Bulgarian weekend

Saturday, October 24, morning. It's time to hit the road - to Bulgaria, although I still wanted to stay in glorious Romania. Apparently Bucharest also did not want to let us go - we were stuck in a traffic jam at the exit from the city for about an hour. We drove for a long time and confused: we got a little lost (after which our navigator received a new nickname - Alena), and the roads in Romania are not very good, and the border was crossed not by the autobahn, but by country roads. In a word, 400 km to Sofia were covered by 6 pm.

The first thing that impressed us in the capital was a huge marble building, a vivid embodiment of the Soviet era - such an imposing abode of the Ukrainian Embassy in Bulgaria. As we were told, China built this building for its embassy after the collapse of the USSR. After 2-3 years, upon completion of construction, when the Chinese ambassador came to receive the object, the cladding fell off before his eyes. He took this as a bad sign and abandoned the building. So it remained restless (on the balance sheet of the Bulgarian government). And in the 90s, Bulgaria gave the building to the Ukrainian Embassy in exchange for buildings in Odessa and Kyiv for the Bulgarian ambassadors - the agreement was concluded for decades.

It is worth saying that initially, in addition to administrative buildings, there was also a complex for employees to live here. The apartments have everything you need, there is a large gym and a common laundry nearby. But there are far fewer people living and working than planned for the Chinese embassy. Therefore, for example, on the whole floor, where we were given an apartment, we lived alone.

Sunday morning started with laundry (oh, what a lovely clothes dryer, an hour and a half and everything is dry) and with the Cherry cafe opposite - we worked there for about 6 hours. And in the evening we went to meet the Ukrainian fighters who came to Bulgaria for rehabilitation. The airport in Sofia is small, and while we were waiting for the guys, we met with representatives of the diaspora (the younger generation). These are mostly girls who married locals and gave birth to children - they are active, they are beauties, laughers and sincerely worry about Ukraine. When the fighters had already approached, they were greeted with a bang, with Ukrainian flags and applause. The head of the Ukrainian organization Mrs. Elena took care of such a solemn reception.

On the same day, we met student journalist Irina Ostrovskaya. The interview dragged on for two hours, which resulted in a report in Bulgarian on the local Internet portal.

We are grateful to Denis Krymov, Third Secretary of the Embassy of Ukraine in Bulgaria, for such bright meetings.

Monday was full of pleasant acquaintances. The day began with a meeting with the Ambassador of Ukraine to Bulgaria Nikolay Baltazhi. It was short - about half an hour, but informative. Traditionally, we presented a motanka doll, the Ambassador made an entry in our guest book, and also told how Ukrainians live in Bulgaria...

In general, the country is poor, so our fellow countrymen live modestly there. The community is mainly made up of our girls who married local men, there are also older people who arrived back in the 80s.

After meeting with the Ambassador, we gave an interview for the local portal "Ukrainian News" to a very pleasant professional journalist Vasily Zhukovsky. Watch the video on our channel.

Next, we went to the Cherry cafe (which we chose the day before). There, girls from the diaspora were already waiting for us, who had come to a master class on motankas. They came with their children and together they made charming dolls. One of the participants transferred her doll through us to the nearest country - Montenegro (she remained with the consul).

Our eventful day ended with a meeting with the best hat maker in Bulgaria - Irina Sardareva. By the way, earlier she was the head of the Ukrainian community. She has amazing works, they are bought up by customers from all over the world. We could not resist and tried on her hats - beauty!

Irina promised to organize another master class in motankas (in Ukrainian costumes) in November for the annual embassy fair in December. Our ambassador offered to sell them and donate the money to charity. We wish them all success!