When I touched down in Sofia, Bulgaria, on a Thursday morning, I was greeted by a white, overcast sky and a jet bridge with signage that read, “Happy Restaurants welcomes you to Bulgaria.” I didn’t know it at the time, but Happy Restaurants is as ubiquitous as McDonald’s is in the United States, with the only difference being Happy’s more expansive menu and lack of a drive-thru option. 

The airport surpassed my expectations in terms of its size and efficiency. While Sofia’s airport has been around since the start of the Cold War, massive renovations in 2006 made it much more accommodating. There was high-speed Wi-Fi that I could use while waiting for my bags to clear customs. Still, since my layover was in Germany and Bulgaria is a member of the EU, I didn’t have to worry about an overly tedious customs process. Compared to the United States’ airport customs, Bulgaria’s wasn’t too different.

Once I got through passport control and had to wait for my bags, the airport began to feel less grand. In the terminal,  there were worn blue benches scattered around several carousels in a room mostly lit by skylights. As far as furnishings go, the airport was about as normal as “normal” could be. The baggage claim is, for the most part, empty save for the benches, two ATMs and security guards at both the entrance and exit. After getting my bags, I had to go through one last step of customs before coming into the main part of the terminal. The main terminal itself is fairly small, with one main lobby that handles both departures and arrivals. 

I was there for a fencing tournament outside Sofia, which meant I had to take a shuttle to travel the hundred kilometers or so between the airport and Plovdiv–another big city. My coach said there was a shuttle waiting for us, but I didn’t know what to expect. When I entered the main lobby, there was a tall, middle-aged man with a navy blue baseball cap and a black stubble. He was holding a sign that showed the logo of the organizers of the tournament–the Bulgarian Fencing Federation–so I knew I was in the right place. He only spoke basic English, and he said we were waiting for more people, so I sat down on a bench in the corner and put my bags down. I didn’t know who we were waiting for or how long we would be waiting, but I was grateful to be in a room with air conditioning and Wi-Fi after the cramped plane flight between Munich and Sofia. 

After about fifteen minutes of watching people come through customs and go out into Sofia from my comfortable bench, I decided to get up and walk around. Bulgarian uses Cyrillic as opposed to Latin characters, so I had no idea what anything meant. Like most American and European airports, there were various shops strewn about the main lobby. After looking around, I settled on a small shop that sold a variety of beverages and fresh pastries. It was around three in the afternoon when I landed, and it felt like the perfect time for a midday snack. I settled for a focaccia-looking pastry and a can of papaya juice. Upon tasting the pastry, I was pleasantly surprised by a cheesy filling enclosed by a crispy, airy crust. 

Unbeknownst to me, I had stumbled upon the Bulgarian delicacy of banitsa—a popular yet simple dish throughout the Balkans, made by layering egg and feta between sheets of puff pastry. 

Beyond Bulgaria, banitsa exists under other pseudonyms and with slightly different preparations: Serbian gibanica swaps out feta cheese for the milder cottage cheese, Greek spanakopita adds spinach and onion to the filling, and Bosnian pita rolls the layers of dough into a spiral rather than layering it. 

Interestingly, all of these Balkan countries were all under Ottoman rule. Historians believe that these dishes descend from the Persian snack börek, dating back as far as the fourth century C.E. When the Ottoman Empire expanded in the fourteenth century, it spread its culture to its new lands. This included banitsa, which evolved in the centuries following its initial introduction. The concept itself is relatively simple, allowing for various versions of the dish to evolve based on the needs and wants of the people that adopt it. For example, Greece’s warm climate and abundance of vegetables like spinach led to it becoming a staple filling in the dish.

Still, Bulgaria’s culture wasn’t solely shaped by the Ottomans. Rather, its culture can be attributed to the many foreign powers that have occupied it. Prior to falling under Ottoman rule, Bulgaria was controlled first by the Romans, and then by the Byzantine Empire. After declaring from the Ottomans in 1908, Bulgaria enjoyed a brief period of independence before coming under the rule of the USSR. The Soviet Union had the most notable influence on contemporary society–even the airport’s brutalist architecture shows the Soviet-era influence, and walls of vast, grey housing blocks tower over the skyline. 

The language, however, originates from proto-Slavic, suggesting Bulgarian has a common language heritage with Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian. Within this region, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro all share a common language, and Bulgarian shares various similarities with these languages. 

