Television Travails

Even given the below freezing temperatures, we have been out exploring everyday for a few hours. Our apartment is very near a big park that is currently covered with snow with its fountains iced. We know that in a couple of months we will be trying to remember what it looked like all frozen over and that children will be running through the fountains. Right now, however, I am paying close attention to my feet because I don’t want to slip and fall. When we are not outside, we are indoors in our apartment. In fact, we have spent many hours here as one does when it is frigid outside: hence my blog entry on domesticity.

Along with my desire to create a home has come corresponding habits that I relate to having free time indoors and that is television. I confess to being used to having a pro football game on, especially a playoff game, or a tennis match, especially the Australian Open. My friends know my love of tennis and understand the void I feel to be missing a Grand Slam. To be doing laundry or cooking without tennis on is for me to feel something missing. The silence has been interesting. No music, no Alexa, nothing.

When we saw Lili again, we asked her about the tv because even Tom couldn’t figure  out how to turn it on. She showed us how to operate the small box set. There are very few stations, but we have learned how to get International CNN in English. Okay, so now we can hear the same news every half hour. By the third day, however, the sound of English was comforting. Now, not so much. I confess to actually feeling some anxiety at the prospect of silence. This is a confession, one that I am not proud of.  It is one of the things you learn about yourself when taken out of your routine environment. Please don’t misunderstand, when we travel, I never miss tv; we seldom ever turn on a tv set in a hotel room anywhere. But with daily routines being established here, I have realized that since retiring and no longer needing to read and prep a novel for teaching, I am accustomed to watching tv after dinner. So much quality tv is available now. Downton Abbey was starting; we had just finished Homeland and The Knick. News was not going to take the place of these stories. For me they are simultaneously relaxing and intellectually satisfying.  When I tried reading, I could only sustain it for an hour without getting sleepy, and we were wanting to stay up in order to turn our internal clocks around.

So I discovered an addiction in Bulgaria, and to my chagrin it fits the American stereotype. Lili offered no solution, only the instruction of how to operate the tv. Tom cannot find a way to stream anything, including ESPNwatch. So this means no North Carolina basketball or Super Bowl. When we met Milena, a colleague (and another blog entry), I apologetically broached the subject. We are ready to pirate! Anything! Where is a Sports Bar? Please, help us! She couldn’t immediately offer a solution. So now our problem (to be fair, Tom was not as crazed as I was) sent us to the Tourist Information Office. Okay, we didn’t go there only to ask about tv; we did have other questions.  We brought up the Super Bowl and the location of a Sports Bar. The young man in the office named Stoyan told us Bulgarians were not interested in American football.  In so many words, he was telling us no Super Bowl would be playing anywhere because no one cared. We understand completely that American football is not the center of the universe, but this would not deter us.