Short morning walk to work

Medium jacket on and backpack at the ready, I leap the car at the crosswalk after the brief pause and then Lili drives away. While not a designated debarkation site, most paved areas in Sofia are used to load and unload passengers. We simple choose a full crosswalk to minimize impact.

I walk to the OMV, convenience store, refueling stop, auto wash and diner. It's a larger chain in Bulgaria and, while, I don't know what OMV means (I "google it" later - no help) I walk up the entry drive and into the store as I've done for the past two months.

I have a snickers bar in my backpack, purchased at the warehouse grocery "Metro" over the weekend. Buying a small bundle of them saves me several stotinki over buying them every morning at OMV.

Of late, I've been having problems with dry skin on my legs and merciless itch which accompanies. This happens when it gets cooler out side. It's made much worse by the amount of caffeine I've been drinking for the last two months. Yesterday I skipped my morning trip to OMV to avoid buying a large bottled Coca-Cola. Today however I remembered the office water cooler is empty, the four 5-gallon refill bottles dry. At OMV, I slip inside to the coolers, hand in my pocket, fishing for stotinki coins. I've 1.50 leva in coins - more than enough.

I buy a mineral bottle of water from Bankia. I'd rather have nice non-mineral water but I make do with what is available. I know the cashier by sight but not by name as its in Cyrillic on her name tag. I say "Good Morning" as I always do. For the alert cashier, this lets them know I don't speak nor intend to speak Bulgarian during this exchange. Usually she catches this but today she is distracted by a conversation with a coworker and proceeds to up-sell me a Lion candy bar in Bulgarian, at least that's what I think she was talking about. I say "No, thank you. This is all" and make the hand-passing-horizontally-over-the-counter gesture. She nods and speaks the total and I read the total displayed. Tax is included in the listed price of products so I get 11 stotinki back in change. I thank her again, though the conversation with her coworker is still on going so my departure is mostly unnoticed.

Outside, as with every morning, I stop on the island between the fuel pumps and put today's "bounty" into my bag. Lili got me a very nice backpack carrying laptops. However, my laptop is about 4 inches too long so I use it for carrying personal gear to work each morning, adding my OVM purchases as I go. It also carries my access badge to the building.

Interestingly enough, it's not my face or name on the badge. It does scan me through the security turnstiles but I could just as easily go around like most of my fellow coworkers, including the guy who's face is on "my" security badge.

Water safely tucked into the bag, I return to the OMV drive way and head to work. Its about 4 minutes walk from OMV and crosses two and a half lanes of traffic. The cross walk I existed the car from is easy enough to get back across as it's well marked and, with enough pedestrians, mostly well respected by speeding motorist. Crossing over put me on a frontage road and free way medium with a bridge pathway of large, broken and differently oriented flat hexagonal bricks. As I navigate the bricks to avoid flexing my month-old, yet-to-heal toe, I am remind of something which Yana had said: "No one jogs in Sofia. They'd end up with broken ankles from all the uneven sidewalks."

At the end of the broken and uneven pathway is another crossing. The pedestrian crosswalk paint is gone, blackened over by road use and automobile oil. To the left of this cross walk is one lane of traffic off exiting from a clover leaf turn. To the right is the frontage road for the freeway. Further to the right is an exit from the freeway. This is the remaining one and a half crossings. I check left, right and further right and, when I think its safe, I hobble directly across the street. Where I more fleet of foot, this would still be less than ideal.

Safely crossing, I round the corner at the iron gate and down the side walk, also made of the same broken bricks, although in better condition. I turn parallel to a eight story build and walk its length, not certain what businesses are inside. I have seen men and women in lab sky-blue coats on earlier days.

I pass the dog houses for the adopted dogs who are away at the moment. Unlike the wild dogs in the fields next to the flat or the other multitudes of stray dogs in the city, these three or four have it pretty comfortable, by stray dog standards.

I round the corner of the sky-blue-people building and head down hill slightly. The cold air slaps my face lightly. Just at 50 Fahrenheit ( 10 degrees Celsius), I know I'll be adjusting to much colder weather soon. While I'm pleased my package of cold weather clothes arrived last week, I'm more concerned about my foot healing before the cold really begins. I can deal with pain and I can deal with cold but I do not want to deal with both at the same time.

I walk pass the book trading windows and down to the entry to my building, past the few chain smokers surrounding the door and the lady mopping the store entry way. I scan through the turnstile with the badge containing a face that is not mine. While I'd like to use the elevators, Sofia elevators are slow and programmed poorly. I take the stairs up to the second floor. I pass the cleaning lady that cleans our offices as she's leaving. I don't say anything as she doesn't speak English, nor I Bulgarian. She's got her hands full and looks tired, beads of sweat on her brow.

It's 9am when I reach the door to the office and, sure enough, it's locked. I'm usually her 15 minutes earlier but no matter. I am the first one in the office again, since office hours are 10:30am to 7:30pm. I come in early to make use of the offered car ride as well as some focus time before people start to roll in.

I open the office window. The office is fill with seventeen or more computers and it gets rather warm in here over night. The sounds of a band saw cut into the gentle hum of the office computers from the door factory across the avenue.

I settle into my office chair with my snickers bar and water and look high into the sky for the blue and low on the horizon at the dusty air and prepare for a few hours of solitary work.