However, the languages still differ in some noticeable ways: Serbo-Croatian uses a case system to contextualize its clauses–also seen in Russian, Latin, and sometimes German to a lesser extent–while Bulgarian lost its complex grammatical cases. Additionally, Bulgarian vocabulary has more Turkish and Greek influences, while Serbo-Croatian has more definite German and Latin influences.

These similarities and differences highlight the fact that although these sovereign nations are under different flags, they are intertwined by these complex cultural interactions.

Upon finishing my pastry, I went to rejoin the Bulgarian shuttle driver, who had decided we had waited long enough for whoever was supposed to join us and that it was time to leave. He escorted us out to an off-yellow Mercedes S203 Wagon from the early 2000s and helped us load our bags into the trunk. 

As soon as I opened the car door, I was immediately hit with a powerful cigarette smell that instantly made my eyes water.

Heavy smoking turned out to be a common theme in Bulgaria, as it consistently tops the list of European countries with the highest percentage of daily smokers, coming in at 28.2% in 2019.

I made an effort to push past the harsh odor and sat down for a long ride down the A1 Motorway (often referred to as the Trakia Motorway by locals). This road links the capital city of Sofia to the city of Burgas on the Black Sea, and it passes through my destination of Plovdiv. Plovdiv is 145 kilometers from the Sofia airport–about a two-hour drive with moderate traffic–so I had to get comfortable. 

The highway had two lanes going in each direction, making it feel more like the equivalent of a state road in the U.S. rather than an interstate highway. Right as we left the city center, the clouds started to clear up, showing my first glimpse of the sky in almost twenty-four hours. The highway through the edge of Sofia is lined with concrete, Soviet-style buildings.

Since I hadn’t yet set up my e-sim plan to get cellular service on my smartphone, I entertained myself by looking at the license plates of cars on the motorway. Each country within Europe has a unique license plate code on the left-hand side that displays the vehicle’s nation of origin. For example, France uses ‘FR’ on all of the plates registered within the country. Unsurprisingly, Bulgaria’s country code is ‘BG,’ and it was by far the most common country code I noticed. 

What surprised me was the number of Turkish trucks on the road. These trucks were distinguishable by their ‘TR’ country codes, further emphasizing the constant interaction between the various countries of the region. If I were to continue on the A1 Motorway to the coastal city of Burgas, I would only be sixty miles away from the Turkish border. On a good day, that drive is feasible in under two hours. Even Istanbul–Turkey’s largest city–is only about 200 miles from Burgas, putting the trip at about three hours. 

Beyond showing the country itself, Bulgaria’s license plates also show the vehicle’s region of origin within the string of numbers and letters.

For example, the license plate CA-9971-TR can be broken down into three parts: Province code, serial number, and series. The serial number and series are unique to the vehicle, similar to the characters of United States’ license plates. The series refers to the last two letters, and the series began with ‘AA’ (except for the province of Silistra, which begins their lettering with ‘CC’). However, the interesting part of the sequence is the first two letters, called the province code. ‘CA’ is the code for Sofia, which means that the vehicle had been registered in the Sofia province. Each province has a unique code, with the more populous ones having several. Sofia, for example, has ‘C,’ ‘CA,’ and ‘CB.’ ‘C’ was the original Sofia province code used until 2005 when all combinations were exhausted, forcing a switch to ‘CA’ and then to ‘CB.’ 

When I first got on the motorway, the vast majority of cars had the ‘CB’ province code. However, after we left the outskirts of the Sofia metropolitan area, there was a transition to ‘PA’ plates, denoting the province of Pazardzhik.

Beyond looking at license plates, I entertained myself by looking at the billboards lining the road. While roads in the U.S. tend to have billboards advertising local businesses, the vast majority of Bulgarian billboards advertise online gambling services. The most frequent gambling websites were Winbet, Efbet, and Topwin. 

Still, there were short stretches with non-gambling billboards. For example, seemingly randomly, while passing through Vakarel, there were four or five billboards in a row all advertising air conditioning units.

Beyond the abundance of gambling billboards, one billboard that stood out to me was “McDonald’s–180 km.” At first, this confused me. Why would they say that the next McDonald’s is almost two hours away?

