Yesterday was Students' Day in Bulgaria.  The university students have their own holiday.  They don't go to class and instead escape into the mountain resorts or the Sofia bars and clubs to celebrate their holiday.  Yes, it's a big drinking day.

A couple of google searches revealed that Students' Day had it's inception in 1903.  It was apparently the 15th anniversary of Sofia University.   Then at the end of WWII in 1944 the holiday was abolished and replaced with International Students' Day which is celebrated on November 17.  In 1962, the holiday was re-instituted. Today students and former students celebrate on this day.

So did I.

I didn't go to a resort in the mountains but I did venture out to Studentski Grad (student city) with friends about 9:00pm and didn't find myself at home and in my own bed until quarter to six.  This said, I feel like I should make it clear that I am not regularly a "6-am-kind-of-girl." It's because I really didn't like leaving the club as the sun was coming up.  The sky should be black when I go to bed not gray.  But when in Bulgaria...<!--more-->

A girl's got to celebrate with and like the Bulgarians and no I am not writing this to try to justify a rakia-fueled existence.  I am just saying that I've never had a chance to celebrate Students' Day in Bulgaria before so I took this opportunity seriously.

I met at my friends house in the city center and three of us took a taxi to Studentski Grad.  It was a 6 leva and 15 minute long ride--not bad at all.  We met the rest of our group for dinner (salad and a rakia) and by 11:30pm we were in the club.

The thing about clubs in Bulgaria is that there is a strange level of pretension  and exclusivity for clubs that are only so-so. After waiting outside for about 20 minutes, we paid and $8 leva cover and then the guys got patted down and I was asked to show some ID.  Of course, I had no idea what this girl was asking for and then she asked me again in English.  I showed her my Bulgarian litchna karta--ha--that really caught her off guard.  All of this rigamaroll lead me to believe that the club was going to be packed.  In fact, at 11:30pm, it was far from crowded.

We were able to get a table after some back and forth in Bulgarian.  There was some question of whether or not we needed to buy a bottle for the table.  We did not and proceeded to order drinks.  In a place like Washington DC, the cocktail waitress would take someone's credit card as reserve for the drinks.  But here in Bulgaria that doesn't happen.  Instead, when we'd each had two drinks or so the cocktail waitress brought us our bill and told us we had to pay and didn't offer to get us anymore drinks.  We paid the bill but after this it wasn't clear if she would still be waiting on us or if we now had to go to the bar for drinks.

I don't understand this country sometimes.  It was easier for me to check my coat than it was to get a drink.  Why wouldn't the bar make it as easy as possible for us to get a drink?  It's not like they are making enough money on the cover and coat check to run the club.

Anyhow, Students' Day seems to really be about the partying, dancing and talking that takes place on a night out with friends and not all of the tedious details so I am moving on.

The group I was out with was a lot of fun--mostly we talked, danced and drank all night.  In our group, there were two Americans, two Bulgarians and two Spaniards.  I speak English and some German with a little bit of Bulgarian sprinkled in.  The other American speaks English and Spanish.  One of the Bulgarians speaks great English and the other great Spanish.  As for the Spaniards, one speaks strong English and the other speaks strong Bulgarian.  Confusing I know but that's just to put the night in perspective.  We were busy speaking lots of different languages and the night was kind of a game of telephone: what? say that again? who? no way.  And so on and so on. It makes dancing look like a really good option.

The funny thing is after dancing with a number of Bulgarians who spoke varrying amounts of English, I ended the night pretty glad that I don't know much Bulgarian.  I think that at least one of the guys was saying kind of "naughty" things to me in Bulgarian--things that would probably embarrass me in English.  But I smiled, shrugged, told him a few times that I didn't understand what he was saying and then stopped dancing with him and returned to my friends.

He was persistent and kept coming over to dance with me but the conversation always went back to the same series of questions that I didn't understand.  <em>Sorry dude. </em> Also, I think that he had a funny accent--one which I've never heard before in Sofia--and this made it that much harder for me to understand what he was saying.

I met some other funny guys and danced and danced and danced.  The music the club played was something else.  It felt like one part high school dance and one part weekend MTV top music video countdown.  I don't remember all of the songs but here are some of the "best of" from last night.  We started with house and techno and then moved on to hip-hop and pop with an eclectic mix of songs that were throw backs. In no particular order, here's the list:
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://vbox7.com/play:f2b0532e" target="_blank">Sexy Girl</a> by Chocolate Puma some of the lyrics: you were just a sexy girl, nothing but a sexy girl</li>
	<li><a href="http://vbox7.com/play:de3ebbcf" target="_blank">Mercy </a>by Duffy some of the very repetitive lyrics: you've got me begging for mercy...why won't you release me?</li>
	<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckKFxMw6z0c">Low</a> by <span class="description"> Flo Rida the lyrics here are well not very complicated: the whole club was looking at her, she the flooora, next thing you know shorty got low, low, low....
</span></li>
	<li><span class="description"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rWk6XIkXCo&amp;feature=related" target="_blank">California Love</a> by 2Pac  these lyrics are pretty straight forward: </span><span class="description">California </span><span class="description">knows how to party, California knows how to party... followed by lots of shake, shake it babies...
</span></li>
	<li><span class="description"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10C68Gzd5GM" target="_blank">I will survive</a> the Cake version (I think) you know how this one goes: Oh no, not I, I will survive, as long as I know how to love, I know I'll stay alive!
</span></li>
	<li><span class="description">Then these two songs which I've heard now twice in two back to back nights out but haven't heard played in a bar in the states well maybe ever: YMCA by the Village People (Regrettably no one was making the arm motions.  So I tried to teach them.  It didn't seem to catch on.) and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Al-icSBz8&amp;feature=related" target="_blank">You're the one that I want</a> from Grease, the movie/musical.
</span></li>
</ul>
All of this music makes for a lot of wow! No wonder I was able to dance the night away; it was like the best of the last 20 years plus some house music that I am not as familiar with.  The night ended at 5am when most of the dance floor had started to clear out.

We caught a taxi pretty easily and were home in not time.  I went to bed and woke up when it was still morning thankful not to be fighting a hangover this afternoon and after a cup of coffee I ventured out for the best "Bulgarian brunch" ever: banitsa and ayran (a salty-cheese pastry and milky-yogurt drink).

It makes me wonder why we don't have a holiday like this in the States.