Rugby & The Evil Baba

9-19-2006

I think part of living successfully and happily in a foreign country is adapting to strange and unusual behavior. For the most part things here are relatively normal, but every now and again things happen that make me wish I was sipping on a Bud and watching a baseball game in the good ol US of A.
Last weekend started out great, I went to Sofia to play in my first rugby match of the season. We played against an old boys team from Kenya. The team consisted mostly of ex-pats who were working for various AID organizations in Kenya. I was surprised to see that the team did not even have one black player. However they did say that their A-side back home had only one white guy on the team. This makes a bit more sense, it is after all a team from Kenya. The game was very social and not taken too seriously, which made it a great opening match for the season. The Kenyan team introduced us to a new ‘tour rule’ that I had never heard of previously. ‘When the ref blows the whistle and yells freeze……. the last person moving has to run to the sideline and pound a beer’. Of course the Bulgarians with little English skills got the raw end of this deal because the command to freeze was lost in translation.
My weekend peaked out at the rugby game and gradually became worse after that. Thanks to a new highway that cuts entirely around Chirpan, it has been increasingly difficult to find a bus home from Sofia. After two hours of waiting and three different buses refusing to sell me a seat because of the new bus route, I became a bit frustrated and annoyed. I decided to take the train home, which adds about an hour of travel time but is ‘all in all’ a bit more comfortable.
I do have a funny story about waiting around the Sofia bus station. Well……..at least I find it a bit amusing, although not at the time. So here it goes………. As I was sitting alone on a bench a woman came up to me and looking at me with a half-sad smile sat next to me. She then began to stare at me with a strange look of desperation. After a few moments of silence she turned to me and mumbled something in Bulgarian. When she repeated it, I had a hard time not laughing. She told me I was beautiful…… and then bombarded me with a bunch of simple questions. As we chatted about simple things she repeated two things over and over. One was that she was cold, and the other was that I was beautiful. Every time she said I was beautiful it made me feel a bit uncomfortable………she was 26 by the way and from some village I had never head of. Well anyways after about 20 min of awkward conversation she looks me in the eyes and calmly says “kiss me now”(in Bulgarian of course). Wow……..how do you respond to that one? I looked at her trying to hold back my laughter and said that I would not because I did not know her. She ended up talking to me about five minutes longer and then got the hint and hit the road.
I must say that this experience was both funny and creepy, kind of a muddled mix of the two. It makes for a good story however, and I suppose it is flattering to know that out there somewhere is a lonely 26 year old Bulgarian girl who thinks I am beautiful and would love to kiss me.
After the long train ride home I was ready for some peace and quiet, and not prepared for the events to come. The night took a turn for the worse after a misunderstanding/communication lapse took place between my site mate and I, which resulted in me not attending an important town event. It was a bit frustrating because skipping the event may have looked as a bit of an insult to my colleagues. This event was important because it was in celebration of a famous artist from Chirpan, and was attended by around 7 ambassadors as well as other important Bulgarian Government officials. Around 11pm while I was lying on my make-shift couch and trying to calm my nerves, my door opened and in walked the “Evil Baba”. She headed straight past the kitchen, through the hallway and into the storage area. I was not in the mood for this invasion of privacy, so I walked up to her and told her that she was not welcome in my home. I told her that if she ever wanted to come in my apartment she must ask permission, which includes knocking on the door first and asking permission to enter. She became very infuriated and said it was her house and that she can come into my apartment whenever she pleases. The next day I complained about this incident to a few colleagues including the vice-mayor, and told them how this happens frequently every time she is in town. I explained to the people at the municipality that it is an invasion of privacy and that I do not feel like it is appropriate for the “Evil Baba” to come into my home whenever she pleases. After an unpleasant after lunch discussion with the “Evil Baba” and my counterparts, it was clear that she did not understand the meaning of the word ‘privacy’. Nor did she understand the fact that if you rent out an apartment, you are no longer able to enter it without an invitation. After a bunch of bad noise I assumed that she got the point and would at least knock before entering my place. I was wrong!!!!!!!!!! She entered my apartment today as I was preparing to take a shower. I was only wearing a towel and she walked into my apartment as if our conversations yesterday had not taken place. So I am not sure what the next step in this process will be, perhaps it is time for me to pack my bags and move on to another residence. I am not sure how much more privacy invasion I can take.