Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Bulgaria Travel for History Lovers and Digital Nomads

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

Bulgaria — is it on your travel list? It’s on mine, especially its capital, Sofia, a city rich in Roman ruins and Byzantine architecture.If you’re a history lover who enjoys affordable travel and getting off the beaten path, then Bulgaria might be the place for you.Joining me today is Stephanie Craig, a travel writer and an American expat/nomad based in Sofia.She’s also one half of the Rick Steves Over Brunch podcast and former host of The History Fangirl podcast.In this episode of the Postcard Academy, Stephanie shares how she ended up in Sofia and why it’s better suited toward digital nomads surfing the Schengen Zone than expats (if you don’t know what the Schengen Zone is, you can go back and listen to the deep dive I did).Then Stephanie is going to take us on a whistle stop tour of Bulgarian history, which is filled with one occupation after another. We also talk about some must-see historical sites in Sofia, including:St. George RotundaBoyana ChurchPark VranaCentral Mineral BathsYou might hear a baby squeak or two in this episode as Stephanie is holding her little one throughout our discussion. He’s very cute.Enjoy the show. *************I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. Thank you for spending some time with me today. Have you ever thought of starting a podcast yourself? Find out how I can help you.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Bulgaria, is it on your travel list? It is on mine, especially its capital, Sophia, which is a city that is rich in Roman ruins and Byzantine architecture. And if you are a history lover who enjoys affordable travel and getting off the beaten path, then Bulgaria might be the place for you. Joining me today is Stephanie Craig, a travel writer and an American expat slash nomad based in Sofia. She's also one half of the Rick Steve. Over Brunch podcast and former host of the History Fangirl podcast. And her website of the same title, HistoryFangirl.com, is a self-described global history geek out. So, you know, I love a good history discussion. In this episode of the Postcard Academy, Stephanie shares how she ended up in

Sophia, which is a very fun story, why the city is better suited toward digital nomads surfing the Schengen zone rather than expats who want to stay there. longer because it's not that easy as you'll hear. And if you don't know what the Shankent Zone is, then you can go back and listen to the deep dive that I did on that quite a long time ago at this point. So you can go to postcardagotomy.com to find that easily. Then Stephanie is going to take us on a whistle stop tour of Bulgarian history, which is filled with just one occupation after another. We'll also talk about some must-see historical sites in Sofia, including St. George Rotunda, Viana Church, Park Vrana, the Central Mineral Baths.

You might hear a few baby squeaks in this episode as Stephanie was holding her little one throughout the conversation. He's very cute and actually didn't disrupt us too much. So maybe he's a future podcaster. All right, enjoy the show. Welcome to the Postcard Academy, a show about travel, living abroad, and location independence for people seeking a more meaningful freedom. healed life. I'm your host, Sarah Micahettel, an American who first moved abroad on our own at age 18, and who has been permanently enjoying life in Europe since 2010. I am so glad you're here. My guest and I will share with you how we made our travel, living abroad, and location

independent dreams come true, and how you can too, because you will never have this day again. Make it matter. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Okay, so where are you for from and how did you end up in Bulgaria? So I'm from Oklahoma and I'm actually like a lot of people who travel full time. I kind of woke up one day and was like, oh, I really don't like my corporate job and didn't really know what it was or like how to deal with it. And then I happened to go through a very amicable divorce and on the other end of it realized that like one of the only reasons I was still living a very typical life was that my ex-husband who's like the nicest person in the world.

expected. Like that was just the life that he wanted to. And we, you know, we were together all in our 20s. So I never got to pick a different path for myself. And then once I woke up and I didn't have anybody telling me I had to do something really traditional or needing me emotionally to be doing something traditional. I was able to side to just travel full time. So I spent a year saving and kept working. And then a year later, I left. And I thought I was going to be traveling the world. four years, just like fancy free. And about my third country, I met my family. And I still traveled a lot for a few years after that, like because I didn't have a full Bulgarian visa. I was here only half the time. But I was using it as a home base. And then the last year I was pregnant and it was pretty high-risk pregnancy.

So bouncing around was no longer an option. And now we are in full COVID. so I am here. Yeah, so I left to be like care, fancy, free, see the world. And right now I am in an apartment 24-7 with a five-month-old. Life happens. So, okay, let me back up a little bit. So you started this world tour.