I assumed this was targeted marketing toward the drivers who plan on taking the Trakia Motorway to the Black Sea, and the billboard serves to plant the idea of fast food in the driver’s head, whether or not they’re currently hungry. 

This billboard was not the first time that the McDonald’s brand used long distances in their ads to make them more memorable. One memorable use of distance was when McDonald’s put up a sign showing detailed directions to a Burger King restaurant 256 km away, and they juxtaposed it with a sign showing a McDonald’s 5 km away. The high distances themselves made the advertisement stand out; this is likely a similar tactic.

After what felt like days in that car, we finally made it to the Grand Hotel Plovdiv. Even though it was late, I had to complete my registration that day. I brought my bags up to the room before going back down to catch the last shuttle of the day from the hotel to the arena. It was also organized by the Bulgarian Fencing Federation, but this time it was an actual bus, which felt much better than the cigarette-smelling sedan. 

Registration took longer than I had anticipated–the lines were long, and there wasn’t any sense of urgency. I appreciated the time to soak up the atmosphere. I went to a grocery store a few blocks from the hotel to get some water. A common theme at a lot of these international fencing tournaments is that they don’t offer drinking fountains, and this one was no different. The airport in Sofia had a poster about the great drinking water quality, but my coach suggested staying away from the water fountains at the stadium. Subsequently, I had to stock up on some large bottles of water and snacks for the tournament. While shopping, I saw this blue can of Schweppes that had Cyrillic writing on it. Upon trying it, I realized that it was a sour lemon soda likely used as a mixer for alcoholic beverages. It was too much for me, and I had to throw it out.

The following day was competition day, so I was focused on getting a good night’s sleep and getting on the shuttle to the event bright and early. 

On the day after my competition, I woke up before sunrise to go sightseeing on my own. I was still suffering from jet lag, so I felt fully awake at six in the morning, which corresponds to 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. My hotel was on the outskirts of Plovdiv, so I began my walk into the main part of the city, where the historical district is. 

On my walk, I was further exposed to the heavy gambling culture. I passed by two casinos, just 500 feet apart, with dated Soviet housing blocks towering over the much newer buildings.

The early morning meant the streets were very quiet, with the occasional passerby interrupting my otherwise solo promenade. By the time I had made it to the city center around 8:30 a.m., the sun was still coming up over the gray skyline. Despite the unappealing nature of brutalist architecture, I felt a sense of awe seeing the sun paint these otherwise gloomy buildings with a beautiful golden glow. Plovdiv is a relatively small city with about 340,000 inhabitants, yet it is still very well-maintained. There was virtually no litter on the narrow, brick streets of the city center, and the addition of flowers and trees along the sides of the pedestrian walkways added to the beauty of the city. 

Even though I had no set destination on my morning walk, I wanted to see the Plovdiv Roman Stadium. Built in the 2nd century C.E. under Roman Emperor Hadrian, it is one of the best-preserved Roman buildings in the Balkans. At its peak in 150 C.E., archaeologists believe it could have held around 30,000 spectators. The ground level where performances were held was closed to the public at the time I visited, but I was able to get a great view from the street level. Despite being built almost two millennia later, the street was only about thirty feet above the ancient street level. Modern Plovdiv was built directly on top of Philippopolis, the ancient city that hosted the coliseum. The name Philippopolis originates from Philip II of Macedon, who was Alexander the Great’s father. Despite its minimal visible influences in modern-day Bulgarian culture, the Macedonian Empire once controlled the city that became Plovdiv.

After seeing the stadium, I decided I was ready to call it a day. I walked the kilometer back to the hotel to enjoy a fresh, vegetable-heavy breakfast with various Bulgarian pastries. I spent the rest of the day reading about the complicated history of the region surrounding Plovdiv as I prepared for my trip home.

Our flight back the next morning was relatively early, so we had gone with the same off-yellow Mercedes driver who took us back to the airport. It was still dark at about seven a.m. when we arrived at the main terminal, which makes sense considering the higher latitude. Security was surprisingly efficient, and I boarded my flight without any hiccups, thus concluding a weekend in Bulgaria. 

In just a few days, I saw how history, culture, and daily life intersect in the most unexpected places. Bulgaria has been shaped by the surrounding cultures for thousands of years, and it is still being shaped by its neighbors to this day.