Traveling in the past few days I keep finding myself using superlatives–best meal, prettiest vista, most delicious wine…In other words, so far everything is great.\u00a0 We ate at an upscale Armenian restaurant our last night in Sofia and it was, well, one of the best meals I’ve ever had.\u00a0\u00a0Of special note was the Bulgarian Cabernet (only sold\u00a0by the\u00a0bottle, no glasses) and the\u00a0yogurt\u00a0dish.\u00a0 Oh, the Bulgarian\u00a0yogurt!\u00a0 To die for.\u00a0 This particular dish was strained yogurt topped with green onions and\u00a0walnuts\u00a0with a\u00a0honey, balsamic vinegar, olive oil dressing. I know you’ve never thought of yogurt in this\u00a0context, but let me assure you, it was spectacular.\u00a0 In fact yogurt is everywhere here and always spectacular.\u00a0 It’s much thicker\u00a0and sourer than American yogurt and is usually eaten plain.\u00a0 We’ve had cow yogurt, sheep yogurt, and buffalo yogurt!\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Moving on from Sofia, but not from yogurt, we took a bus into the Rila mountains.\u00a0 The scenery as we entered the mountains was beautiful.\u00a0 After a totally positive experience in Sofia, I was surprised by how great it felt to leave.\u00a0 Sofia, like any car centric European city, is pretty crowded, smoggy and smoky.\u00a0 But out in the country it was all fields and mountain vistas.\u00a0 People work in their fields pulling weeds by hand, travel around in carts pulled by donkeys, and live in houses with vine covered trellises.\u00a0 The balanced life struck me as well: everyone seemed to use just what they needed.\u00a0 The fields were in plots just big enough for a family and the rest of the land was left wild.\u00a0 Donkeys and horses were\u00a0kept only as they were necessary for farming, transportation, etc.\u00a0 There were no ranches, plantations, hoarding, or excessive houses.\u00a0 And it’s not because the people were poor–the houses were modestly sized, well kept, and with gardens.\u00a0 I really wanted to get out and explore the fields, take photos of the donkeys, and get a better feel for the neighborhoods, but not knowing when the next bus would happen along we stayed aboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Traveling in the past few days I keep finding myself using superlatives–best meal, prettiest vista, most delicious wine…In other words, so far everything is great.\u00a0 We ate at an upscale Armenian restaurant our last night in Sofia and it was, well, one of the best meals I’ve ever had.\u00a0\u00a0Of special note was the Bulgarian Cabernet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}