You said you hit three countries first. So tell me about like what were those three countries? And then how did you end up in, in Bulgaria specifically? So I always wanted to speak. see Cyprus. I don't know if I really knew why. It just seems like a cool place to start. And I was leaving with Miles. And the nice thing about miles is you can go places that might be more expensive to get to. So flying from America to Cyprus would normally be more expensive than going like to London or something. So I flew to Cyprus, spend a month there. The next stop was Greece

because Greece happened to be the cheapest sky scanner ticket from Cyprus. And, you know, before I got to Cyprus, I didn't know very much about it. If you, if you, you know anything about it, it makes complete sense that Greece would be a really good option, just because they're, you know, culturally Greek, well, half the island is, and Greece has military in Cyprus and everything that happened with the war. But when I left, I didn't even know they had a war. When I left Cyprus, I went to Greece, and when I was leaving Greece, Bulgaria was the cheapest sky scanner ticket. And I didn't know why. I didn't even know that Bulgaria ordered Greece.

And I studied Eastern European Studies in college. I thought I was going to get a degree in it. It ended up not, but I took almost every course that you needed to for the degree, except I couldn't learn Russian. And I don't know Bulgarian, and it's ridiculous how much time I've spent trying to learn Russian and

Bulgarian to not know anything. So when I got here, I really loved it and really clicked. And it definitely settled my love for wanting to explore more of Eastern Europe. I would not have come back full time if it hadn't be that I met my fiancé. And at the time, he was not obviously my fiancé, but I met him. And I wanted to come back and see if things would work out if I was here. So that's how I got here.

How did you guys meet? Well, Donald Trump got elected president. And I was very upset. And I was hanging out with a girl that I knew from travel writing named Ruth. And I was like, I got to go. So Donald Trump got elected on a Tuesday. and Thursday was like, I have to go out and forget about this. Like, obviously, we didn't know how crazy things we were going to get,

but we didn't have a good feeling about what had just happened in America. And so I was like, I need to go get drunk. So we were on like an organized bar crawl because even though I wanted to go get drunk, I'm not actually cool enough to like go party in Eastern Europe by myself. And she, I was, I think 31 at the time. and she was like maybe 23 or 24 and didn't know how to use dating apps at all, didn't know how to use Tinder. So I was like, well, let me just show you like how it works. So we were in this hostile basement bar on a pub crawl and I was just showing her how to use the app. And my fiance

came up and it said that he was from South Africa, which isn't quite true, but it was like the most recent place he'd lived. And she said, oh, South African guys are the nicest guys. You have to say yes. And I don't know if I would have said yes. She hadn't said that because just like when you're in Bulgaria and you're looking for a date when you just go on a date with a local. But she was like, no, like, trust me, they're the nicest guys. And so, yeah, so now I'm holding our baby. Amazing. Okay, I love it.

So Sophia sounds like it's a really great city for expats and nomads. How do they typically work out like the visa situation? They're like, if I went there and I didn't have EU citizenship or something like that, how would I be able to stay there? So Bulgaria has a really closed system and it's really frustrating. One of the great things about it is that it's not part of the Schengen zone. So you get a lot of Americans coming here for three months because when you come here, you get your own 90 days and it's not a part of the Schingen. So it doesn't, you know, you can go to France and Germany and the Czech Republic and then come to Bulgaria for three months in chill. And I know a lot of bloggers that I'm friends with who have come and hung out here and worked and then like a work retreat for a few months saving money and avoiding the chicken zone.

But they're not really great about, there's not really a way to get like a freelancer visa like they have in like Berlin. And you can't even really buy your way in like you can in Greece and Spain. So mostly what people do is come here for 90 days and then leave and then come back for another 90 days if they really like it. people get married. I have friends who ended up getting married, not for a visa, obviously, but just like, and watching them go through the Lichna card process is a nightmare. So if you actually do get to stay here long term, it's a lichna card. Obviously, EU citizens can come for as long as they want, but they do have to register here. I have a business that is a registered Bulgarian business that's not an automatic visa. There's a whole other process you have to go through

after that. But what you'll typically see for non-EU is to come and be a digital nomad for 90 days. Okay. So you can do the Schengen zone surfing. It's a good place for that, it sounds like. It's a good place. And people will talk about like, oh, Plavdiv is this great place for digital nomads. And I like Plavdiv, but I would never want to spend 90 days there instead of here. You know, the internet in Bulgaria, everywhere in the cities is really good. And there are are just more things to do here than plavdiv. Plavdiv, I think, makes it great overnight or weekend, but I would not spend three months in Plavdiv. If I was looking to be a digital nomad in Bulgaria, I would definitely come to Sofia. Well, and it sounds like it's very affordable compared to other

