A few years ago, I started a food blog with my partner right before my first trip abroad. Thanks to my busy school schedule, I ended up abandoning it after a few posts, but I had so much fun writing this particular one that I always knew I would repost it once I started blogging again. It is a really fun time capsule of when travelling was new to me rather than my norm as it has been ever since. Plus it was great to be reminded of all these good meals! I hope you enjoy.
Bulgaria, Part I: Jerry Seinfeld and Thick Balkan Tomatoes
After years of dreaming of being a world traveler, even just leaving the country once, I’ve finally done it; I got myself a passport, hopped on a plane and struggled to learn a different language only to speak English when I got to my destination anyway. That’s right — I’m a college student abroad. What is the destination you ask? France? Italy? Nope. Maybe something a little less obvious like The Netherlands or maybe Sweden? Wrong again. I’m going to be spending my month abroad in BULGARIA. (Go big or go home, right?). After taking a course in Bulgarian language studies for a year, I finally get to see where it all started. This is my first post in a four-part series that I’m going to be doing about my study abroad experience here at the 41st International Seminar of Bulgarian Language and Culture at the University of Veliko Turnovo.
Yep you read that right, I’m currently coming at you from the mountain city of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria’s medieval capital. This post, the first in a four-part series about my trip, is being brought to you from the hallway of my dorm building (the only place the school’s Wi-Fi works lol). I already have so much I want to share after only two days of being here! I can tell that my gamble paid off, and that this country is a total hidden gem.
But I don’t want to get ahead of myself; after all, what’s a destination without the journey? And this first post will be about just that: my trip here. Specifically, in keeping with the theme of the blog, the food I had along the way [note: my old blog’s name was “Can I take it to go?”]. To quote that quintessential standup comedian of the 1990’s:
“Hey, what’s the deal with airplane food?”
– Jerry Seinfeld
With this enduring, philosophical question at the forefront of my mind, I set out to uncover just what the so-called “deal” with airplane food was, specifically the food provided by Turkish Airlines, the airline who I trusted to get me across the Atlantic to everyone’s favorite Balkan nation.
This was my first time taking a flight that involved eating and sleeping, and while I was getting prepared for the trip I was inundated with tips and tricks for getting through a red-eye from all sides. Based on all the things both friends and blog posts recommended for me, I think that my flight on Turkish Airlines must’ve been better than most when it came to food. (And in general. I got so many free amenities! My Turkish airline slippers are already coming in handy around my dorm). With everyone’s warnings and the general cultural stigma around airplane food in mind, I got a large McDonald’s fries in the airport food court to fill me up in case I ended up skipping my in-flight meal. I used about 10 ketchup packets on my fries as a way to say goodbye to my dearest, most favorite condiment in case it was hard to come by in Bulgaria.
Dinner
It ended up being a good thing that I ate beforehand because they fed us rather late, around 11pm EST, around 6am in Bulgaria. Even though I was getting a little impatient while I was waiting, I think it ended up being a good thing that we ate at that time, lessening my jet lag by switching my body clock over to the eating schedule I was about to start when I got off the plane. We started out, of course, with the typical airplane peanuts and drink (spoiler alert: “Turkish prepared” peanuts taste the same as Planter’s). I opted for sour cherry juice, after finding out that it was a standard Turkish drink in one of the airline’s safety videos. Let me say that, as someone who drinks primarily water, sour cherry juice is literally the best fruit juice I’ve ever had. My first thought when I took a sip of it was how much it reminded me of sangria. It was super flavorful and had a bite that was reminiscent of red wine and balanced out its sweetness.
After I kept eyeing the cart throughout the second half of my in-flight movie, it finally made its way to me. I was glad to see that my request of a vegetarian option had been granted. Turkish Airlines is really good when it comes to providing special meal options; from my count they offer nine, ranging from the expected vegetarian and vegan options, to several religiously observant meals and even offering more than one type of vegetarian meal. I suppose this must be a function of the fact that they are an Islamic company, meaning they generally put more care into their food in order for it to be halal, and the fact that they make flights to more countries than any other airlines. With such a diverse market, it pays off to try to accommodate the tastes of as many of the nationalities they serve as possible.
