November 3. One of the selling points (out of three) of my new toothbrush is “golden bristles”. Yee-haw. One of the other ones should have been: “one of the only soft-bristled toothbrushes to exist in Bulgaria”. Besides which, it’s not that soft.

November 5. Because I do not have a bank account in the name of my foundation, I cannot get paid until one is opened. This would have been nice to know before trudging down past NDK, packet of invoices in hand. And how to open a bank account? Acquire yet another piece of paper, this one from the Palace of Justice (the recently refurbished building with the lions out front).

Today is not a good day, for other reasons as well. Indignance. But one good thing happened, at least: a pleasant evening spent in conversation with a new acquaintance.
I’ve decided that this winter, I’ll turn on the parno in my flat. It works, to a sufficient degree, but the drafts coming from under the window frames diminish the effect of the heat. Don’t worry, Mum!

November 6. Sometimes I imagine my life like a film, in which what I really wanted to do would be permissible. I’m at the Palace of Justice, having wandered the building’s first two stories, asking people if they knew where the place to submit a request for a vremenno upravlenie document is. “Not here,” “I don’t know” (this one coming from an office labelled “information”), and finally, “Oh, that’s on the ground floor”. Ground floor: I ask at a window and get treated like an idiot. Another window has a more kindly lady. Around the corner to another window-land: I ask at a window and get scorned by yet another lady, who tells me that obviously I should go to another window. Which one? She shrugs her shoulders and looks at me like I’m daft.

Cut.
Small female stands in the centre of a milling crowd, ground floor, Palace of Justice. A space of about two metres opens up around her; the people freeze.
Female: (screams)
Crowd resumes its action; female starts to cry.
Cut.
But that didn’t happen; I just started to cry silently, frustrated and upset at this and other things in life, while wandering over to some queue labelled “godina 1”, thinking it best to start at the beginning.
But that’s not where I was to be, so said yet another gruff lady.

So if you ever need to turn in some letter requesting whatever this form is to open a bank account (don’t forget that you also need to have a stamp made) for your foundation, let it be known: first go to a little cashier room and pay five leva, then go to room 75, where the people are somewhat kinder, or at least not so crude, turn in the letter and the payment slip, and then come back in about a week. Or, in my case, on Friday after noon.
And then I bought myself an espresso from one of the numerous distributors in the building.
I understand why people plain over Bulgarian bureaucracy.

November 7. A surprise visit by X to the office and an invitation to go away this weekend make a long day bright.

November 8. I am so loving this new Italian market! Blissfully, blithely, exploring the shop. Oh, how I’ve missed quality food. And I’m in a good mood today, for whatever reason. Reason: a) the store, b) tomorrow!

November 9. And it was a good today, until... a phone call came and said I needed to be at such-and-such a place after such-and-such a time, thus ruining the weekend plans. And then I’m just  really down. Such things happen, yes, but this, for whatever reason, has killed me. Though disappointing people distresses me, this hits deeper.

November 10. I’m still down, feeling forlorn and forlorn and forlorn. And this lasts all day, even after an afternoon spent among friends, and so I call my mum and start bawling. It’s been a long... week, month, life. (This, and on Tuesday, was the first time I’d cried since June 2007 when saying goodbye to my little sister in California.) Eventually, I feel somewhat better.
Cut.
Bulgaria, 1973. Dark alley one blustery autumn night, shadows of leaves playing on the sides of impersonal blocks of flats.
Small female, walking, alone, ponders fate, but does not believe in fate. Ponders life, wonders when this phase will end.
Cut.
It takes one hour and 40 minutes to walk to Shipka Street from Mladost-3.

November 11. Asking at the entrance to the cemetery exactly how to arrive at the foreign war graves, the kind SOT man drives me to location. So I arrive chauffeured, too. I would write something else right now, but won’t.

This is a strange career, journalism. I go to these events, take photos, chat, etc, and people are friendly enough, but we’re not friends. This is a life of limbo – I’m not Bulgarian, nor did I come because of a man, but I live permanently in Bulgaria; I’m not an employee of a foreign firm or a diplomat or a missionary, nor did I come for a job, but I’m a foreigner. If I were not at my job, making said not-me persons appear in the paper, I’d be just another damn chouzhdenka (doing what?).

Take two.
I think that I need a roommate. I think that my sister should come visit me. I think that it would be cool to have a machine that records one’s thoughts. Thoughts always sound so much more beautiful when they’re floating around my mind. I think (or in this case, know) that I need to take a maintenance course in French. Comprehension is 100 per cent fine, but speech sounds like it’s gone through the garbage disposal.

It was not until I went to university that I realised that not everyone has a garbage disposal in the kitchen. Now, it’s just normal that there not be one.

Today I vacuumed, or started to. The vacuum tends to smell funny when it runs, but this time, it started to smell really funny, and make strange noises. And then it started to really smell like burning plastic. It’s now sitting on the balcony, but my whole flat, despite having been aired out for 30 minutes (brrr), still smells nauseating.