LG's Excellent PC Adventure

Thanksgiving is traditionally held on the last Thursday of November except in Bulgaria where we hold it whenever some of us can gather in one spot at the same time on a given weekend close enough to that actual day. This year Thanksgiving was this past weekend. My apartment is the largest amongst those of all my friends so, by default, I am the host. I wouldn't have it any other way. This year there were to be twelve of us and people were traveling from every corner of Bulgaria to attend. Different people came with different expectations and different visions of the perfect Thanksgiving dinner as remembered from their own homes and families. However, one expectation held in common by them all was that there would be a turkey cooked to a soft golden brown and dinner would begin when the turkey was ready. Everyone planned to bring a dish or a bottle of wine or a dessert, everyone planned to come with a hardy appetite and everyone, without exception (even the vegetarians) expected to see a turkey on the table. I was responsible for the turkey.

Please understand, there are turkeys in Bulgaria, lots of them. Turkeys gang up in packs in every village and make it their business to strut about and to gobble around in the wee small hours of the mornings waking up honest citizens from their well-deserved rest. 'Pyweeka' is Bulgarian for turkey and you can find them everywhere. Except in stores at Thanksgiving. I went out to Billa (a big store), I went out to Metro (the other big store), I searched high and low and found not a single solitary pyweeka, frozen or otherwise. Here it's more of a Christmas sort of meal so there may be turkeys available in the stores around that time, which will be small consolation to a group of turkey-deprived American Thanksgiving feasters.

Last year my colleague Rumiana helped me get a turkey. It was a turkey raised in Brazil by a French company who then sold it to a German food distributor who in turn shipped it to Bulgaria. This United Nations of turkeys looked suspiciously like a duck but it served its purpose. However, with twelve of us planning to dig in, the UN bird would never do. We needed a real pyweeka with some meat on its bones.

Once again, Rumiana came to my rescue. She and her husband own a house in a small village nearby and she offered to get me a pyweeka from her neighbor who had a flock of them. I said that I would gladly buy any turkey available that weighed between five and eight kilos. Rumiana said that she thought the birds were in that range now but that they would probably weigh less after I killed them and removed the parts that you don't eat. Oh. Well, the neighbor would actually kill the bird so that it wouldn't make a mess in Rumiana's car but I'd get the feathered remains to do with as I pleased. Oh.

Plan B involved me going back to Metro and Billa and looking for two or three of the biggest frozen chickens I could find. I was in the process of convincing myself that I could tie three chickens together and no one would know the difference when Rumiana said she'd located a place that had honest-to-God frozen turkeys...just like at home! She ordered one for me over the phone, hung up and told me I'd have to pick it up the next day at Neego. Wonderful! Excellent! Superb! We have a turkey I can understand and deal with, a frozen turkey with all the inedible bits already removed.

What's Neego? Unfortunately, I waited until the next day to ask this question and Darina (another colleague) said, "it's the Beef & Pork Institute". In a weird Bulgarian sort of way it makes perfect sense that you can only get a turkey at Thanksgiving from the Beef & Pork Institute. Okay, but can I walk there? No. Oh, can I catch a bus? No. Well where is it? Now, you can go anywhere in Stara Zagora by cab for one lev and you can get to any of the outlying parts of the city for one lev fifty stotinki but you can't get to Neego for less than nine leva. We rode so far and so long that I do believe we crossed two international borders on the way. Neego may actually be somewhere in the Middle East. Toni (the colleague who always gets stuck "helping Larry do simple things he's incapable of doing by himself") came with me and when we finally got there she suggested that we ask the cab to wait or risk having to walk back.

There was a line with approximately twenty people on it waiting for turkeys. There was a closed door and one by one people would be invited in to get their turkeys. I was the only one there with a cab waiting with its meter ticking. At the rate the line was moving it was going to be a very long and costly wait. I badgered Toni into going up to the head of the line and I knocked on the closed door. This caused audible grumbling up and down the line. I walked into the turkey distribution room as soon as they opened the door and said very loudly in English, "Hello, I ordered a turkey and I just want to pick it up. Do you have my turkey?" A few people in the line spoke up sharply and I turned and said loudly and in nearly perfect English, "Yes, I'm here for a turkey. I'll only be a minute and then you can all do whatever it is you are doing." Toni was hiding behind a pile of frozen turkeys.

The woman in the distribution room understood that the quickest way to get rid of me would be to give me my turkey, so she did. As I was walking out and everyone on the line was giving me the death stare, I said, "Thank you for understanding, it means so much to a Canadian like me." But I had acquired what was possibly the world's most costly five kilo turkey and I was happy. Toni ran to the cab with her coat pulled over her head just like those people being pulled into and out of police stations on the news.

My friends arrived and we all really got into the spirit of the Holiday. We had pumpkin cooked with butter and brown sugar, a green bean casserole with crunchy onion rings on top, garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a shopska salad, gravy, stuffing and a turkey large enough to feed twelve with leftovers. For dessert we had an apple crisp, banana bread with chocolate chips, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream and fudge brownies. We took time during the meal to go around the table to give each person an opportunity to say what he or she was thankful for and everyone remembered family and friends. Wine and rakiya flowed throughout the evening and Brian and I repaired to the terrace to smoke cigars while everyone sat around groaning and rubbing their stomachs. It was a great evening.

On Sunday, after everyone left I puttered around tidying up and then pulled some turkey out of the fridge to make a sandwich. It was quiet and peaceful and I put my sandwich on the table and went to switch on my iTunes. Just then a hose that supplies water to the toilet tank in my bathroom corroded completely through, separated from the tank and began to shoot water around the bathroom as if it were a fire hose. I ran to shut off the water and the faucet handle broke off in my hand. Everything I tried to stuff into the hose shot across the bathroom like a shell from a howitzer. I was forced to run, soaking wet, eight floors down to get Hristo my landlord. He came up, found the main water shutoff valve (under the sink in the guest bathroom), stuck a ten stotinki coin and a piece of inner tube into the butt end of the hose and said he'd be back tonight with a new hose. I mopped up the mess, changed into dry clothes and ate my sandwich. Nothing spoils the taste of a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. Nothing.

I have quite a bit to do during the next two weeks. I'm trying to complete a video for Habitat for Humanity by December 1st, I have a powerpoint presentation due by November 30th for my colleagues here at REDA, there is a committee meeting I have to prepare for and attend also on December 1st and I have to find ways to get the knitting business kick started. Our web address is: www.handknitcrafts.com so please take a look at it and tell others about it if you like it.

Then I'll be going to New York for Christmas to see my family. So, in case I don't get another chance to write before the end of the year, Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays to you all. And remember, it makes all Canadians look bad when one of us crashes the line for frozen turkeys.