Io Sapsai 🌱

My cat is so food motivated he eats absolutely everything. Obviously has a preference for wet food with gravy so I buy a bunch of different flavours in bulk but he’s happy to eat the same thing every day. He also loves olives, bread (wholemeal more than white, sourdough has an advantage too. Local bakery bread is where things are really at. Supermarket bread is a mixed bag, he usually ignores it because it’s crap), seeds, nuts, potato chips, lentils, hummus, yogurt, and grass.

Don’t get me wrong, Bucharest and Sofia are rather LGBT friendly as long as you know where you’re safe. (I’ve only visited both for a couple of days on a number of occasions). I can’t speak about other cities but the Orthodox Church is really strong in Romania. Bulgaria on the other hand has soccer extremists/fascists who are particularly dangerous and tend to mob on their targets so it’s hard to even find the culprits by the authorities… Not that they even bother unless it’s a murder.

In fact I had a mob of Bulgarian hooligans in Bucharest of all places yelling “Look dude Rapunzel!” pointing at me (I present masculine but have rather long hair). I felt realy threatened and uncomfortable but I realised they didn’t know I spoke their language and I was in a crowded place so it all passed.

Bulgaria is an example. The LGBTQ+ community is discussed only during the annual pride parade. Sofia is rather liberal but the rest of the country is highly conservative. The people in power are likely in favour of marriage equality (or most don’t care that much so they just vote with the flow) but it’s a political suicide given the opinion of the most active voters. If you decided to run a country-wide poll, most people would be against gay marriage. The general attitude is “I don’t mind gay people as long as they’re not in my face”. Except many have stronger opinions than that. Especially men.

Speaking of men, the Balkan macho culture created a fear of gay people (literal homophobia). On a regular basis I hear men speaking about being afraid of being raped by gay men in certain situations (think massage rooms, men’s locker rooms, bars).

Football hooligan extremists are especially dangerous because they go on witch hunts for marginalized groups and would attack (and sometimes murder) anyone who looks gay, Turkish, ir has a darker skin colour just for sport. There are still partly unresolved murders of LGBT youth commited a decade ago.

In fact I’m surprised about Greece, they must be the first ortbodox christian country to legalize same sex marriage and they’re very religious compared to us.

I mean…I was like that when we first adopted our cat. Then we learned about respecting personal space and whaddya know, I haven’t been scratched in months (Last time was me trying to remove a small piece of thread from his mouth, to prevent him from eating it. He ate it anyway with no consequences and gave me a gash that left a scar.)