I had no expectations whatsoever for my quick trip to Bulgaria.  Perhaps in the back of my mind, I was expecting crumbling eastern bloc buildings and smoggy Ladas crowding the streets filled with wrestlers and weight lifters.  Instead I arrived in the spacious Sofia airport, with no lines to get through customs, a fantastically clean modern subway system, and grand avenues with parks, upscale shops and bakeries.  On a late Sunday night, I watched a woman cleaning the stairs of the underground. In the morning, my colleagues and I stopped quickly at the impressive Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in central Sofia, the largest church in the country.  I bought my soya milk and cashew cheese at Zelen Bio food store near my central hotel, to prepare for the trip to Arbanasi and the Haemosporidians of Wildlife meeting.  I feared that there would be no food to eat, but again, I was surprised by a lovely lunch of tomato-roasted pepper salad, and roasted potatoes with mushrooms in the old city of Veliko Tarnovo.

It is hard to imagine that I should fly to Bulgaria for one week.  I used to mark the years by my travels.  In 1989, I visited Lithuania the first time.  In 1988 was a long trip to China.  In 1997, I spent a long time in India.  But now that travel is so cheap and accessible, it is routine to just get on a 13-hour direct flight to Istanbul, and fly to a spot with a 10-hour time difference. It is too convenient, and it is contributing to climate change. All the traveling becomes a blur, and somehow less special.  The airports are crowded and the planes uncomfortable. On the other hand, it allows about 50 scientists from all over the world to attend a scientific conference in a little village in Bulgaria.

The meeting is excellent, with tremendous developments in the field of avian malaria research. The work of the participants would be of interest to scientists in a diverse set of fields, from traditional parasitology to disease ecology to bioinformatics.  And the schedule is loose enough for us to informally discuss science in a splendid, yet inexpensive setting.

We witnessed the light show over the ruins of Tsaravets, in Veliko Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgaria Empire: lasers and colored light patterns over the ancient fortress.  Arbanasi is famous for its  old monastery and nice views of the surrounding countryside.  This is a modern hotel with a conference center in the middle of a rustic village.  Only after arriving here did I understand the reason for the long trip.   People are curious to hear impressions of the Trump/Clinton election from an American, but I am the wrong person to ask. Am I American?  I don’t follow the news, yet I am certain that Clinton will win. In any case, I think that the USA can do better.  They can learn a few things from the Bulgarians.