For years I had seen Bulgaria on the map and dreamed of visiting. Then the day came on which I was actually there… and everything was shut down because Colin Powell, who at the time was the U.S. Secretary of State, was there for a state visit! It was the first time an American “leader” (even a relatively low-grade one like C. Powell) had visited Bulgaria in a long time and downtown Sofia was decked out with red/white/blue bunting hung next to red/white/green bunting. I was once in line behind C. Powell at an office supply store in Arlington, Virginia (he is SHORT!) and so I was a little irked that I was missing out on all sorts of fabulous museums, etc. for a U.S. cabinet minister whom I’d already practically MET.

I was walking through the central square in front of the big beautiful ethnographical museum when the two military bands started tuning up. The American military band played the Bulgarian national anthem and the people around me sang along in the same kind of obligatory, desultory fashion as Americans usually whimper their way through “The Star-Spangled Banner” at baseball games. Then the Bulgarian military band played “TS-SB” and I found myself actually singing along! I’m not especially patriotic, or an especially good singer, but it makes me feel good to sing, and that day in Sofia it was just the right temperature outside to be walking around and bursting into song in public places. A couple of little Bulgarian kids who were there with their dad were standing next to me and they looked up at me and watched me sing, so I directed my “performance” to them, and when it was over, they smiled and laughed, and their dad said something to me in Bulgarian that I took to be kind, and I waved at the kids and went off somewhere for a cappuccino.