European cities. I think you, I read you were spending like $200 a month on your housing, including internet. So the affordability is great in the middle of a pandemic where travel writing now pays like nothing. So it's been very lucky. So my rent is 525 Lava. Our bills are about 200 Lava and our internet is like another and internet and cell phones let's say it's another like 100 level. So that's 800 and something Lava. So divided by two is about yeah, about $250 a person. Okay. Now if you were so I'm networked in with locals and we have an actual not landlord, we have an actual broker that's like a local. If you come in as a digital nomad and you, like my first apartment was much more expensive than

when I'm paying now. I get discounts for, you know, signing up for a year and for having someone negotiating for it for me in Bulgarian. It's if you come in and you're just going to be here for 90 days, I would expect to spend, you know, maybe $100 or $200 more. But obviously the convenience of not being stuck in a year long lease is also really important. Yeah, so is there, I would imagine, like, Airbnb and expat forums where we could get on and say, you know, I'm looking to rent room for 90 days. So I did, my first month, I did an Airbnb and I paid like $450 for it. And my fiance made fun of me. He's like, it's not worth that. But, and obviously, we know that Airbnb's can really crush local economies. I don't think it's happening in Sophia so much. But the property values here are rising to a point where people do start to freak out. I also.

live in a former so not soviet but a former socialist block apartment on the edge of town like I don't live right where you would want to be if I got an apartment I like my person personally I prefer my apartment because I like the space and I have like a stunning view of Mount Botosha from our windows and if you're going to be in an apartment for 24 seven for months that's really great but you know obviously prices do change depending on where you want to be to But most of my friends who come here and get places, never complain about how much they cost. Well, I would love, so you mentioned the mountain. Could you give us a visual snapshot of Sophia?

Like, where is it geographically? What does the postcard look like? If you can think of where Greece is as the tip of the Balkan Peninsula, like mainland Greece being kind of the bottom. Bulgaria is one country north of Greece. And Sophia is in the western part of Bulgaria. So Bulgaria stretches from the Black Sea in the East Coast and on the West Coast, or not the West Coast, but the Western border is Serbia and North Macedonia. So you've got Serbia, North Macedonia on the West, Greece on the south, a little bit of Turkey. Then on the east, the Black Sea and north of us is Romania.

And Sophia is in the western part of the country, kind of in the middle. There are a few mountains around Mount Fetotia is the most famous, and it's, quite tall, but it's definitely not even close to the biggest mountain. The Bulgaria is quite mountainous and the Balkan Peninsula is named for the Balkan mountains and the Balkan mountains are a mountain range in Bulgaria, even though the whole peninsula is named for it. So there's really great skiing and and nature within two hours of here. The mountain here is just kind of beautiful and does actually have skiing, but if you're interested in like a mountainous vacation, I would go to Banksco in the south.

So Sophia has so much history and a lot of occupied history. It's was a Roman city. So I mean, the history goes back before that. But I think there's Roman ruins and things that you can see in Sophia and elsewhere. Could you give us like a whistle stop tour of Bulgarian history? So I'm obviously going to skip most of the high. I'll do the highlights.

But there's a fabulous podcast, and I'm guessing your podcast, listeners who like podcasts, called the Bulgarian history podcast that is similar to the, you know, history of ancient Greece and Roman history podcasts that go through literally from the beginning to today. And he, I don't know where he's up to because I'm behind, but the person who runs that is a, I want to say a full white scholar living here in Sophia. and we are friends on Facebook but never have met in real life, but everything he does is like really great. So definitely check that out if you're interested in the nitty gritty. So basically, Sophia was Sertica under the Roman rule, but even before that, this is one of the longest inhabited parts of Europe. So Plavdiv is one of the oldest cities in Europe anywhere or in Macedonia,

which is part of the Bulgarian kingdom, is one of the oldest human settlements in Europe. So this part of the world has so much more history than my American brain can really contemplate. Before the Romans, you had the Thracians. So there were the ancient Greeks and the Thracians lived north of them. There are some amazing UNESCO World Heritage sites here that are Thracian tombs that are just beautiful. So you've got the Thracians, you've got the Romans come in, build Saratica.

Sophia, the name, Sophia actually was the name of the church. church that was based on the Iya Sophia in Istanbul and slowly the name of the town changed from Saratica to Sophia because of that. So you've got the Romans in, but then as the Romans become the Byzantine Empire and Orthodox Christianity takes over, that becomes really important here. You've got step tribes coming in. The Slavs were originally a step tribe like the Mongols and who came in later and like the Huns. So the Slavs came. So the Slavs came. And Bulgarians really like to talk about their Thracian past, but most Bulgarians are not actually Thracian at all. Most Bulgarians are gloves in some way.

