Well, I cut off last month's blog slightly short, because HOLIDAY! (And I wanted to put it all in the same post). Feels kinda wild to believe that this happened this month, as it sort of feels like forever ago, but somehow, there it was.
On April 29th, I got the train up to London airport for an overnight stay in a hotel before an early morning flight on May 1st.
I really truly hate flying. (But I quite like airports and staying in nice airport hotels)
I booked again with Journee, the provider where you don't know where you're going until you get to the airport. (Over the last three years I've been to Lisbon and Seville with them!)
At some frightfully early hour, I walked over to Luton airport and opened the envelope to reveal my destination... Which was... Sofia?! They helpfully put 'Bulgaria' on the piece of paper because I would literally have had no idea. I knew nothing whatsoever about the place!
So off I went, and after a somewhat bumpier flight than I would have liked, disembarked in a somewhat grimy, bleak airport (I am told the other more modern terminal was nicer). It was also absolutely hammering down with rain.
What I wanted to do (based on the little bit of research I'd done while still in Luton), was walk 20 minutes or so over to the other terminal and hop on the metro into central Sofia (around a 20 min ride). Easy.
However, the torrential rain (and my complete failure to pack adequate footwear for that) made that prospect seem less appealing. There were signs for a free shuttle bus between terminals, so I squeezed in underneath a tiny bus shelter where it seemed to depart from, and waited for it.
One thing I did not know about Bulgaria before I got there is that they use the Cyrillic alphabet, which meant I had literally no hope of even trying to understand the bus signage, or anything else. But what little I could piece together seemed to indicate this was the correct bus. Everyone else there seemed to be Bulgarian, apart from one guy, who for some reason was giving me British energy.
Anyway, I got on the bus along with everyone else, and followed along with alarm on google maps as the bus appeared to proceed in... extremely the wrong direction. After around ten minutes, I got up and asked the probably-British man whether he spoke English. My intuition was correct. Alaistair and I became fast friends over our shared predicament of having no fucking idea where we were going. Luckily, the bus was broadly heading in the direction of central Sofia, so after some general conferring, we got off near a more inner city metro station, where we were then able to complete the metro journey as planned. Phew.
Alaistair, it turned out, was on his way to a stag do, which he seemed to have somewhat mixed feelings about (fond of the friends, pre-emptively exhausted by the prospect of stagging). We dodged the torrential rain before I reached my hotel, which was luckily only around five minutes walk from the metro — sending Alaistair off towards his weekend of lads lads lads, or whatever.
Luckily, my room was ready early, so I sat down and dried off for a bit before heading out again. (Hotel VERY nice as always, good work journee). I immediately bought some better shoes, before generally mooching around a bit and trying to make sense of the new city through the ongoing rain. First impressions were — interesting, grimy, somewhat grumpy seeming people (but again — rain?), clear signs of poverty and urban decay, but also lots of cool buildings and interesting stuff.
I ate a delicious vegan burger and then was quite pleased to retreat back to my nice hotel room and play video games for the rest of the evening (my bonus holiday treat was a couple of new games downloaded to my Switch!)
The next day was still very grey and cold, but luckily not raining any more. My initial research and input from friends on social media first led me to catch a metro to the outskirts of the city to visit the Museum of Socialist Art. The museum itself was actually closed due to it being a public holiday, but I was mostly just there to see the extraordinary garden which was full of all the statues of Lenin they'd taken down. (And other communist leaders). One thing I quickly realised about Sofia (and probably Bulgaria more widely) is that there is an extraordinary amount of public sculpture, just like, everywhere. It's kind of incredible.
I got the metro back into the centre and picked up some modest vegan snacks at a local supermarket, before heading out on a 'food tour' Journee had booked me on. I had wondered how fun this would be as a) I hate tours and b) would there even be vegan stuff to eat?! But it was surprisingly good. The tour guide was a fun young woman who wasn't as grating and over enthusiastic as most other tour guides I've experienced, and in addition, there was only me and one other woman from Germany on the tour, which also made things less annoying as it felt more like a conversation (though obviously less lucrative for the tour guide, which I felt bad about, and tipped her handsomely at the end to try and make up for it).
It was actually a really great experience, though I ate TOO MUCH and had to go have a lie down in my hotel room (and no dinner!) at the end of it. I learned a lot not just about food, but also about Bulgaria more generally, which served me well for the rest of my trip.
On day 3, Journee wanted me to go on a 2 hour coach ride to some fucking monastery, but absolutely not, no, no way. (Firstly because I hate coaches and buses and get very motion sick, and secondly because I have zero interest in leaving the city and going out to the countryside to see an old building).
So instead I bailed (and as luck would have it the tour guide was sick anyway and they wanted to reschedule, so I got a refund!) — and instead, I decided to try and get to Bankya, a small town just outside Sofia, where there was an iconic historic spa building (fully functioning as a spa since a recent renovation).
