An Unintentionally Long Walk

I woke up Monday morning a bit sore from Sunday's hike, but eventually got moving.  After running a few errands, I spent most of the day engaged in some productive reading and writing.  I took a break during the afternoon, though, to take another stab at resolving my Internet situation.  This started with a call to the provider who had come last week and told me that there was an issue with the cables in the building and that they'd get back to me.  Turns out, they had decided at some point that they couldn't resolve the issue, but didn't think to inform me. No longer waiting on them, I decided to go for a walk and find the offices of Centrum Group, another provider that had been recommended by people in my building.

This turned out to be quite an effort.  I didn't take a map along with me, and this proved to be a mistake as I ended up walking under Blvd. Dondukov at an underpass and ended up taking a long walk along a busy arterial road through an industrial area.  I finally reached an intersection and asked an older woman waiting for a bus my version of "where is Boulevard Don-doookoff?" in Bulgarian. She was quite confused, mostly due to my incorrectly placing the emphasis on the second sylable of the street name.  Then the lights came on for both of us, and she walked me to the corner to point me in the general direction of Blvd. DUNdukov.  It was, however, only the general direction, and I explored a bit more of Sofia before finally reaching the boulevard.

My next challenge was figuring out where 130 Blvd. Dondukov was located.  Building numbers in Bulgaria aren't always prominent.  Or existent.  And - as I eventually remembered - while building numbers in Europe are sequential on a particular side of the street, they don't always correspond to those across the street.  So, numbers 112, 114 and 116 might be across the street from numbers 93, 95, and 97. 

I finally found No. 130, an older building with one entrance that houses several offices, rather than the storefront I was anticipating.  I stared, almost laughing at myself at this point, at the six small business signs, all in Bulgarian.  Putting my newly-learned Cyrillic knowledge to use, I figured out that the building did, in fact house "Центрум Груп."  (Of course, I then noticed "www.centrum-group.com" directly below it.)

I went in and made my way through the rather dark corridor to the big windowless door labeled "Центрум Груп."  I walked into the small, empty room, and up to the sole woman behind the glass partition.

"Govorite li Angliski?"

"Ne."

Well, then.  This was not a busy office, and it was clear that there was no one else there who did speak Angliski.  While my first thoughts were to either 1) walk home and give up on Internet forever, or 2) just start sobbing, I somehow had the presence of mind to pull out my phone and call a friend to translate.  It was a laborious process, with frequent handing the phone back and forth, but after twenty minutes or so I walked out of there a proud Центрум Груп customer.  In the euphoria of the moment, I event went ahead and ordered the cable TV package, something I've not had in . . . well, ever maybe. 

Tuesday morning I took another long walk to a store that my friend recommended to buy a wireless router.  Shortly after arriving back home, the good folks from Центрум Груп arrived and connected both cable and Internet, and configured my wireless router for me.  All of this took about 20 hours start to finish.  After waiting and waiting over a week for the company that never delivered, this was quite satisfying.

So, I'm all connected now.  It's great to have Internet and TV for entertainment purposes.  But it's also really nice for me to have Internet at home for work purposes.  While there are places for me to work at the university, I don't think they would be conducive to maximum productivity.  I know myself, and this is a worthwhile investment.  Especially after I found out that the Cardinals-Nationals NLDS game is at noon on Wednesday, which means I'll be awake to listen to it online.

I'm not sure about Bulgarian television from the bit I've watched during meals so far, but I'm keeping an open mind.

I've been reconnecting a bit with life back home, too, and that is nice.  I was able to give my wife  a Skype tour of our apartment.  I also came across the gem below, a humorously edgy video about the very serious subject of Iowa's judicial retention elections.  But it's not appropriate for younger viewers.  Sort of like Bulgarian music videos.