Bulgaria Beckons

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The center of Sofia brims with Old Country attractions--the changing of the presidential guard, streets made from yellow bricks gifted by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I--but the city of 1.2 million is compact enough for visitors to venture to locales off the beaten track, like the communist monument turned skate park in Borisova Gradina and the Ladies' Market, where average-income Sofians do their shopping. The marketplace of storefronts and open-air kiosks sells everything from clementines to wallpaper to negligees to banitsa, a flaky pastry stuffed with the feta-like "white cheese" used in many Bulgarian dishes. One kiosk sells mulled wine from barrels for 1.2 leva, about 80¢, a liter--a price indicative of how very far the dollar goes. The top end is a bargain too. At Pri Yafata, an upscale restaurant serving traditional Bulgarian cuisine (which means Turkish and Greek influences plus a proclivity for using all parts of the animal--hot pig's head soup, anyone?), a folk-style three-course dinner for two with wine can be had for $35.

That, though, is starting to change. Bulgaria doesn't move to the euro until 2010, but the country is already seeing the effects of integration with the European economy. The Sofia Echo, an English-language weekly, reports that in the last few months of 2006, the price of bread went up more than 10% and is expected to increase another 20% to 50% this year. The evolving landscape is perhaps nowhere better observed than at the gleaming new glass-wrapped Mall of Sofia, where locals sip $2.60 caramel macchiatos, browse stores such as Lacoste and Hugo Boss and take in movies at Bulgaria's first IMAX theater.

Across town, you can still fill up a used soda bottle with hot mineral water next to the old Turkish baths, but to the extent that you believe progress and popularization displace authenticity, you should head over sooner rather than later.