I usually try to sneak a bulb or clipping into the US from wherever it is that I am visiting. From Bulgaria, however, I am much more tempted to import a dog. Bulgaria has tons of homeless dogs everywhere in their cities and villages and if it had not been for Brigitte Bardot -yes, the actress – they wouldn’t even be alive. You might have heard about it in the news a while ago, several celebrities got all involved in saving post-socialist animals, especially dogs. Brigitte Bardot effected that the dogs be sterilized and not killed, but the running joke here is that since Bulgarians are not trying to have sex with the dogs but rather are trying to not be killed by them it would have been better to invest in pulling their teeth. The dogs I have seen – and met – certainly wouldn’t bite anybody though. They are very friendly, real survivors. Everyday I walk to the university, one of them meets me by the alley entrance and trots behind me until I get to the entrance area. I wish I could bring him home. But colleagues here tell me that tourists want to do so all the time and that it is almost impossible because of the red tape.

And then I realized that they also have a very vivid social life after 6 pm. They can get a little testy at that point. Peer pressure.

    

Then.. I saw her.. but she’s a little different from the others..

 

Shared homelessness.