A special day in Sofia

A special day in Sofia

On the road again! We haven’t been in the car for quite a while. But, immediately it felt normal to be back on the road. Sitting next to each other, listen to music, sing along, talk about everything and nothing at the same time, listen to podcast and just admire the unknown surrounding which passes in the windows.

After leaving the little eco-village, we headed towards Sofia where we already arranged a meeting with three Bulgarians for a little chat about the EU over dinner. Kindly, Simone, my parent’s friend, organized this for us. As we learned, she follows our project and realized that she could organize interview partners for us in Bulgaria and Rumania which is awesome. So, whenever you, dear reader, have a contact for us in the countries we are travelling to, do not hesitate to tell us – every interview brings us a step further to our documentary! At this point: Thank you Simone, for arranging this.

We arrived in Bulgaria’s capital in the afternoon and with some luck even found a parking spot for huge Oswald. There we met Neli, Dimitar and Georgi and went to a little park with them. Already the welcome was very warm. We chatted about our project and learned that they already knew some things about it since they were reading through this website a bit. Dimitar was immediately ready for the interview and performed really well in front of the camera – as he had been on camera several times before. As we know now, he wasn’t. Anyways, he shared his interesting thoughts about the EU with us – thank you, Dimitar!

Interview with Dimitar. Our first interview in public.

Neli, Simone’s working colleague, talked with us in front of the camera next. This was already our 28th interview on our journey. Since it becomes more and more normal to us, it is weird to think about the end of the project which will be only in five months but still, it comes closer. At some point it won’t be our everyday life anymore to interview people all over Europe and talk with them about the EU, their life, their country and their fears and hopes for the future. It is still a great adventure for us, and every interview brings interesting new points. So did the interview with Neli – thank you for sharing your impressions about the EU with us!

Interview with Neli in Sofia.

Those were the first interviews on our trip, we had in a public space. Before that, we were afraid that the noises around would be too loud or that the movement around the interview scene would be disturbing. It wasn’t. Actually, it was amazing! The two did not let themselves be distracted. Plus, during Neli’s interview a man stopped, watched the scene and listened. In the end, he applauded. Tim used the advantage of the situation and asked him if he would like to share his thoughts on camera as well. Immediately, he said yes and positioned himself on the bench. The only problem: He did not speak English. So, Dimitar jumped in and offered to translate. This whole situation was just so random but very moving. Great teamwork – thanks to all participants!

And action! Spontaneous interview in the park.

He introduced himself as Santa Clause. We did not even wonder why. This was the most emotional interview we had so far – tears included:

Georgi, Bulgaria

After all this input, we went to a restaurant close by with Neli, Dimitar and Georgi to talk some more about this and that. We learned so much about Bulgaria – work, prices and life there – also about how life changed in Bulgaria when they entered the EU in 2007. Plus, we got to know those three incredibly nice people. Thank you so much for meeting with us, the nice dinner and the insights you gave us.

After those nice hours, we keep on driving north. I realized that we have not updated you in a long while about our route. So here is the route we took through Bulgaria:

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