Not a Towel

I’m planning to buy most of my supplies this weekend in Montana—it’s the nearest large city, about 45 minutes by bus, and is similar in size to Vratsa— but wanted to get a few things around town so I could bond with the local shop owners etc. One of these items was supposed to be a bath towel. Although the apartment had a towel, it’s more of a hand towel size and it’s pretty chilly in the mornings. I wanted something to wrap myself in and planned on using the hand towel in the kitchen. Well… I went to the magazine (magazines are Bulgarian stores) that sells some household goods, with my list in hand. Of course, I should have translated it to Bulgarian first, but most of the words I knew and I figured it wasn’t that big of a store, I could just point something out if I wanted it. In these types of smaller stores, you usually don’t get most of the items yourself—no carts and aisles, you tell the cashier the items you want and she gets them for you from behind the counter.

After getting most of my list taken care of: clothespins, cutting knife, can opener, dish soap, etc., I pointed at what appeared to be a giant fluffy towel in clear plastic wrapping. The clerk raised her eyebrows and asked me if it was what I really wanted. “Yes,” I replied. “It’s for the bath, right?” She nodded and added it to my tab. Next, on my list was a bucket with holes to use for holding my shower stuff. The shower sprays everywhere and doesn’t drain very fast. I needed something to put my shampoo in so it wouldn’t float away that wouldn’t get soggy from water. They didn’t have anything that would work, but the conversation was difficult and lasted a solid 10 minutes. I was getting sort of stressed and ready to go when I asked for the bill. It was higher than I’d expected, but I figured that maybe things were just more expensive than I’d calculated.

When I returned to the apartment and took the ‘bath towel’ out of the plastic wrap, I saw that it was, in fact, not a towel, but an expensive bath/lounging robe. It was already dark and I didn’t feel like enduring the embarrassment of walking back across town with a opened robe package to explain to the attendant, who had just endured a 10 minute conversation about buckets with holes in broken Bulgarian with me, that I thought the Hugh Hefner style robe was actually a towel, and could she please give me refund. So, now I have a fancy robe, that doubles as a bath towel. It’s really quite comfortable and even has a hood that I can sort of dry my hair with. I wear it as much as possible to get the full benefit of every Lev I spent on it.