Our Daughter's Birth City

Our daughter’s birth city is located on the eastern side of Bulgaria, not far from the shores of the Black Sea. It has about 90,000 inhabitants and its earliest settlement goes back to a few centuries BC. We had a wonderful time there and were especially impressed and affected by the atmosphere of content, purposeful activity and happy interest that seemed to permeate the entire place and its population.

Our hotel was located on the edge of a large and beautiful park, one of many green spaces we enjoyed while in Bulgaria. More often than not, we chose to walk from the hotel to the orphanage as most of the way led through this park, then through a complex of apartment buildings. The park includes tennis courts, soccer fields, walking/jogging/biking paths, and exercise equipment open to the public. One night we heard a spirited soccer game last until nearly midnight. The park is well maintained and heavily frequented by locals which makes for a great combination.

Our daughter’s city also showcases statues, monuments, and public art from big to small:

Here’s a tribute to Saints Cyril and Methodius, the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet:

We spent a lot of time exploring the immensely long and wide shopping promenade of this city and still never quite made it to the end. Trees, shops, banks, apartments, businesses, and restaurants line this pedestrian-only zone which is currently being improved with new pavement:

There’s even a church tucked into the middle of this bustling area:

We saw a great mixture of old, new and everything in-between as we took in the city. Cars from the communist period to brand-new luxury automobiles zipped along the roads while old ladies with kerchiefs tied around their heads carrying baskets of groceries shared the sidewalks with teens listening to music on their i-pods. Homes ranged from newly constructed to barely holding together:

For me, having grown up in East Germany, so much of what I saw in this town was familiar. I felt very much at home in the atmosphere there and it almost seemed to my mom and me like we’d been transported back in time to the very best of an era that ended over 20 years ago.