This was a bit of an adventure, but a fun one — metro to the end of the line, and then a 20 minute public bus (tolerable) to Bankya. For the first time here I started seeing stray dogs, which is pretty alien to me. (They're such handsome guys, even though I kept well out of their way. Lots of them seemed to hang out at bus stops where people were presumably feeding them scraps).
The spa was incredible. Extraordinarily cheap, and seemingly no other tourists. Everyone who realised I was a tourist (as I couldn't speak Bulgarian) seemed politely bemused by, but broadly welcoming of my presence. The facilities were great and gorgeous. Two huge, beautiful mineral pools, sauna, a couple of steam rooms, several jacuzzis, and 'the salt room' which I paid extra for (good for your lungs, apparently. It made me very snotty which seemed worthwhile somehow).
Spa etiquette here was wildly different to anywhere else I've ever experienced. Everyone had their phones out (even in jacuzzis?!) speaking and laughing loudly, taking video calls, generally using it as a social space. Absolutely great (no, really). No reverent silence, just like, hanging out.
Very fun. I travelled back into central Sofia the same way, in time for a late lunch in my hotel room of leftover supermarket snacks (being vegan here was FINE, but I wouldn't go as far as to say easy).
Then I headed out for a long walk, revisiting a cool market we'd been to on the tour the previous day (where I used maybe the most cursed toilet I've ever encountered), and walked through a number of parks.
It was fine, and I saw some cool stuff, but I didn't feel like, in love with the place.
Had a nice takeaway dinner from a Bulgarian-Indian all veggie fusion place we'd visited on the food tour the previous day.
On my final full day I got the metro all the way to the other end of the line, to see 'the bells'. A strange monument, to... children or something? Constructed in the 70s, Bulgaria asked every country to contribute a bell for the collection, and many did. Now all those bells are just hanging out in a strange open-air arrangement in the middle of a forest in a bleak industrial, developing area on the outskirts of the city. A weird and fun thing.
This didn't take much of the day however, so after that I travelled back into central Sofia and visited the museum of modern art (tiny, not especially good) and the museum of earth and man (extraordinary, trip highlight). The latter was... well, basically just a museum of rocks and how humans have used them. Enormous crystals. Every niche rock you can imagine. Extraordinarily little curation or captioning. Just... rocks. It was somehow hypnotic, incredible. I adored it.
After this, I got lunch at a very nice (but somewhat inconveniently located) vegan restaurant, then took a long walk back through several more parks and an open air market. I had a mediocre pizza for dinner and started to feel that I had probably exhausted most of Sofia's good vegan options at this point.
My flight wasn't until evening on the final day, so I had time to kill. My bags could stay safely at the hotel, so I enjoyed visiting 'the red flat' — a perfectly preserved 1980s flat from before the fall of communism, with a surprisingly good audio tour (I never normally do audio tours as they're usually very slow and boring but you kind of had to here).
After this, I walked over to some of the main tourist sights like the cathedral and another couple of big famous churches. None of them were especially good, so I stopped and had some weird chips for lunch.
I am always anxious about getting to airports on time, and there was some specific advice from journee about how queues were long, so I got there super early — only to discover precisely zero queues and the attendant at security being like 'why are you here so early'. The airport SUCKED — nothing (for me) to eat, not enough toilets (big queues all the time), and not enough seats. It was a bad four hours and I found myself swearing that I simply must not do this again, because flying is so unbearably awful, when I could instead be on a train?!
Anyway, I got home safe enough, and was able to get a train home from Luton easily by around 23.00 that night.
Overall I didn't enjoy it as much as my other journee holidays — it wasn't journee's fault that the weather was almost entirely terrible throughout though. Still, I did have fun — TBH send me to any major european city and put me up in a nice hotel and I can probably make it a nice time. I don't think I ever need to go back to Sofia though.
I didn't necessarily feel *rested* after my trip, but back into the whirl of things. After a fancy client do at a fancy lawyer's office which I dipped out of early, headed down to Peckham to see V do visuals at the monthly algorave. Very fun.
I had a weirdly bad self esteem time in Bulgaria for some reason. I had an upset stomach for some of the trip and was very bloated, which made me feel fat(ter), and I got rained on a bunch and constantly just generally felt a bit like a miserable looking drowned rat. I've made some changes since getting back and tried to nix some bad habits, but tbh the thing that made me feel best was simply: cutting my fringe back in. Classic.
We had a (small) election, didn't we. What a mess of a country.
Got to (briefly) hang out with Reggie.
I started seeing a lot of whatever this plant is on my walks with KJ. I love these leaves!
Also on a botanical note, this orchid a student gave me last year flowered again!
