compare dentistry to). A visit to the dentist is cheap, and they were effective. I was complimented on my clean teeth, but I grind my teeth in my sleep. Their solution was a mouthguard, which would cost about $50 CAD, meanwhile a quote from a Canadian dentist over a year ago was $260.

More important than money and fancy chairs and what not, Dr. Ada had great chair-side manner. So much of us have strange, primal fears of dentists – Joe, far example, had a beer on the walk to the office to calm his nerves – and either way, it's nice that when a stranger pokes around in your mouth, it does not feel like a torture scene.

Photo by Arnold

What's so cool about Kosice?

Cool stuff inside the East Slovak Museum.

Kosice was nothing more than a dot on the map that I came across when I was planning a summer trip to Krakow.

Budapest and Krakow run along almost the same line of latitude, but between the two cities is a snarl of mountains in Slovakia. Trains run around these, either due west, through Bratislava or Vienna, or deep into the old East Bloc, to Kosice.

On the map, there is nothing to distinguish the city. It’s at the far end of Slovakia. A Czech friend, who grew up near Prague and then lived there, gave me a strange look when I mentioned going there. “But what is there? That is so far east, it’s almost the Ukraine.”

But that dot in the far east of Europe seemed interesting. The summer trip to Krakow did not happen, but I decided to take a weekend, when one came up, to go for a visit. As I waited, I did a little research.

I got St. Elizabeth Cathedral at just the right time of day.

There’s a Gothic church in the old square, the most eastern in Europe. Kosice was the Hapsburgs' farthest eastern stronghold. In fact, this is where Western and Central Europe meets Eastern Europe: The whole area has historically been populated by Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Ukrainians.

It was a free city under Hungarian rule for a long time, such was the mix of ethnicities there. A Hungarian connection still exists today – Hungarians still call Kosice its old Hungarians name, Kassa. The city itself also venerates its most famous writer, Marai Sandor,an ethnic Hungarian.

If this cool history nerd stuff didn’t get my attention, the city is also a European Capital of Culture for 2013.

It’s like a European cultural Olympics. The state poured money into creating and renovating venues for art exhibitions, music and theatrical performances and other artsy fartsy pursuits. The hope for many host cities is that this investment turns into a long-term return – that the infrastructure creates an innovation industry.

Finally, finally, finally, I found an off weekend and dropped in for a brief visit.

It’s an old city, but the Soviet’s fingerprints are all over it. The city is a hodge podge of fin de siècle with socialist urban planning. There are old, clanking trams, but they are brilliantly coloured (with ads, but they are still colourful). The old town centre is a pedestrian only square, with the Gothic cathedral, a 100-year-old eclectic-style theatre and outdoor cafe. Within view of the square are old socialist apartment blocks. The apartment blocks, those monuments to socialist social engineering, are not grey, but lively, with murals and brilliantly coloured patterns.

I’m going to avoid going too deep into art critic mode here, but the art I saw at the Capital of Culture events are something else entirely different.

A great deal of it was contemporary art, and we all know how that can be sometimes. A lot of the work on display had an opinion. But there was a sense of humour in much of it, and there was definitely a distinctive voice, or sensibility to it.

I saw this throughout the city, from the exhibits I visited to murals painted on pub doors. There’s something about the spirit of the city that’s young, brash and darkly humorous. The city is young (so is Slovakia). It is a college town, so there are bars all over and, even though Slovakia is on the Euro, food and drink are affordable.

There is something going on in Kosice. I couldn’t tell you what it is for sure, not after such a brief visit, but it's a place worth watching.

The door of a Spanish pub.

Socialist apartment building, brightened up a bit.

Jakabov Palace