[caption id="attachment_474" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Christmas has come early this year! "]<img class="size-medium wp-image-474" title="carolyn-for-web" src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/carolyn-for-web.jpg?w=300" alt="Christmas has come early this year! " width="300" height="225" />[/caption]

The post office in Sofia is a catch all.  It's like the drawer in your kitchen that is officially the junk-drawer.  But it's a junk-drawer in a good way.  You know, you go there to grab a pair of scissors, or a rubber band, a piece of string or a postage stamp.  The problem is that you don't always know if what you're looking for will be there or if it will be the right size, length or amount--so you dig through old playing cards, nails, bits left over from do it yourself Ikea projects where inexplicably at the end you have left over pieces...

Well in Sofia, the post office is similar and I might add almost completely unusable if you don't speak Bulgarian.  At post offices in Bulgaria, you can do tons of different things.  You can play bills, you can bank and I think that given the number of windows you must be able do other things as well--like mail letters or pick up packages.  This means that there are tons of windows with disaffected employees sitting behind them to take your money.

Luckily, I don't have to go to the post office to pay my utility bills.  My landlord does this for me and then brings me the receipts which I then reimburse him for.  I have a hunch it would be craze inducing to pay your bills in the post office if you were a Bulgarian let alone if I had to do so navigating in my limited Bulgarian.  And I think that this is how most people pay their bills--in person and in cash.  It should however be noted that I don't know this for sure.  In the states, I thought writing out checks and remembering to mail them each month was tedious.  Well now that I've seen this other system, I think that writing a check isn't so bad.<!--more-->

Also, just so that you don't think I am being completely culturally insensitive, I do understand why this system has evolved and remains today.  Bulgaria is still a cash economy.  People have debit cards but they use them to withdraw cash.  Only twice have I ever seen anyone pay for anything with a debit card--once in the grocery store and once at a shoe store.  And let me tell you, the employees processing the debit card transaction didn't seem very happy about it.

Anyhow, back to the post office, my parents sent me a package for Christmas in the beginning of December and about two weeks later I checked my mailbox and there was a slip of paper telling me that I had a package to pick up.  (Yeah!)

The slip gave me the address to pick up the package and the post office times.  So I marched out of my house at 8:15 am ready to pick up my package.  The night before I'd looked up the location on bg maps and knew exactly where I was going--to the same place I mailed my ballot for Obama.  At the post office though, it wasn't clear which window I was supposed to go to.  I asked some people both behind glass windows and in the lobby.

I felt like I had the prized golden ticket from Willy Wonka and the Cholcolate Factory only no one was very excited for me and I didn't know where I was supposed to go to collect my prize.  Finally I asked this man in a uniform of some sort who seemed to be guarding an elevator.  He looked at me with big eyes and told me very slowly that I had to back outside and turn right.  Okay.

Funny how the room I ended up wasn't part of the building marked post office.  Anyhow I gave my slip to the man at the counter.  He said something that sounded like my name and told the woman he was working with a four-digit number.  Then he started looking through a lined paper notebook.  It's amazing to me that this seems to be the preferred system of organization through out the country.

Of course what this means is that he doesn't find my name on the first try.  He thinks I am trying to pick up some man's package.  I show him my litchna karta.  I am not sure why but it just seems like the thing to do.  This seemed to do the trick.  Oh Karolina.... and then she finds my package.

At this point, I have 40 Leva in my pocket.  I've been told that often you have to pay a tax to get your package.  I didn't know how much this going to be so I thought it was better to be prepared.  I didn't want to have to come back for my package because I didn't have enough money.  Well, the man smiles at me and hands me my package.  I don't have to pay a tax or anything.

Good thing.  When I look at the package on my way out, I see that my dAd has addressed the package and I assume mailed it and on the mail-slip attached to the package it says: gift $50.  Really, do they never listen to me? I'd been told that any box that was declared and labeled gift with a value would result in a tax at the post office that was 50% of the stated value.

I couldn't help but wonder what my parents were sending me.  I love these two but they are known for being frugal and my mom doesn't love to shop so when she asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year I couldn't think of a thing.  She told me to think about it.  I didn't.  So when she asked me again via Skype at Thanksgiving with my aunts and uncles around I say: cherry chapstick and marshmallows.  Yes.  Marshmallows.

As a result, I got marshmellows in a couple of different forms: peeps, the chocolate santa filled with marshmallow cream and part of a bag of jet puffed green and red marshmallows in the shape of christmas trees and stars.  I also got two tubes of cherry chapstick, a great little notebook, a bar of chocolate and some other goodies.  Everything was individually wrapped! This alone was great.  And even better it was all stuffed into a stocking.

And I can say now for the first time in all seriousness "wow, Christmas has come early!" (and not think of it as a slightly off putting pick-up line--which I do kind of miss hearing for the record.)