On the subject of low self esteem, one thing I do take pride in is like, being broadly competent at my job. I ran a workshop for the MA illustration students, and idk, maybe it kinda sucked?! (I really don't know, I still think it was good, but I think it was too late in the course for it, and too close to a deadline, so they didn't really want to be there). I'm just not sure how useful most of them found it. Well, I had these doubts at the time but since then a few of them have shown me work they made off the back of it or said they enjoyed it, so maybe it wasn't quite the car crash I thought it was in the moment.
Anyway one bit it seemed like they did all enjoy was when I asked them to make an origami something from memory.
I've got some extra teaching work (just until September) on UAL's new Online only masters programs (a bit like open university I guess?).
As the students only have one hour of contact time with me a week (plus occasional one to one tutorials), I really polish myself up for it, haha.
I wondered if teaching this way would really suck but actually I am having a great time with it.
For a while in mid May the weather was really weird, and I was grumpy (but latterly it's been GREAT so no complaints)
These coloured shapes represent google calendar events, and the ones falling out of my brain represent TWO meetings which I either slipped up and forgot or arrived shamefully late for. (I'm not even sure how!? They were right there in the calendar!) It is possible I am spinning too many plates.
One of our neighbours is on a vendetta about our terribly overgrown carpark. I find it hard to care very much but also I do what I am told (unlike everyone else on the street apparently), so me and said neighbour's sixteen year old son (who came out to help me, sweetly) had a satisfying 45 minutes hacking and raking undergrowth.
I'm on vinted now! Vinted is great! I sold loads of stuff! Then also bought loads of stuff! Oh no!
Okay, an emerging theme this month is that I am REALLY STRESSED. It probably has something to do with the fact that I am currently (temporarily) working full time at UAL, while also attempting to sustain all my freelance client work... AND, me and my colleague Keir won some funding to create an ambitious installation piece at this year's EMF camp festival in July, and I am melting down over the prospect of... actually managing to do that. On top of everything else. Ack
Ran the second half of the not-especially-successful illustration workshop and drew this during it
One reason it was probably politic for me to do some undergrowth clearing in the carpark is that apparently we have a car now.
I hate this for us.
(I think cars suck, I hate to go in them, and I kind of believe it's morally wrong to have a car in London in almost all circumstances, yet here we are).
My partner got it for free from a friend who wanted shot of it. I can't drive, but they can, and they enjoy it. So here it is. We have barely used it (because there is literally no reason to drive anywhere in London why would you do it) — but my partner has an insurance policy that collects data on your driving, and if you don't drive the car once a month, they cancel your policy.
So, against my better judgement, after a stressful week, I got excited about being driven to the nice pizza place about ten minutes away in Crystal Palace. A valid or good reason to burn fossil fuels?! Absolutely not. Did I enjoy my pizza? Yes.
Do I now find myself wanting to do more stupid car errands just for funsies? Also kind of yes. Goddamit. This is how big car gets you.
(Luckily I hate like, the physical experience of being in the car, being driven along roads sufficiently, that this temptation is very low)
Went to hang out with V and pals and play a 'Jubensha' (Chinese murder mystery roleplaying game genre, though this one was actually not Chinese). It was extremely fun.
Then it was time for HOT GIRL SUMMER
(Temps 24 – 30ish are like, my sweet spot when I just feel GOOD! and HAPPY! All the time!!)
My partner sowed lots of wildflowers in the lawn last year and now it's poppin' off!
One of the games I started playing on holiday was iconic classic Disco Elysium, which I am coming in VERY late to. Basically everyone I've spoken to about it has played it already and considers it one of their favourite games of all time. It's heading that way for me too! (I am not far in, no spoilers!)
Our friends Kath and Fuad hosted a garden party BBQ on that 33 degree day and it was honestly hard work (even though food and people were all like A+++ lovely, just felt like I was evaporating a bit)
It was also kind of too hot to go life drawing, but I did it anyway, and had a fairly successful night (I had been really wanting to focus on black inky pen and hatching shading)
For like two days we had SO MANY ANTS in the flat but thankfully that seems to have ceased. I guess they were just hot too.
As mentioned, I DO like the heat, but I would also ideally prefer to simply not work in it.
My students also apparently struggle to work in the heat, as for the first time ever I had over 50% no shows for my tutorials. (All the more time to sit and stare at this cute display of people's favourite foods?!)
Had an extremely lovely morning yesterday — meeting friend Tom to play rummikub and eat a large sandwich in Deptford. Continuing to enjoy the heat.
This is a visual diary about nothing but my love for gazpacho (and how I must indulge today as the weather is going to get bad again this week, and it is decidedly a sunny weather food!)
I hope that you are all well and have also been enjoying this weather too. See you at the end of June, which is currently lined up to be a month full of loads of fun things squeezed in around way too much work...
