I was pleased to be invited to teach workshops on Spiritual Awareness and Healing and a WHEE Level 1 Practitioner Workshop in Sofia a week ago. I'm just about over my jet lag after my return.

My Bulgarian hosts, Mihaela and Simeon at the Institute for Integral Development, were a delight to work with and to visit with. We found ourselves very much in tune with each other in our wholistic understandings of life and healing interventions. More on this in my next blog.

Here, I want to share some of the physical context of my visit and observations on helpful lessons from visiting a distinctly different culture.

Sofia has absorbed several hundred thousands of people from the countryside since the transition from Communism to Democracy. The city is a hodge-podge mixture of old and new buildings, vehicles and cultural traditions. I was left with strong impressions about:

Healthy, tasty food available everywhere. Bulgaria has not joined the rest of the world in using chemical fertilizers, so its produce is close to organic in quality - though not identified by them as such. It was a delight to have yogurt in many dishes as well as in a popular local drink that has cucumbers shredded into it. The fresh cheeses were delicious. Here's a suggestion to replace nachos or french fries served in North America with the plastic orange goop that passes for cheese:

                         Shredded fresh white cheese on french fries.




Several technological innovations I'd like to see in North America:

A hotel room lighting system that requires insertion of your electronic door key card to activate. When you leave your room, you remove your card to take it with you and all the lights are shut off.





Parking meters are number coded so that you can enter the code in your cell phone and pay your parking fee electronically. If you're in a museum, a restaurant or a business meeting you can add minutes or hours through your cell phone.


In the city of Plovdiv the traffic lights have a count-down for cars (as well as pedestrians), helping people to anticipate when the lights will change.


On the down side, people still smoke in restaurants... Heavily!  There are no no-smoking sections.  Traffic in Sofia is very heavy from early AM to late PM.


Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Challenging to read street and store signs!




But occasional Rosetta signs provide clues...

(Another clue is that you might order food to eat here)



(Some English in the bottom lines)


More to follow.

Blessings

Dan
http://benorwholisticblog.com/