isoglossia

It’s become more and more common for these monthly reports to be a) late b) hastily and shabbily put together and c) nothing more than extended photo captions. This month’s report strains the envelope on all three counts.

The final hour of August is ticking by as I type this, and I was this close to blowing off the August monthly report entirely, figuring that it wouldn’t be possible to capture the excitement and upheaval of the last month. Then there was some other part of my brain that was trying to rationalize away the need for posting by going in the complete opposite direction, saying essentially “there’s nothing to report, keep moving, nothing to see here.” It turns out that both parts of my brain just wanted to watch “Mad Men” and drink Thracian rosé unmolested by self-imposed deadlines.

A month ago we bade farewell to the people who meant more to us than any others in Slovenia, Rada and Bojan, who evolved from babysitters into surrogate grandparents. It was very hard to leave them. SMSes continue to fly between Slovenia and Sofia.

One of the first orders of business on arriving here was to arrange a meeting with Baba Sofii, who will be taking care of Alek when we return to work. Though this picture may not show it, you both are already very fond of Sofii. We have great faith in her ability to not kill you, Alek, just as we have somehow managed, tempted though this long August has made us.

Alek graduated from voziček (now koличka) to a trike. Go, Ike, Go!

You both have evinced an astonishing interest in the bits of flotsam that can be found on the playgrounds of Sofia. You have also noticed that there is a playground every 50 meters here, and beg to fing on the fings and fide on the fides of all of them, beating sun or not.

But the sandpit, aka ‘pit of gravél has to be your favorite recreation of all.

Bathing facilities are sufficient to counteract the quantities of filth you manage to collect in the course of the day. ONLY JUST.

Adam has not yet noticed that he is the only child in Bulgaria wearing a helmet. Also: he can’t yet understand the taunting.

Papa spent the first few weeks in the new place using diamond bits to drill holes in the super-hardened, bunker-grade Bulgarian concrete walls in order to hang pictures of duckies. Adam aspires also to drill.

In addition to the trike, Alek moved up to a Big Boy Bed this month, acquired through much hardship in the fastnesses of Bucharest. I guess there will never be a post about that trip to the land of Vlad the Impaler/IKEA, nor about the fact that all the boys have added three countries to their visited list since the last report: Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania. MY STURDY BALKAN BABIES.

Now go to sleep, for god’s sake, both of you.

People have begun to wonder. If we’ve moved yet. If we’ve arrived in Sofia. If so, how things are there. If we’re alive. If we have internet. If there are dogs sleeping under cars here at all. We’ve been extremely busy during the last several weeks, but I’ll take a few minutes to put some minds at ease. Yes; yes; fantastic; mostly; yes (fast!); and boy howdy YES.

We made the trip itself much more quickly and painlessly than expected, just a quick 12 hours in the car which the boys hardly even noticed, sleeping as they did through Croatia and Serbia. The terrain just before leaving Serbia to cross into Bulgaria was especially dramatic and rocky and gorge-y and more so thanks to the gorgeous dawn which lit it. Our introduction to Sofia’s traffic was a bit overwhelming but we managed to navigate to our destination without hitting any horses pulling sofas, and then began the process of settling in. This continues to occupy our energy. The truck hauling all of our crapola arrived 24 hours behind us, by which time we’d gotten settled into our new apartment on the southwestern side of Sofia. By the evening of our second day here the move was complete but for unpacking. This last step we expect to be complete by 2010.

It’s hard to put our first impressions into words. Despite the scant 12-hour drive, this is certainly a very different place from the one we’ve just left, and some of the contrasts are not so favorable. We’ve traded Alpine order and cleanliness for a Balkan chaos that can be overwhelming. We could give you directions to our flat using certain salient mounds of rubbish as landmarks, for example. The sidewalks are heaving and crumbling but they are also carpeted in the plums, apples, and peaches which drop from the fruit trees that grow like demented, benign weeds in every patch of earth not supporting the concrete slab apartment blocks that sprout rust-streaked satellite dishes and enormous vines sagging with grapes in equal profusion. The first thing a western eye will notice is a certain casual squalor (if not the creative approach to the left turn), but the vibrancy and warmth we’ve seen in just a few short weeks balance out that surface roughness. The people, the food, and the commitment to children are the things that have struck us most favorably. All the people we’ve dealt with since arriving have been open and helpful in a way that we’d forgotten existed. Just our nearest supermarket has a range of food we could only dream of (and often did) in Slovenia (and at prices we can actually afford). Alek’s nanny, Baba Sofia, promises to be fantastic, and Adam has already been over for a tour of his kindergarten, just a short walk across the extensive playground behind our block, and he’s getting excited. We dropped off his poop samples today, so if everything comes out clean, he’ll start getting socialized in just over a week.

We are home in Sofia. It still feels a bit unreal. Of an evening Magda is likely to say to me, “Where do we live now?” and I’ll reply, “It appears that we live in BULGARIA.” It’s still very new, and it’s certainly different, but it feels right.

Now we just need a few minor alterations to the site’s layout to reflect our relocation. Expect those around the time we finish unpacking.

Any other questions?