Ellis and Jodie's Bulgarian Adventure

Walking to work on Thursday I witnessed the first snow flurries of the season, exciting me so much I had to call Jodie with this news. She was not as pleased. The snow flurries continued throughout the day but nothing stuck to the ground. Although it's been dipping below freezing on many nights, the days are typically much warmer and winter can still be held off for now. However, all the local news agencies are predicting a colder than usual winter this year, with one agency saying that the first real snow should fall on or about November 20. We shall see!

This part is true = Israel's Mossad Agency Chief Meir Dagan just made a visit to Bulgaria and the two countries pledged mutual assistance in intelligence gathering efforts. A joke circulated in the Bulgarian Internet forums on the meeting of Bulgarian Prime Minister Borisov with Mossad Director Dagan in Sofia. The tete-a-tete meeting between Bulgarian Prime Minister Borisov and Mossad Director Dagan went as follows: Borisov: "Am I still in power?" Dagan: "Yes." Borisov: "Whew!" From the Sofia News Agency .

According to what we’ve learned, John Hulsbosch first came to Bulgaria from the Netherlands on a volunteer program back in 2003. He had studied baking back in his home country and while in Bulgaria he came into contact with the owner of a local bakery. John purchased the bakery, and combined his own name with the popular Bulgarian name Ivan to call his new business “JoVan the Dutch Baker”. We stopped by the bakery on Sunday and purchased a round loaf of brown bread. Sorry, but I don’t know the name of this particular bread, but it was unbelievably good. We ate half of it on Monday, and froze the other half for breakfast today. It was truly the best bread we’ve ever eaten in Bulgaria. The bakery is located on Angel Kanchev Street, and we only discovered it because we were looking for a restaurant in that neighborhood. It’s walking distance from our home, but quite a walk. That’s a shame, because the bread from this bakery is so good! Articles about this bakery: Feeding Bulgarians Fresh ...

On our weekend cultural tour in central Sofia, we also visited the National Art Gallery , located in the former royal palace of Bulgaria and home to a huge collection of Bulgarian art. The reason for our visit was an exhibition of Degas statues. However, only one of the statues was actually done by Degas himself. The others were sculpted by his students after the artist's death, however they were cast in the molds he had created. Even so, the collection of ballerinas and wild horses, all in black and vivid motion, was quite interesting. Note the photographer and his wife in the mirror!