Second Day Back on the Job

Today was passport picture day!  That means, we (because my friends Chelsea and Josh are here for their son Levi at the same time) had to finagle our way into getting passable pictures of our boys for their passports.  It really does not take long, but then again, we are dealing with government.  That means that there has got to be some waiting in there somewhere.

So at 9:30am our driver and translator, Marty and Dani, picked us all up at the hotel to go to the passport place.  It was literally a block or two away from the hotel, but because there was construction on the lion’s bridge (or is that Lions’ Bridge?) we had to take the long way around.  We were about five minutes away from Marty’s smoke break before we made it to the passport place.

We stepped in and it was a whole mess of people and counters and these little closet cubicle thingies that apparently were used for taking the passport photos.  Soshko and I stood in line for a grand total of 3 minutes before we had enough.  Yeah, that’s right – even though Soshko was the one falling down and whining and fussing, I was the grand orchestrator.  One word: Ventriloquism.  Dani said that we could step outside.

After hunting rapidly disappearing rain puddles on the sidewalk for about five minutes, Soshko and I were summoned to go take Soshko’s picture.

We were taken into one of those cubicle closets to do the picture.  Really, the whole place was so busy that the only thing I remember was busyness.  That and that it reeked of Old World government buildings; very stately.

I don’t remember much because there wasn’t much to remember.  Besides the busyness, there was a whole bunch of Bulgarian and someone trying to force Soshko to look into the camera.  I have a feeling that I could have helped, but maybe not in that environment.

After that funfest, Chelsea and Josh were going to go for a walk.  Knowing that I needed to get some stuff as well, I volunteered to tag along.

First off, I want to simultaneously apologize and express deep thanks to Chelsea, Josh and Levi.  I want to apologize for stepping in on their plans to do the walking tour of Sofia.  Soshko was not in the mood for walking that long, and he was definitely not in much of a mood for much of anything.  So I had that wet blanket feeling going on.

But also goes out a huge thanks for the moral support for shopping.  I have to admit that I am intimidated by shopping in Bulgaria because it is assumed, by many, that you speak Bulgarian.  And even though I know a little bit, enough to ask if they speak English, I’m still a little shy of it.  Just having other Americans doing the shopping in the same boat as me is inspirational.

Anyway, we managed to hit a couple of shops, and that's as far as I got in writing a blog post about our adventures before Soshko made it known that he had other plans, such as learning how to raid the hotel room's mini bar/fridge.  He's needed a lot of attention today, and in lieu of finishing this blog post tonight after the little guy went to sleep, Sam convinced me to hit the hay early instead.