A Walkway on Campus
A Flower Vendor downtown
Sofia Street Musicians
"Mama" Dog, beloved by all of campus but always looking sad
Part II: We go to the Greatest Bakery in Bulgaria
Introducing: Sladkarska Kushti (House of Sweets)
These might be the best cookies in the bakery
But these are darn good too...
And then there's these...
We decided we couldn't take any risks.
On a warm beautiful day in Sofia, one must choose between many good options. Go to the mountain? Wander a park? Shop the fruit markets? Play tennis? Do laundry so it will dry quickly in the sun? Gather fall leaves and buckeyes for the windowsill?
Today, we fit in as many of those as we could, beginning with a lap of downtown. We cruised along Graf Ignatiev, stopping to admire the last raspberries and the first butternut squash at the fruit market, sidled through Slaveykov Square book market, noticing a new copy of Eragon in Cyrrilic, then stumbled about in search of our latest and greatest food discovery in Sofia - "The House of Sweets" on Rakovski boulevard.
If you are living in Sofia, or even Belgrade, Athens, or Bucharest, stop what you are doing. Find the nearest public transportation and head for Sofia. You need to eat these cookies. You need to experience for yourself the joy of walking down a not-that-nice street, looking in fairly random shop windows, when suddenly... literally thousands of cookies in perhaps a hundred varieties wink back at you from behind glass. You walk in, and you are the only one there. How is that possible? You choose from chocolate filled butter cookie shells, tiny baklava triangles, vanilla cream cones, miniature walnut tarts, "night and day" chocolate and vanilla cookies, garishly colored sugar balls that you're sure will taste better than they look, jam sandwich cookies that couldn't possibly taste better than they look, and so many more. Finally, after choosing perhaps thirty cookies, you stop, exhausted. The final bill? 7 leva, or about 4 euros, or about 5 dollars.
What's not to love?
Sladkarska Kushti
Rakovski Boulevard, near Slaveykov Square
FIVE STARS
1 comment:
Thank goodness that bakery isn't in Lakeside, because the 23 pounds I've lost in the last 4 months would be back within a week. Enjoy it for me, though, and don't be sad on my behalf. Remember that I grew up in the bosom (wince) of the best bakery in MN. The finest candy makers, the best decorator of Lady Baltimore cakes, and the bakers of Kringler, Julekage, and other Danish delicacies sent home large bags of the above mentioned with my father every night, throughout elementary school. If your grandfather hadn't changed his work, my features would have disappeared...
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