What's the most exotic language you speak or have studied?

Were you born in Bulgaria Maggie?

Drom, my guess would be that the progressive Jews outnumber the orthodox/right wing Zionist faction these days in a big way. I just happened to be born Jewish. I don't practice Judaism, or any other religion for that matter. I think they are all a crock, but I have to give kudos to the rabbis who duped all these Hollywood shiksas into studying the Kabbalah.

What about the Orthodox anti-Zionists, like ... what's their name again ... anyway, you know what I mean?


You mean, Britney Spears, Madonna (or should I say: 'Esther' )

But thats OK tho, cause he's Dutch, and in Holland we also say "mesjogge" and "mazzel" ! ;-)

Oh, I forgot! Some kids also once taught me how to count to ten in Albanian, does that count? :-P

Actually, I knew a bunch of household words, you know ... bread, tea, morning, evening, that kind of stuff ...
Another language thats not like anything else ;-)

I once learned a Japanse word or two from someone too ... but very, very limited ... including "i love you", "yes" and "more" ;-)

Not to forget we eat matzes and our capital is named Mokum :wink:


What were you up to nimh??

Yes, my both parents are Bulgarian. But i'm living in Germany now for some time.



Well, Rick, i don't know what he had been up to, but my wild guess would be that he met a Japanese girl and asked her whether he can draw her a mikvah:))).

Big city (like Sofia, Plovdiv etc.)? Just curious.


Good one.

Yes, Sofia.

I've been to Sofia, beautiful city I have to say.

Uhm, i am not too fond of it. I'm rather keen on some smaller villages near the mountains. But i'm very glad you liked it.

I liked the beautiful churches the most in Sofia. The thing I liked most of Bulgaria though was the Rila monastery - beautiful! And the view: marvelous!

Now my Bulgarian pride is as twice as big as before

You're welcome :wink:

LOL you kids crack me up ... (and yeh, there was a girl involved <sighs>)

Rila, yeah, its beautiful! Very much so. So modestly peaceful and delicate, in that green valley ...

Me, too, I wasnt too fond of Sofia, but perhaps I just had bad luck ... first time I got there, I got sick the very first day, and stayed sick till a couple of days later when we moved on to first Rila, and then Sandanski and a little town near there - Melnik? Sandanski was a cute, lively town, and near Melnik we had the most amazing walk, through sandstone or what-was-it mountains that were polished into the most extreme forms and shapes - an alien landscape, nothing green, just bizarrely, excitingly shaped white rock for an hour or two ...

Later we also went to Veliko Turnovo, which I greatly liked too and which is very pretty, perched up on a mountain in a valley if I remember correctly ... and everywhere, we met the nicest and friendliest people.

(Though one thing struck me, namely that people in Sandanski seemed more boisterously cheerful than elsewhere in Bulgaria, where the mood was more polite - like it was already Macedonia or Greece!)

That was in 1992 ... we took a cheap bus from Budapest to Istanbul only to unboard in Sofia. Driving through Serbia with nothing else on the road (boycott, fuel shortage) except for the odd armored car with soldiers was a bit unnerving ... people were very quiet. We had soldiers coming in at roadblocks twice, harassing an American on the bus .. unnerving. Plus we arrived late at night in Sofia without a clue ... but a random passer-by (a music teacher, it turned out), put us up, and he was the most kind and graceful host.

(As said, I fell sick the next day and so we stayed two or three nights ... Since he refused to take any money, we did a lot of shopping for him - and the day we left, we secretly left some money wrapped in a thank-you note anyway ... I still dont know whether that helped him or whether we offended him mortally ... but we couldnt just leave - the man barely had enough to live on ... <frowns>)

The whole exercise with the bus meant we had to catch the bus back to Hungary in Istanbul, which was another adventure of sorts as the international train there was extra expensive - so instead we went on the local train to a border town, took a taxi to the actual border, and hitchhiked from there with a touring car full of Turks going back home, a woman belly-dancing in the walkway ... heh ;-)

Later, I once went back to Sofia when I had to be in Thessaloniki for my work anyway, but again I was in a bit of bad luck: for three days, it snowed, hailed, froze, big mounds of ice everywhere. March it was, or something like that ... and those cute yellow bricks on two of those large monumental squares downtown turned the slipperiest I've ever seen bricks to be ... must be some special kind! <grins>.

Of course, when I took the train back to Saloniki (bad idea, but thats another story again), it rode through ice and snow until it curved into the "Macedonian" valley towards Simitli and Sandanski - and the landscape, as if by some miracle, turned green, the snow disappeared, the sun came out - and the world looked friendly once again ... I really like that part of Bulgaria! ;-)

It's really amazing, you could write a book over this, Nimh:))))



Must be because of the wine in Melnik... People love it... Some of them way too much... Not to mention that about 70-80% of the Macedonian population is Bulgarian. Well, actually, Macedonian language is regarded as a dialect of Bulgarian (out of historical and linguistical reasons). I myself have been there and can prove it true:).



Who knows, most of us, are very friendly and very proud people:) *big smile*



It is a special kind indeed. We call it the "Yellow Bricks in the Center" kind.

Funny. It seems a lot of Macedonians see themselves as Macedonians, and not as Bulgarians. Many Bulgarians believe they ARE Bulgarians - the friend with whom I went to Bulgaria is half-Bulgarian, and assured me they are. So funny. I don't know who I should believe, but it reminds me of a female friend, a Chinese girl, who is convinced Taiwan should be 'reunited' with China again. Just so funny (no more to add). :wink:

Unfortunately, it's not funny at all. After the Turkish slavery, this is the saddest part of my poor land's history. The problem was that after Bulgaria was freed in 1878, some regions, including the one of Macedonia remained in Turkish borders. Many people fought for its freedom, but out of bad diplomacy the Bulgarian government failed to support them. We betrayed the Macedonian population, so there is no reason for any loyality anymore. A bad foreign policy caused thousands of lies, tons of hate, invention of unexisting historical "facts"... It's not funny at all, it hurts, when you see your national spirit being betrayed and turned to nothing.

Sorry, with my funny comments I did mean the situation, but the fact that these friends kept assuring me of what they thought was the truth (Macedonians being Bulgarians, Taiwan being part of China). I had no intentions to make fun of the situation Maggie5554515.

No prob. I'm just being very dramatical.