If you go to Bulgaria for your first trip and never see or hear this stuff, you will be totally fine. Trip one is Sunday through Saturday and about bonding with your child or children. These are just nice details to have. Just an FYI, Vesta is our NGO and they set up our lodging so parts of this may not apply to everyone. For details specific to meeting our child please see our other blog posts labeled by day (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday).
Now I know you hyper planners out there are on the edge of your seat, so here are some riveting details about small appliances, converters, FOOD, batteries, phones, FOOD, lodging, beds, FOOD, Sliven, Sofia, gifts for the orphanage workers/child, what to wear and FOOD. Now I'm hungry.
I’ve put the topics in bold. That way, if you do not want to read this monster long post, you can just skip to the parts that interest you or you have questions about. Also, feel free to comment with questions, email me, find me on FB or whatever. I sooo appreciate the people that answered those questions for me. I would love to do the same for someone else.
Converters and small appliances. We bought a pack of three European plug converters on Amazon pretty cheap. These were useful for cell phone charging at the hotel. It’s worth bringing some nicer headphones or earplugs for the longer flights if you want to watch movies or listen to music. Fortunately, I had some iPhone earbuds with me. There were hair dryers at all the hotels and the apartment we stayed at but if you are picky bring your own. They aren’t super hot and their high speed drying is like our low speed. I have a lot of hair so it took a while and you have to hold a button down to keep the dryer on— my hand got crampy.
Battery backup. Buy this if you plan on carrying your cell phone! We bought this battery backup to charge our phones while we were out and about. It was $15 on Amazon and we used it every day while we were walking the city. Between my one million pictures and texting it was helpful to recharge our phones on-the-go. Sometimes you can find an outlet, but not always!
Phone. Our cell provider is T-Mobile. We had free texting and low-
speed data as part of our plan so that was nice for communicating and using the Internet but it was definitely slow. Check your plan before you go; we had to call a special number to enable international calling. Everywhere we stayed had WiFi, so FaceTiming and blogging was easy. Vesta gave us a small phone that we lovingly referred to as our Jason Bourne “burner” phone when we first arrived. It had all the Vesta workers’ numbers in it. This made it super easy to communicate and not worry about phone call fees when in contacting Vesta people in country. All calls would have been $.20 per minute for us. Not awful but it would have been an annoying expense.
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| "It's Jason Bourne" |
Apartment in Sofia. This was a nice two-room apartment. Vesta left a large bottled water, juice, snacks and some bananas waiting for us. The weird ladder-looking thing in the bathroom is a towel warmer. There was a hair dryer there and toiletries. We were only there one night but it would be a great setup for a longer week. It has access to the pedestrian street were you can find just about everything.
Sliven. Sliven is beautiful! It's seated right at the base of the Balkan mountains. The view is breathtaking. Sliven is less touristy and you see kids skating and playing in the pedestrian street at 10 or 11 pm on a school night. Across from the hotel was a mall with a coffee shop, some smaller stores and an H&M as the staple store.
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| View from the coffee shop in the mall! |
In Sliven there is plenty of poverty. There are Roma beggars, some are passive, some are inappropriate and aggressive. Our translator would not translate what one man said to her, but watching her try to cover herself I knew it was bad. At the same time, it feels very safe in the main center of town and we walked back to the hotel without Kev one night with no concerns. He wouldn’t have left us two girls alone if he felt it was unsafe.
Lodging in Sliven. Since the orphanage was in Sliven we stayed Sunday night in Sofia then our translator picked us up Monday morning and drove us to Sliven. We stayed in the Park Central Hotel. Our translator stayed in the room next door to ours. We did not have the ability to fix our own food, but that gave us opportunities to try local yumminess. The hotel was very nice and located right in the town center. We could easily walk to food, lots of shopping, a couple of souvenir shops and a grocery store. Souvenirs are a little cheaper in Sliven but, you can find most souvenirs in Sofia and more variety. So, unless the souvenir is specific to Sliven like a magnet or postcard don't stress if you forget to pick one up. There were also photo stores to print out pictures. We stopped at one to print a picture of us with Little B to leave in his photo album. The baby orphanage Little B lives in was just a short drive away and was the only baby orphanage in town.
Sofia. We only spent two nights in Sofia, so we are far from experts.
Here is what we did learn. The pedestrian street is super nice with a mix of high end stores and not so high end, obviously where the wealthy shop. There were also multiple souvenir stores and places to get Rose products on this street. Roses are huge in Bulgaria and make excellent gifts or stuff for silent auctions. The pottery is another great idea for silent auctions or personal souvenirs, but we didn’t attempt bringing any home this trip.
Sofia. We only spent two nights in Sofia, so we are far from experts.
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| Pedestrian street in Sofia. |
Beds. Just be prepared, even in the hotels that are very nice the beds are not comfy at all, they are fairly hard. In the Ramada hotel we stayed at in Sofia on the way back it felt like we were sleeping directly on a box spring. You’ll be exhausted so it won’t really matter, but just be aware. We’ve done plenty of mission trips, so we didn’t expect much. If you ask for a king size bed you may find yourself falling into the crack between two singles that have been pushed together.
