There's no romance story here. This weekend out with friends at one of our favorite bars, I was talking to a Bulgarian guy who told me that the town he grew up in is a sex-stained industrial ex-communist city.  His family no longer lives there and he avoids going home. It's too depressing.

I am not sure what the appropriate response to this comment would have been but I am pretty sure that three Maker's Marks in I didn't make it.  Sure I grew up in a crumbling farming town (which now seems to be remaking itself on the back of the wine grape) but none of this helped me think of anything to say.  I can't even pretend to know what that feels like.

This story dovetails with another.  Before I moved to Bulgaria, I made a snide joke to my roommate about writing and love.  It was something about after moving to Bulgaria I'll finally have enough time on my hands to write--to write seriously for the first time in my life.  I followed this up with: a Bulgarian Romance Novel.  At the time, it seemed like a funny thing to say.  The romance genre is seen by many as silly and trite and I'd been reading serious works and novels for the last three years for my MA in English Literature and given the country's history, Bulgaria didn't really seem like a romance reading culture.  Insert joke, some laughing and it became a passing memory. Until I was reminded me of this joke recently.  It gave me pause.  It reminded me of my own naivety.

Yet at the same time, I couldn't help but laugh.  I am having boy problems.<!--more-->

There's a lot that's confusing in and about this country and my blog chronicles many of these: the Cyrillic alphabet, which lines to stand in at the post office, the metric system, the bus schedule, why both cheeses serine and kashkaval are white in color but one gets translated into English as white cheese and the other as yellow cheese, and the fact that for some reason no one ever seems to have change.  Now I'll add to this to the list: guys.

I am a realist and fiercely independent to boot.  I don't get hung up on guys--either they call me or they don't, either I like them or I don't--sure there's a little more nuance than I've just expressed but really what's the point of wasting your time on a guy who's not on the same page you are?  I think it's pretty clear, I didn't move to this country expecting to find love.  I didn't have visions of some foreign fairytale floating through my head.

Before I left, I can't say that I spent much time thinking about dating, relationships or love in Bulgaria but plenty of other people did this for me.  Some fantasized about me finding a dark haired Balkan man and falling in love, others told me to find a nice Bulgarian guy because that's the only way to learn the language while others were more realistic.  I heard from one friend: be careful, they have STDs there that we've never heard of (though I am not sure that's actually true).

So, I figured that dating here would be some, probably funnier, version of my life in Washington DC.  My love life in Washington wasn't spectacular but it wasn't boring.  I met a lot of interesting guys, went out with some of them and dated a few of them seriously.  It's not as if I was moving to Sofia with unreasonable expectations.  I am just as happy to meet friends out at a bar as I am to spend time one on one with a guy.

Then I met this new guy at a house party--a friend of a friend--smart, funny, charming.  He seemed into me.  I was into him and we kissed at the end of the night.  He left with my number.  Only he never called.  Fine.  Until a group of us get together for dinner last weekend.

Again, he seems into me--flirting, touching my arm and later out for drinks always standing next to me.  These are, I thought, universal clues that he likes me.  I wonder if I shouldn't be so annoyed that he didn't call and I decide to chalk it up to some cultural misunderstanding.  I don't know the flirting-dating-mating mores in this country.  Hell, I don't really even know the language.  The least I can do is be nice to him and see if this whole thing is going anywhere.

Silly me.  Our group moves to a club to dance and drink some more.  Within 30 minutes, he's making out with another fairly aggressive Bulgarian girl from the group we went out with against a wall in the back of the club (who I know has a boyfriend but who I also know is a big girl and can make her own decisions).  Curses! Being tall and being able to see everything.  He leaves about 20 minutes later without her.  As he gets his coat, he grabs my hand and tells me one thing: sorry.  I just shake my head.  Lots of bad things come to mind but I don't say any of them.  What's the point? Everybody knows what's happened.  I can either be angry or brush it off.  I pick the latter and end up dancing all night.  It was great.

The next morning he texts me.  To say that he hopes I am not mad at him and that he's sorry.  I write back and a couple of text messages later things seem okay.  He's apologized, I'm not so mad/annoyed and one of my Fulbright friends has convinced me that I might have been a little bit harsh in my first text message.  I figure that's that.  Then I get a text on Monday inviting me to his birthday party.

At yoga, I tell my friend the situation and she thinks I should go.  She tells me at least I know where I stand.  This seems to make sense to me so I text him that I am going to come.  He replies and I turn around to walk back to the tram stop.  I read his message a couple of times: I wanted to tell you that she's coming later.  I want you to know.  I don't want to hurt your feelings again...  It made my choice pretty easy.  I am done with that.

But the thing is I don't like to be jerked around.  I'm a modern girl--I know that relationships are hard and I know that the dating culture is dying but really, this is it? We're trading the possibility of romance for quick-dirty sex.  Maybe this country needs a good romance novel after all.