Oct15

Bulgaria, Sofia pride, and a birthday!

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Saturday, 13-June-2026 and Sunday, 14-June-2026


Well dang, Ben. You’re some cool jet-setting fancy-pants, aren’t you? You were just in the United States, and now you’re flying to Bulgaria?

That’s correct, dear reader, yours truly is finally starting to live the dream that I had when first moving to Europe… I’m flying around the continent going to parties!

In this specific case – flying to Sofia for a birthday party, and for our second Pride celebration of the year. Just a quick jaunt, you understand. A few hours in the air, a quick hop skip and jump to the house, and then a lovely few days in Sofia.

Now, Sofia pride was impressive and lovely in my opinion… but from what I heard from others, it was a bit underwhelming when compared to previous years. From my side, though? Huge music events, a fair number of booths, a solid (yet respectful) police presence, and just so many people. Like… SO many people. And since Bulgaria had just recently won Eurovision, we got to hear the winning song by DARA! Who, for those like me who haven’t heard of her, was the one who won Eurovision.

We relaxed, we met Andrea’s friends, we listened to music, and we enjoyed the sun and shade as the day went on. The concert ended, the parade / march began, and we walked until we stopped walking. It was fun, it was lovely, and I appreciated the time to simply enjoy a bit of an adventure while listening and reading Bulgarian (which I’m still learning, slowly but surely).

The end of Pride was… a bit weird, I have to admit. We were marching, and had stopped for a moment as we’d stopped multiple times before – For a traffic light, or some other official situation we assumed. But 15min onward, we were still stopped and waiting. Someone finally came down the line, “The march is over! Congrats! Go home.”

… wait, what? Yeah, turns out, there wasn’t actually an ending point… just a random stop near the palace of culture? No real announcements, no major event, just an organizer coming down the line telling folks to disperse and go home. It was… strange. Anti-climactic, of course, but also it kind of felt undermined? Andrea had opinions, to the surprise of no one, but I couldn’t really comment one way or the other. We did chat with one of the organizers briefly, but… no real new information.


Aside from that one weird note, though, it really was an excellent weekend away.

Pride was lovely, and a great chance to get into the excitement and chaos of the city.

The birthday party was excellent – getting to meet lots of new people, practice a bit of Bulgarian, and eat delicious food? Yes please!

Slowly but surely, adventure continues!



Oct9

An Irish Whiskey Society whiskey tasting

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Thursday, 11-June-2026

Andrea’s been a part of the Irish Whiskey Society for a while now – I can’t quite remember how and when she joined, but I’ve gotten to hear about the tastings that they put on every so often.

It’s neat – Not quite my cup of whiskey, for one reason of another, but it’s cool and fun and I was quite excited to be invited along to a special tasting… a tasting for “airport exclusives”, alongside a few other rare bottles from the society’s private stores.

…

Yeah, I’m not saying no to tasting rare and unique whiskeys. Come on, now.

“So? How was it, Ben? Get to the point!”

Alright, alright – in short, it was lovely… but I’ll be honest with myself (and you, dear reader) that I’m not a particularly skilled or loquacious whiskey taster. I enjoyed many of them, was underwhelmed by some of them, and was thankful to be walked through the whole process.

I took photos of the ones that I could, and made a point to stay in the moment, appreciating the chance to try bottles that there’s pretty much no chance I’d pay for myself (not due to quality, but due to the sheer cost of the bottles).

Good times, had by all.

Oct7

Pride and interviews in New England

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Thursday, 04-June-2026 through Sunday, 07-June-2026

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been back to New England… a full month, almost!

Well, this time it’s for a new reason – not family, not friends (though I was excited to see both!), instead it was triggered by an invitation. An invitation to interview for a possible new job! That’s right… I applied to maybe half a dozen roles in the US, compared to my 350+ applications in Ireland, and they flew me out for an interview.

Tells a bit of a story about how experience translates across the Atlantic, doesn’t it?

But while I’d love to rant about that whole situation, and may well do so in a future post, today we consider the fun. I was flown out, and set up with both a hotel and a car rental. I sprung for Andrea’s flight, as it only seemed fair, and so we got an impromptu vacation out of it. A whirlwind one, mind you – arriving on a Thursday, interviewing on a Friday, and then flying back out late in the evening on Saturday… but you know what? It was freaking awesome.

Seriously – so much fun.

The interview? It went smooth and clean – no concerns, no hassles, and it was incredibly cool to get to see a production floor working at that scale and capacity (Apologies, but I’m being a bit intentionally vague there).

The exploring in the city? Lovely and fun – we even got to see a play on Friday evening, which was brutally powerful and incredibly well acted. Next to Normal, put on by the Trinity Rep in Providence. Neither of us were prepared for the crying and emotions it brought… but god damn, were Andrea and I happy that we went.

On Saturday? We got to hit up Boston Pride! The first of a whole series of Pride Month celebrations, as it would turn out, but for now it was just a fun point of excitement. To be fair, Pride itself was… okay. I mean, we got there near the end of the celebrations, so everyone was starting to wind down. The parade / march had happened, and let’s be honest here – Boston has been doing Pride for ages. It’s not like the march is fighting against people actively opposing it… or, at least, the folks opposing are in such a minority that I’ve never heard of them. Instead, it seemed like it was a simple and fun day in the park for our Gen Z counterparts. I mean, seriously – it felt like 93% of the people there were 20 years younger than me.

So, yeah. It was a whirlwind trip, no two ways about it.

And, as it turns out, it would be just the beginning…