So you've got that culture. Bulgaria is really proud of the fact that the saints, Kirol and Matodius, who invented Cyrillic, did so within the borders of the Bulgarian Empire. Don't. It's a lot of questions about what they actually would have thought of themselves if those two. particularly would have thought of those selves as Bulgarians, but Cyrillic, Bulgarians are very proud of the fact that Cyrillic was a Bulgarian invention. And it's not, you know, even though Russian is the most common language to use that alphabet,

if you call it the Russian alphabet, they will get very upset. Okay. And there's been a huge holiday here. I think it's in May. That is St. Kirillan Methodius Day. It's all about Bulgarian language and literature. And it's literally like a bank holiday day off work. that big, dedicated to the alphabet and literature. Once you get past the Byzantine Empire, you've got Bulgaria creating its own kingdom fighting the Byzantines off. The Byzantines would come back in.

The Bulgarians would fight them out. The first Bulgarian kingdom is tied up in a lot of fights with the Byzantine Empire. Once the Byzantine Empire gets overtaken by the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman Empire gets interested in Bulgaria, That's around the 1300s when the Ottomans come in, right? Yeah, so they come into Istanbul proper and I think the 1400s, but they came into Istanbul from the north. So they were already here before they had fully, I believe, before they had fully taken over

Istanbul. And the Second Bulgarian Kingdom is tied up with a lot of fighting of the Ottoman Empire, but obviously ultimately unsuccessful. And so Bulgaria was an occupied nation. for about 400 to 500 years, depending on exactly how much you want to say they had power in the beginning of the 20th century. This episode is sponsored by me, or rather by my online course, Podcast Launch Academy. You are a podcast lover, and thank you so much for being here.

But I was wondering, have you ever thought about creating a podcast yourself? Well, visit sarahigatel.com to learn how we can work together and to take the podcast personality quiz. So the Russians come in in the 19th century and help the Bulgarians fight off the Turks in a show of Pan-Slavic unity. And there's lots of monuments and important sites dedicated to the Russian liberation. And it's interesting because, like, one of the biggest statues in Sofia is a czar, is a, as a statue to a Russian czar.

And you can kind of see the beginnings of why. Bulgaria got tied as a satellite nation during the Soviet Union because they're ties between just pan-slavism and also the fact that they felt like they owed so much to Russia for helping liberate them. All of that gets entangled. When was that exactly? I want to say the 1880s. It might have been the 1870s. Okay. And then when Bulgaria was free, it wasn't completely free.

As the Ottoman Empire left the Balkans, they didn't, nation-eas. were independent but not completely independent and still overseen or had enough economic ties. So the Turks didn't really 100% leave until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. But and Bulgaria went to help fight off the Turks in the former Yugoslavia during Balkan wars. So they were still here. But Bulgaria likes to say that the 19th century was when they became liberated. And there's a lot of national revival. architecture and some of the most beautiful buildings were built during that period.

Some of them even named after Russians or dedicated or beautiful. Like they're just stunning Russian Orthodox churches. Here, there's one in Sophia called St. Nicholas the Wondermaker that's called the Russian church, nicknamed the Russian church. The church in Shipka is a gorgeous Orthodox church. There were so many Russians who came to fight to help liberate Bulgaria that ended up, you know, married to Bulgarians or just staying for one reason or another and they needed places to worship. And as close as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church might seem

to outsiders, they're different enough that they needed their own places of worship. So during World War II, you know, in the past, maybe Russia had helped liberate them, but then became their occupier for quite a few decades until 1990. Can you talk about a little bit of the communism years? There's some bad jokes that your Bulgarian tour guides will probably tell you about how Bulgaria was never on the right side during World War II. So they were an Axis power and then they switched to being an allied power. But when they were an Axis power, the Americans bombed them and the Russians occupied them. But when they were an allied power, they were not treated well either because it hadn't been really on the right side the whole time.

Bulgarians do like to say like when they were in Axis power and Germany was asking them to send in the Jewish population here to the concentration camps, that Bulgarians are very proud, well, not all Bulgarians, but you'll hear the story is that they're proud that they didn't end up sending anybody and they took them all to like a work camp and delayed and delayed and pretended they needed them

and had them work on their own internal projects so that they never actually handed them over. Unlike a lot of other Eastern European and Balkan countries, there was never really a huge push here for, a huge anti-Semitic push during that time. And there's a beautiful old synagogue in the middle of town that I think just was reconstructed or just went, it was renovated that predates this that is where you can find out more about it.