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| McDonald's Bathroom |
Restaurants. In Sliven, we ate at mostly sit-down style restaurants. We ate at Park Central Hotel, Bar & Grill Maki and several other places. The food was amazing. Bar & Grill Maki was probably one of the best places we ate at. But, I will get to food details later. We did pay for our translator’s meals, but I do not believe this was expected. Most menus were in Bulgarian, but some had English translations or pictures. Once we stopped at a stand called AliBaba just down from our hotel. It's meat, some veggies and fries in a pita type bread. The people who ran the place did not speak English, and we didn’t have our translator with us at the time. We survived, ended up with double the food we wanted and two yogurt drinks we didn't want. Minus the yogurt drinks, the food was amazing.
Once we left Sliven, we were only in Sofia a couple days. We ate first a a place called Happy, its kind of like if Applebee’s had a kid with Titled Kilt or Hooters. Most all of the wait staff speak English, and there are pictures and English descriptions on the menus. It’s easy. Quick comment—10% is a nice tip at a restaurant in Europe for good service. There is a service charge already factored into your bill and wait staff make a living wage (unlike in the US). However, as foreigners who required extra time and patience, we wanted to be generous and leave wait staff with a pleasant encounter with us when possible. Our absolute favorite place in Sofia was a meat-heavy street food stand. It had all kinds of cooked meats and they were soooo good. Once we went there and pointed to order, another time we went there and the guy spoke English.
Once we left Sliven, we were only in Sofia a couple days. We ate first a a place called Happy, its kind of like if Applebee’s had a kid with Titled Kilt or Hooters. Most all of the wait staff speak English, and there are pictures and English descriptions on the menus. It’s easy. Quick comment—10% is a nice tip at a restaurant in Europe for good service. There is a service charge already factored into your bill and wait staff make a living wage (unlike in the US). However, as foreigners who required extra time and patience, we wanted to be generous and leave wait staff with a pleasant encounter with us when possible. Our absolute favorite place in Sofia was a meat-heavy street food stand. It had all kinds of cooked meats and they were soooo good. Once we went there and pointed to order, another time we went there and the guy spoke English.
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| Shopska Salad |
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| Kavarma |
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| Poached Eggs with Yogurt |
Turkish or Greek coffee is available, but no thank you. I like coffee, not the grinds. We had Bulgarian meatballs--amazing. I had this mega potato dish, potatoes are a major component in most meals. Banitsa is the one thing we missed. I can’t believe we went this entire trip and didn’t try it, but it’s on my "to do" list for trip 2! There are super cheap espresso vending machines everywhere. It’s worth figuring out what you like so you can easily get these on your own as they are in Bulgarian. Kev could single-handedly keep them in business. He loved he could get espresso for about $.30 any time he wanted!
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| Espresso Machine |
Gifts for the orphanage workers and translators. I’ve seen and heard different agencies say different things. Some say to take little gifts for the workers, some suggest you do not. Just go with what your agency tells you and don’t stress. We already have enough to stress about. We brought salt water taffy (since we live at the beach), chocolate bars and Bath and Body Works lotion. I took them in a little bag and just gave them to the psychologist at the orphanage and ask her to share the gifts with the other workers. I didn't want to make it a big deal.
Gifts for your child. We brought three special gifts that we asked to be returned with him if possible. A little blanket with his name on it, a recordable storybook of our family reading it, and a soft photo album with pics of our family and him. We also brought LEGO’s, play dough, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, musical toy and cars. We gave him the gifts over the course of the week. It was nice to have a little surprise each day. We brought a variety of clothes and sizes, but just left them with the orphanage. I don’t expect to get any of the toys or clothes back, although they said we would get them back. We’ll see. I'm glad I brought toys with us to play with him. It made it easy and gave him a chance to warm up to us.
What should I wear? I read many things about what to wear and listened to the suggestions of our agency. I avoided flip flops, shorts and spaghetti strap shirts. Bulgaria is more conservative. That being said, I saw people in shorts and tank tops. Follow the lead of your agency, but bring something cooler so you aren’t roasting during down time during the day if you travel when the weather is warmer.
Journaling and blogging. Do this on your first trip. There are so many details, comments, feelings and experiences I know I will forget. Little B is young and will not remember much if anything. I want to remember for him.
Ok friends, I hope this helps some people out. It's a load of info. You should get a prize if you read this far! It was very helpful for me to hear other people’s experiences and eliminate a little of the unexpected. There are so many unknowns with an adoption it’s nice to have a little security and preparation for some things.
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Comments
We are also adopting from Bulgaria through AGCI and I wanted to ask a few details about the travel and expenses. Its been wonderful reading your recent blogs about the travel and Skype dates you have been able to maintain.
Jessie