Writing this in the lunch break, dressed in the same clothes as yesterday. Last night we celebrated my colleague Tina's birthday at Josefina and I crashed at her place. You can follow her blog here - I hope she will post about her outfit as she looked fabulous!
We have a strong Balkan presence at our small office - Tina is from Bosnia, Sophie from Serbia, Jelena from Herzegovina and of course - me. Add Tina's brother and her cousin visiting from Serbia, and the atmosphere can get quite...lively. What I like about hanging with people from Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia is that I can be totally myself. I have heard from foreign people living in Bulgaria that one common feature is our brutal honesty - what you see is pretty much what you get. We can try and be political with you for a while, but at the end we are going to tell you what is really on our mind, and without much sugar-coating too. For example if I am annoyed with someone or if I have said something negative behind their back (it happens - we're human hehe), I cannot be smiling at them the minute they turn around. For me, there is a difference between being polite and being a hypocrite. Authenticity/personal integrity is something that I very much value in people, myself included. This has gotten me unfriended on Facebook a time or two, so if you guys start unliking my page soon I will forgive you! ;) Another thing that is not very close to our hearts is this whole notion of "lagom" - we can (unfortunately) very often see the world in black and white. There is even a revolutionary song praising our tendency to love and hate deeply. Not that i am very proud of it, but we do tend to fancy drama and extremities. That's however one of the things that make our parties just better! ;)
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![Shots with Tina](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b91325_fb9dfb469e3e4dcca959f4db667300e9~mv2_d_1500_1500_s_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_980,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/b91325_fb9dfb469e3e4dcca959f4db667300e9~mv2_d_1500_1500_s_2.jpg)
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b91325_3b9c6d9ef73b41bebfe73051ac977505~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_735,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/b91325_3b9c6d9ef73b41bebfe73051ac977505~mv2.jpg)