My dinner was good if a bit plain, with an entrée of mixed vegetables and white rice alongside a double side of your typical chopped salad. Considering “inedible” was the adjective I heard most in descriptions of airplane food, how fresh everything tasted was enough to keep me happy (even if I was a little jealous all my non-vegetarian neighbors got vanilla pudding with their meals). The highlight was definitely the tabbouleh included with the meal; I was glad that I was already getting a chance to sample some local flavors. I ate it with some “fresh” (read: re-heated) brown bread; there was something oddly processed tasting about it but just having some warm bread with my tabbouleh was nice.
Taken by author, 2018.
Breakfast
But honestly, who cares about my dinner because the breakfast was really what made my experience worth posting about. I almost slept through it but boy am I glad I woke up in time because it was taaaayyyysty. My breakfast was vegetarian too, so I got potatoes and vegetables rather than everyone else’s omelet and, considering that, behind ketchup, eggs probably make up the largest portion of my diet, I was initially a little disappointed. But then, once I tasted it, I knew I was the real winner over my omelet-eating friends. The potatoes were cooked to absolute perfection, tasting like Mediterranean-style home fries, and the mushrooms served with them were positively scrumptious, and I do NOT use that word lightly.
Where it really shone was how much it incorporated local foods. There were two types of cheeses on the side, both of which were quite different than the creamy, rich Western European cheeses we Americans are most familiar with. The first I tried, a goat cheese known as сирене (pronounced sear-en-ay), resembled feta in its crumbliness and color, but was much less salty and had a stronger flavor. The second I had was Haloumi, which was very mild with an almost smoky-sweet aftertaste. It absorbed some of the juice of the tomato it was served with, adding another layer to the flavor of the cheese and elevating it into something with enough complexity that it could’ve been a stand-alone snack.
This brings me to my greatest revelation about Balkan food so far. The tomatoes here are much different than those in the America. They have much more meat to them rather than the wet, seedy stuff that makes up like 80% of the tomatoes we’re used to, and they’re much more savory, too. Considering the main reasons I leave tomatoes on my plate are that they’re too watery and too sweet for my liking, these thick ‘maters are basically Tomato Plus™ and they’re my new favorite thing.
Lunch
After my layover in the Istanbul airport, I took a connecting flight from Istanbul to Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital and most populous city. I napped through the majority of it to make up for the hours of sleep I lost while listening to a baby scream in the seat behind me for most of the red-eye (isn’t that always how it goes?). Once again I almost slept through a meal, this time one I wasn’t even expecting, so imagine my delight when I fully regained consciousness just as a smiling flight attendant handed me my most favorite lunch, a tuna sandwich! Served on a mini-submarine multigrain roll, for the most part it tasted the same as the typical American tuna salad sandwich, but with one unexpected addition, green beans.
Never in my life have I considered putting green beans on a tuna sandwich but they kind of added something, an extra crunch and a mild flavor that made this sandwich an interesting change from the norm. Tuna Sandwich: The Green Bean Remix may be a new edition to my lunch sandwich rotation once I get back to the states. It was served with a pretty good Caprese salad, (enhanced of course by those thick tomatoes!), a cherry-flavored pastry and those funny little waters that are packaged like fruit cups that they have on planes sometimes. I’d say the cherry pastry was the only thing that set it apart from a typical American lunch, and even that just tasted like a prepackaged hostess-type thing that happened to have cherries on it, as those are apparently a big feature of Turkish food. It was the first time I had a sweet in 48 hours, which for me is a long time, so I was a big fan of its inclusion. With a full stomach, I selected a fitting final song to set the mood as my plane approached Sofia, my first international travelling experience coming to an end (minus the two taxis and cross-country bus that I had to take once I landed).
Rating:
Dinner: 6.5/10 Thick Balkan Tomatoes
Breakfast: 8.5/10 over-used Seinfeld jokes
Lunch: 7/10 cherry food products
Originally published at https://melaniejohnsondc.com on March 25, 2022.
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