Blagoevgrad is in southwest Bulgaria, near Macedonia. It takes about 5 ½ hours, by bus for me to get there from Chiprovtsi…if everything is on schedule and I don’t have a layover in Sofia. Blagoevgrad has been inhabited since the Thracians settled there in 300BC. It is currently home to the American University and has lots of shopping, restaurants, AND a movie theater.
Although we hardly had any time to wander around, a herd of us did taxi to town for a movie one night. We saw Inception, which was good, but the experience itself was even better. I’ve been craving movie theater popcorn and a fountain soda for a while…they didn’t have fountain sodas, but they did have beer and fresh popcorn. I couldn’t have asked for more. Sitting in the dark theater surrounded by fellow volunteers, eating buttery popcorn, drinking coke light through a straw while pretending it was a fountain soda, and watching Leonardo DiCaprio on a giant screen made for a perfect evening.
One day, a few of us skipped lunch at the hotel where the conference was held (several kilometers away from town) to have dyuners at a Dyuner King near the city center. Dyuners are unlike anything else. They sort of begin as a gyro, with either chicken or lamb inside of a large pita-ish bread wrap, then I you choose salads to add, I like it with beans and cucumber salad. There are also cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, French fries, ketchup and maybe a few other sauces inside the bread. There’s a lot going on in a dyuner, but they are great and keep you full for a long time. The other volunteers seem to be dyuner experts, it was a new experience for me. They are common in the larger towns in Bulgaria, but never really appealed to me. This is a picture I found online. Mine was a lot fuller and messier looking, but it still conveys the dyuner concept.
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