They also like, they'll also tell you the story on the free tour. Bulgaria got hammered during World War II, just hammered for a country that really saw no fighting other than bombing, they got really hammered. After World War II, they overthrew the Tsar. The Tsar that they overthrew was actually a baby. And he was living in exile. And he is still alive. And he is one of the only former czar.

First of all, he's one of the only people that ever held the title of Tsar to still be alive. And Tsar is actually, it's not like just the Russian word for king. It was a very specific thing that the Byzantine Empire gave to, their allies. So the title of Tsar was given to the Bulgarians. The title of Tsar was given to the Russians. And the Bulgarians were very proud of that. And so even when they would go through periods

where they didn't have a kingdom, the fact that they held that title and had the right to call someone a czar when they did have a kingdom was a very big deal. So this title, this child that got overthrown, holds this title that has been given to Bulgaria by, you know, the heirs of Constantine. It's crazy. So he was obviously no longer in charge of anything and had never truly been in charge as he was a child. But after the fall of communism came back

and became president and is one of the only former, he's one of the only former monarchs in the world to ever then turn around and be an elected official. And you can actually still go to the palaces that his family owns. He's created, turned some of them into museums. And actually my fiance got to cook for him one time. And it's just so it just tickles me so much that there's just this very rich, very old man here who was an overthrown child czar and also a president. And it all just connects back to things that happened here thousands of years ago. Wow. That tickles me as well. It's just one of those stories that I don't think anyone, not anyone, but very few people outside of Bulgaria would think about enough to even know that it, I mean, I learned it about it later

too. Like when my fiance told me that he was coming into their restaurant, then I was like, looked up the whole history. I was like, what? He's still alive. And he's still, he's, I don't think technically he's not a czar anymore, but he, there's a man walking around who was a czar. That is fascinating. So you mentioned that you can tour some of the places like maybe his palace or something. What is that? Actually, it's terrible. It's one of the things that's on my bucket list to do before I leave that I still have not done because it's only open very specific times. But there's also another palace that's this beautiful yellow palace in town that's been turned into an art museum. And then there is a mausoleum that his family has as well.

And then if you're interested in like history of the Bulgarian czars at Rila Monastery, which is one of the most important sites in the country and a UNESCO World Heritage site, there is a grave of one of the czars in that church. And then at Boyana church out in Sophia, one of the czarina's who helped restore and save that church is buried there. So even though outside of the country, you don't really think of like Bulgarian royal history too much here. It's not like in your face because this is a former communist nation. They did overthrow them. But they're still here.

Like you can still find it if you look for it. So I know that you like Byzantine architecture. Could you describe this? And then I guess for people who don't know like what the Byzantine Empire was, can you just like give a basic explanation? Because it sounds like it's a huge part of Bulgarian history. Yeah. So the Roman Empire was so large, it became unwieldy for one person to rule it. And while Rome was a great place for the Romans emotionally, it's not a great position to actually rule a Mediterranean, European, European.

empire from. So they split off the jurisdictions into like an eastern and a western and there was a and slowly over time they developed an eastern empire and a western empire with different leaders. And they had a tetrarchy where, because like how does one person rule all of Europe and the Mediterranean and North Africa and the Middle East? Like that's just, it's too much. So then they had a system of four people. And so there's actually tons of Roman ruins all around the Balkans because a lot of the Eastern Roman Empire emperors were actually from the Balkans in some way. There's even one of the emperors was Guy named Maximinus Thrax, and Thrax is another way to say Eurasian.

The Byzantine Empire is what we retroactively call the Eastern Roman Empire because at a certain point it just feels like it's not Roman anymore and it had become truly much more of a Greek empire. So if you think of Constantine, we think of Constantine as a Roman Empire and he felt. found the city of Constantinople, which became Istanbul. By the time you get to a few hundred years later, all these people are speaking ancient Greek and Latin, but it's just very Greek.

