Second Day in Sophia

This isn't breakfast.

     Wow, Day 2 and I'm already falling behind on this stuff. Sad face. Anyway, after a very restless six hours of sleep, myself and my roommate, Ryan, got up because the sun fully risen by 5:30. We tried entertaining ourselves till breakfast by watching TV, but most of the channels were either sappy dramas dubbed in Bulgarian or news channels covering very boring topics. We held out until 7:00, at which point we flew down the elevator and entered the breakfast buffet, and what a breakfast it was. To begin with, there was an assortment of breakfasty meats (including really thick bacon) and your typical continental breakfast choices, like eggs and toast, only they tasted a ton better. Then, there was an omelet chef who had an awesome accent to complement the very little English that he spoke. Next was the fruit bar, which, aside from the grapefruit, contained exceptional specimens of peaches, oranges, pineapple, and watermelon. Finally, as if that wasn't enough, there was the drink bar. Three uncommon juices, green apple, peach, and pineapple, pretty much stole the whole show that morning (especially the green apple). I don't know how they made it so good, but those juices were pretty addicting.

The delicious chocolate pudding.

     After loading ourselves onto two buses, we made our first trip to Sofia Hall, the venue of our first performance, while snapping pictures of various historical buildings, strange street signs, and McDonalds billboards. Once inside the hall, we rehearsed, yay. The hall is very different from UCI or Segerstrom in that it's pretty small for a concert hall, seating around 1,500, and has very little reverb, meaning that there is no echo to help cover up mistakes or slight timing mishaps, and that the acoustics we had gotten used to over the season were now making us a very uncoordinated group. Regardless, the rehearsal was productive, despite the majority of the orchestra being dead tired. After the rehearsal, we walked to the Grand Hotel Sofia, where we ate lunch. Unlike breakfast, the lunch food was much more Bulgarian and vegetabley-tasting. There were, however, delicious cups of pudding, crystal glasses which we utilized in a musical manner, and little glass soda bottles.

Museum of Natural History

Zombie orchestra

     After lunch, the orchestra was split into two groups in order to make our afternoon excursions more manageable. One group would start at the Museum of Natural History, while the other would start on a walking tour of Sofia. My group started at the Museum, which contained a plethora of ancient artifacts, some dating back to several thousand years B.C. The most striking part of the museum's artifacts were carvings made of wood, gold, silver, or other various materials. Some of these carvings, usually of religious purpose, were so finely detailed that I could barely make out the lines, let alone fathom how an ancient civilization created such pieces. After the museum, our Bulgarian guide, noticing how zombie-like the group was becoming, decided that those who wanted to could take an abbreviated version of the walking tour which the other group had done first. Being good students, both my sister and I went. Instead of the normal two-hour trip, we only made one stop at some ruins of the ancient Roman city some ten feet below the current ground level. Several walls, as well as the frame for a gate, were visible at the location where we went.

    We returned to the bus, headed back to the hotel, and went to dinner. Like lunch, the dinner food was more Bulgarian, though less vegetabley than lunch. Of particular note was the lasagna, which was cheese based. Although very rich, the cheese tasted quite good amongst all the layers of noodle. Several guests whom Mrs. Stahr invited spoke, talking about their lives in Sophia and giving some handy life lessons. With the conclusion of dinner, myself and Ryan headed back to our room and, after some evening socializing, went off to sleep once again.

-Philip