A Matter Of Attitude

Sofia, BG - As I may have mentioned, my first two weeks in Sofia was business and this last week is a vacation.  Of course, the weather during the last two weeks was beautiful, sunny with high temperatures between 20-25°C.  Of course, on Saturday, my first really free day, the rain and cold came. 

As I mentioned to a colleague on my first full day in Sofia, adventure is something bad happening to someone else.  But, really, how bad is a little rain?  Okay, what came down on Saturday wouldn't have been pleasant if I was walking home from the train station.  But I was in Sofia.  Did I mention I brought a rain coat and and umbrella?  So instead of staying in the hotel, I took a bit of a stroll to the City Center Sofia mall.

Walking the grounds of the National Palace of Culture was a bit different.  No skateboarders.  No bicyclists performing tricks.  No families taking a stroll.  No protests or political rallies.  Just a steady drizzle and a few others like me walking to and from stores, if the percentage of people carrying bags was any indication.  Perhaps if I lived in Sofia, I would have been wet and miserable.  But as I was just visiting, I was in the mood to take in new sights and have a good time.

I think Eve Online is very much like my experience in Sofia so far.  In the high-sec zone of Chicago and suburbs, a gusting wind and chilly temperatures are a bad thing.  In the lower-sec zone of Sofia, the rain is a different experience that brought a smile.  In New Eden, players take bad experiences, losing ships, in low and null sec a lot better than if they do in high-sec.

For a lot of players, myself included, geography dictates the style of play we expect to encounter.  High sec is "supposed" to be safe while all other areas are not.  Well, I don't expect high sec to be safe, just a bit safer, but hopefully you understand my point.  When people don't get what they expect, a lot of them get cranky and the tears come in buckets.  The trick is to not let where you are dictate your happiness but what you are doing.  And if you are happy in one place doing something, shouldn't you be happy doing that same thing everyplace?  I think that goes for life both inside and outside the game.

How Do Minmatar Say No?

Sofia, BG - One of the curious differences in body languages between Bulgarians and most of the rest of the world is how they indicate yes and no.  For "no", instead of shaking their heads left and right, they nod their heads up and down.  The story of how this came to be has a very Minmatar flavor to it.

As was explained to me over dinner last week, when Bulgaria was under the Ottoman yoke, they were very interested in making sure everyone was a Muslim.  One way they would do that was to place a blade across someone's neck and ask if they were a Muslim.  If they nodded "yes", they were okay.  If they shook their heads "no", they slit their own throats.

As time went on, Bulgarians who didn't want to be Muslims, but also wanted to live, changed their body language.  Nodding their heads was a signal for "no", while shaking their heads meant "yes".  I supposed once the Ottoman's caught on to what was happening, they started asking a different way.  After all, they were only killing fellow Muslims.

That got me to thinking.  Do the Minmatar have any unique quirks brought on by their enslavement by the Amarr?  Besides Vitoc addiction, that is.

Sofia Unrest - CONCORD Arrives

Sofia, BG - Last night was the first time since I arrived in Sofia I did not see protesters on the streets or outside the National Palace of Culture.  There was an extremely heavy police presence the past two days, although on Tuesday I saw protesters waving a Bulgarian flag as police looked on.  Last night, the area was quiet as a counted at least 30 police officers in and around the building.  That figure does not include the police that must have been on the north end of the park and fountains.  I walked through the area, but didn't take any pictures.  The way things are going, I wasn't about to risk irritating a bunch of guys carrying billy clubs who just had a couple of bad days.  While my area is quite, I don't know about the rest of Sofia.  Perhaps the arrest of notorious Roma crime boss Kiril Rashkov, aka Tsar Kiro, today had something to do with the lack of activity.

The pictures that I did take of Tuesday's protest didn't turn out too well.  Something about a big police presence between me and the protest.  While no one is going to mistake me for a gypsy, I'll take the protection the police gave, given what happened Monday, given what could have happened Monday.

Maybe if everything calms down I can go back to thinking about video games.

Sofia Unrest - I Was There

Sofia, BG - With everything going on in the world today, I doubt many in the West are looking at what is happening in Bulgaria today.  On Saturday, as I was flying to Sofia, protests began after a young man was run down by an associate of a mafia boss, known as Tsar Kiro,  in the village of Katunitsa.  From my imperfect understanding of the situation, this Tsar Kiro is a Roma, or a gypsy, a group that makes up between 5 and 10 percent of the population of Bulgaria and is looked down upon as being thieves, swindlers and just all-around lazy.  I'm not saying that is true, but that is the perception I get from some here.

I didn't realize all of this was going on as I didn't follow the news.  After all, nothing local could really affect me, right?  And I didn't know any of this background until I got home last night.  However, I do have a practice of scouting out an area I arrive at, and since I had stayed at this hotel before, I actually know the surrounding area a little better than the area around my office building in Chicago.  During my two hour walk, I did notice a crowd in the park adjacent to the National Palace of Culture, which is across the street from the hotel.  I didn't know if it was a political rally since it was led with Bulgarian flags or if something else was happening, like a football (or soccer) match.  It was that type of crowd.  Did I forget to mention the Bulgarian presidential campaign began on Saturday also?

Yesterday's unrest began with crowds beginning to organize around 7pm.  I can confirm that as I and a colleague were walking home from the local office and saw a crowd beginning to form and march down Vitosha Blvd.  We wound up at the very end of the blob, which I estimated cover the area 2-3 platoons of soldiers would stand in, making the crowd size between 100-150.  Apparently, news coverage from the scene confirms my count.  But at the time, I wasn't as  worried about the numbers as I was the mood of the crowd.  This was not a fun, happy crowd.  This was one I wanted no part of.

As police began to arrive at the back of the crowd, we slowed our pace and allowed the crowd to pull ahead.  As my Bulgarian is very bad, I didn't know what was going on, and I didn't want to know the reasons why, quite frankly.  Since they were marching toward the National Palace of Culture, I figured they were going to a rally or protest of some sort.  Either that, or they were going to march up and down Vitosha, a shopping district, to make a point.  For those in Chicago, think Michigan Avenue.

Sure enough, at least part of the crowd began to double back.  Either that, or it was a different crowd.  I'm not really sure.  The only think I knew was that two foreigners walking into that crowd was not the wisest thing to do.  So I led my colleague down Patriyarh Eytimiy Blvd. and then made a quick left to get us out of sight.  After that, the way was clear, although not knowing that I had spotted all of the crowd, I was still leery of another group appearing.  I may have scouted the area, but I don't know it THAT well.

As I told my colleague, an adventure was something bad happening to someone else.  Fortunately, our adventure was minor and we arrived at our hotel at 7:30 with something to talk about.  I perhaps unwisely decided to walk to the Central City Mall around 8pm.  As I walked in the park around the National Palace of Culture, it was a pleasant evening with a not-so-good band from the United States playing a free concert.  Apparently all the real action was occurring at the National Assembly square.

I realize as a gaming blog, this post is way off-topic.  If I really wanted to, I could try to relate the experience to Eve Online and how some of the actions I do relate to the way I play the game.  I'd like to think that my life experience led my to behave the way I did (and influences the way I play Eve) rather than the other way around.  After all, I'm 47 and this is my 7th trip outside the United States.  But this is something I just had to write about.  And next time, I'll remember to take the camera out of my computer bag to prove "I was there".