And so it becomes its own thing. And visiting architecture, if you think of like the Iosophia, just looks different than the Colosseum. And it's just a different style. Slowly over time, that gets developed into, you know, beautiful onion domes of Russian.

churches and Bulgarian churches actually don't have onion domes. They have like a half dome, but it's still, you know, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral here in Sophia looks more like what you would expect to see in red square than what you'd expect to see in Istanbul because the Orthodox community had to keep their architecture and traditions alive even after the Turks had taken over. Byzantine Empire or Byzantine architecture is, you know, the architecture of the Byzantine Empire in, Istanbul and beyond, but they never called themselves that. Neo-B Byzantine Empire or Neo-B Byzantine architecture is Bulgaria's and other people's attempts to revive that style in the 19th century as the Turkish Empire was losing power. So there are so many buildings here that are built in the 19th century, but are hearkening back to ancient Constantinople as for their. influences. And when we say Constantine, he was like 300s, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think he definitely was 300. I think it was like two something to early 300. Yeah. Just to put a, throw a date out there for people.

Okay. So so much history in Sophia. If I were going to come visit you and you're going to take me on a little walking tour, what would be some musties if we want to get a feel for the history? So you'll definitely want to start on Vatotia Boulevard. It's kind of the heart of the city anyway. The Palace of Justice is a common place for tours to start because you've got these great big lions to meet under. But Vototio Boulevard is just interesting. You've got the Betocia Mountain in the background. And when they started it, the socialists were like, we're going to build it all the way to the mountain.

And it goes like two miles. Normally a walking tour would lead the other way. but one of the buildings that I think is really interesting is the National Palace of Culture, which was built in the 1980s, I believe, which is at that end of Votosha Boulevard and across the street. And it's just this giant, I mean, if you've ever, if you're familiar with like the brutalism and the, like, what socialist architecture looks like, not like the socialist classic architecture, but like the brutal concrete, like this building is just like a magnificent example of that. And when I got here, there used to be this Soviet, not Soviet. When I got here, there used to be this socialist monument out front.

They actually bulldozed, which was pretty sad. There's a museum here where they typically take all their monuments from that time so that you can see them and learn about them. But this one, I guess, was just too big to move to that. So you definitely want to see the National Palace of Culture. Other important places to see is the Largo, which is three magnificent, giant social, like classical socialist buildings where you have, you know, it's all of the majesty of ancient Rome and France and like Napoleonic France, but used with socialist symbolism to just awe people into the power of the socialist regime that was here. Where you see a Bulgarian flag

now, there used to be a socialist red star and where there's now a giant, a giant. statue of St. Sophia. There used to be, that's where the statue of linen was. So all of these things used to be in this one square. And then a few other really important places that are near there is the, there's an old Ottoman mosque. It's one of the only mosques that's left over from that time period. And most of the mosques that have, that are left over have been turned into museums or churches. This is still an operating mosque where you can still see people coming to pray and you can buy tickets to tour it. And it just was renovated. And it's called the Bion. Banya Banya Bashi Masks.

And then right by there is the Sophia Central Mineral Bask, which is just the stunning yellow building with this gorgeous tilework that used to be like a kind of Budapest-style bath because Sophia is built on hot springs. Unfortunately, today it's a museum. But there are renovating a bath out kind of on the edge of the city that'll be more of like a Budapest bath experience here. and I can't wait until it opens. Yeah, that sounds great.

So there's a few other things, but the last thing I'll mention is Alexandria Cathedral. I think it would be weird to go to any city and not at least see their cathedral from the outside, but Alexanderowski Cathedral is gold and teal and just, it's just amazing to look at. And it's beautiful and it looks different from every angle. So if you have time, I would do a 360-degree walk around it. I saw some pictures this week as I was like looking up Sophia,

that I want to ask you about these places. So St. George Rotunda and then Park Rana, have you been to these places? So St. George Rotunda is gorgeous, and it's kind of in the middle of all of this. It's the oldest building, but it's definitely the oldest church in the city. And it is a early Byzantine, like maybe 400s church. But it's in, it's behind where the president of Bulgaria does his work out of. So it's behind the executive building. You actually walk through the car park of the executive building to get there.

There's a couple other interests, but that's the most common one. I've not been inside it, but I've gone and taken pictures of the outside of it a lot. I have not been to the park frana. That is when I was saying earlier that the former czar has a palace that you can go to or that's now a museum that I want to go to, but I haven't gotten to go yet. That is the park verona. And so that is owned by the family of the former czar. I hope you enjoyed this first half of my conversation with Stephanie on Bulgarian history,

which I think it's a good idea to get this sort of background before we visited a place. And in the next episode, Stephanie is going to share her insider local advice on everything that we should experience when we visit Sofia, Bulgaria. That's all for now. Thanks so much for listening. And have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.