Working

I've been working. I may have over-stated the case about monkeys. As it turns out you need to be a trained poly-linguist. Well, you need to be able to retrieve fax numbers from non English speakers anyway. This I can do, but not so well with monoglot inhabitants of the Balkans. Other than that, mostly you have to be able to keep a byzantine system of categories and filing systems in mind while trolling websites for potentially interesting speakers and attendees for our exciting conferences. Check out the website here. In general my co-workers are pleasant, and I won't bring up those that aren't. We have a surprisingly high number of Americans and Canadians working at Friends of Europe.



I also went to Bulgaria. I experienced a Balkan Orthodox wedding in all of its glory. Hard to really convey it. Pretty much as you might expect. First we went to a big deal religious ceremony, with some interesting touches. I enjoyed the part where the wedding party had to walk around in circles with the priest, while wearing crowns. I'm told that western Christianity lost the "tactile" part of ceremony a while back, and that's we "we" tend to have less dancing and moving around in our ceremonies.

After the religious portion we moved on to a civil ceremony outside at the hotel. Quickly dispensed with, we moved on to a boozy meal, complete with speeches and entertainment, part of which included the three bona fide foreigners reciting the first paragraph of the Bulgarian national poem. (Or so I'm told) We brought down the house. This was all followed up by a lengthy evening of festivities and dancing. Unfortunatley I was scheduled to wake up around 7 the next morning in order to get back to Sofia for my flight, or more accurately, Janek's flight. Mine was 7 hours later, so I spent my time trying to fool the Radisson staff into believing that I was an important and worthwhile guest who was just spending some time in their lounge. All in all, Bulgarians strike me as being very pleasant on the whole.