Kazan — summer 2014

Gosh, I love vacation. Wander around the city, pause-eat-read, wander, pause-eat-read...

This time around it is espresso and crème caramel, essentially the same thing as flan.

This song has been going through my heart over and over again the last month. It captures so well those moments of fierce, infatuated love when your heart doesn't believe your love will ever be returned, but you are too considerate to make a move that you know would not be appreciated or perhaps too unsure to make the first move when you don't know whether it would be appreciated.

It's my last full day in Sofia. Now I have to start thinking about Russia again. Send some e-mails. And oh yes, it's father's day. Better call dad.

It's been amazing to go the better part of a week without seriously watching the news. The news in Iraq is dismaying.

Cognitive dissonance. Disruptions in Iraq. I sit in Sofia wondering which pastry to buy.

On the bus ride from Plovdiv to Sofia the driver had a great station on, and one of the songs was the Bangles’ song “Eternal Flame.” Gosh, I love that song. One of the lines goes, “I watch you when you are sleeping.” To wake up in the middle of the night and watch the slow rise and fall as your love breathes... I don't think there is any greater privilege and joy in life.

• I think I would call Bulgarian drivers ‘courteously aggressive.’ They aggressively attempt to gain any space they can, but are polite to drivers pulling out of tricky parking spaces or alleys. I kind of like that.
• Lots of tatoos on guys in their teens and twenties, just like in the US. Yuck.
• In Plovdiv more women wear practical shoes, which is a very good thing. In Sofia more women wear stiletto heels, which is a very bad thing. When fashion leads to decisions that diminish normal human health, then you can be sure that fashion is oppressing us.