Come on in! Заповядайте!

What’s been happening lately?

Well, nothing much. We have been home buddies for three weeks in my hometown of Plovdiv. Kuba is in Poland to see his family and the kids and I are staying with my parents. They have been the best of hosts and are spoiling us with all the great food my dad is cooking. The only change is that we are not on the move for the first time in 11 months.

Wanna come over and hang out?

Above is the block of flats that I grew up in. It used to be an awesome base for a childhood full of mischief and all kinds of crazy adventures. When I was little I thought that my town is the whole world and I had no idea that there is much more to life than my street, my apartment building, my friends and whatever else was familiar to me.

The best thing about the building itself is that it is in the city center and one can walk to everywhere on foot. Our apartment is on the third floor. Not much has changed about it since I was a child. The interior is pretty much frozen in time with all the books on the shelves and my pastel sketches taped on the walls.

Come on in. Below is the narrow entry still dressed in the 40 year old wood paneling. I used to spend hours chatting with my friends on the land phone line which used to reside on the bookshelf.

The living room and the dining room are joined. The space faces a long terrace and another ugly block identical to ours. The room has always been painted in this killer green that my mom custom mixed. I still remember her trying to get the right shade of green by mixing the base color with reds and blues and what not. I have always been proud of the unusual shade of green as it made our place somewhat different from the other identical apartments. In the time of socialism being different was difficult to achieve.

The room is exactly as I remember it. The only change is the new paper light and the furniture. The old couches used to be super comfortable and I loved reading on them. We don’t hang out on the new furniture much these days. Even the kids prefer to sprawl on the carpet.

The kitchen. We never used it as we took all our meals next door with my grandma and grandpa. Once they passed my dad made our tiny kitchen his kingdom. The cabinets are lower than what I am used to and everything is small but cozy.

The dining room. We never took our meals here as we were always eating next door with my grandparents. My grandma used to cook for everyone and this used to be the fancy table for just hanging out. Me and my brother would often turn it into a ping-pong table after school.

Now we eat here. All meals start with salad with tomatoes and cukes, olives and feta. Yum! You see the red spread in the middle? This is liutenitza, my favorite. I might have to pack a bag of liutenitza jars for Namibia.

One of my favorite spots is the terrace. I would spend hours chatting to my friend Elie whose terrace was next door. On some days we would get bored and would throw buckets of cold water on people passing below. One of these days my karma will catch up with me and I will get a random shower from above. It is just a matter of time, I know it.

My mom would also jump from their terrace into ours whenever we locked in our keys or lost them. Crazy.

My bedroom is below. This is where I bothered my brother with my endless chatting. The room used to have this shaggy green carpet I loved rolling on…

My parents’ room. It always felt like a cave to me. I loved spending time here and trying my mom’s clothes and jewelry while she was at work. Strangely I grew up to be a tomboy even though I had tons of dresses to play with when she wasn’t around.

I couldn’t take a good shot of the bathroom. It is a typical bathroom for Bulgaria – a wet room with a sink. It has a big electric water heater in one corner and I remember being somewhat scared of it all throughout my childhood:)

This is all there is to our place. I am loving the slow quiet days and the feeling that we are home. We are relaxing fully and the thought that we will be on the road again very soon is making me nervous. I am not going to lie that I am anxious about what is ahead. It is as if the pause in our trip erased all the experience we have acquired over the previous 11 months and we are again green tourist and not seasoned travelers. I am working daily on pushing the anxiety away till Kuba comes back so I can lean on him as nothing seems to rattle him, ever.

Anyways, do you want to see what we carry in our packs? I will be spreading all of our luggage on the carpet, so it will be easy to document.

Now or never:)