Word: sofias
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...like Sofia Coppola’s movies, then you probably have a similar taste for one of her favorite bands, Air. Three years since the release of their masterpiece “Talkie Walkie,” the French duo have returned with “Pocket Symphony” and a fresh supply of their patented haute-electronica. Their sound combines rigorous piano, string, and synth melodies with a variety of eclectic instrumentals, plus vocals by both group members, Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. In “Pocket Sympony,” Air continues...
...Gaucho's Eastern European career has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride. In Bulgaria, he played for Levski, a Sofia-based club then owned by a Russian oligarch named Michael Chorny who, at the time, was banned from setting foot on Bulgarian soil because of alleged ties with organized crime. A big star in Sofia, Gaucho threw a tantrum after a coach replaced him in an important UEFA Champions League qualification match. He picked up his brother and a bottle of Jack Daniels and disappeared for a week, leaving reporters to speculate about his whereabouts. (He had retreated...
...Sofia easily matches the rest of Europe in cobblestone streets and cathedrals. Aleksander Nevski Memorial Church, a massive neo-Byzantine tribute to the Russian soldiers who died fighting for Bulgaria's independence from the Turks in the late 19th century, is well trafficked, as are the souvenir stalls outside selling communist and Nazi paraphernalia. Fewer sightseers meander into the Sveta Nedelya Church, where Sofians gather for incense-imbued Bulgarian Orthodox services in a mural-covered sanctuary. It was there that a church employee approached my camera-toting travel companion, asking to be photographed. We wound up sharing warm bread...
...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...
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...