It was a wonderful warm summer day and I responded positively and with big pleasure to an invitation from few of my friends, photographers from "Club Photo World", Bulgaria for a city walk and ice-cream tasting at a new ice cream garage shop with increasing reputation, where the rumors say the owners, a young Italian family who decided to live and do business in Bulgaria, prepare home-made delicious miracles :)

It was Saturday and the shop, located on one small, cozy and full with artistic ateliers downtown street in Sofia, was, I would say, logically overcrowded with a long and noisy queue of people from all generations waiting patiently to try the home-made thingy. After choosing our varieties of sweet, it became obvious we'll have to find a place outside where we could sit and enjoy the food and the views.

After a quick discussion, we decided to go to the city garden in front of the "Ivan Vazov" National Theater. So, we slowly walked towards it, eating our ice-creams and talking about different topics, photography, travel plans and destinations, food (of course) and where we have been so far during the summer.

On our way to the garden, we crossed the unusually empty "Rakovski" street:

If you've ever been to Sofia you know that there are several wonderful old buildings, interesting and even revolutionary from architectural perspective. The period of time between the liberation from the Ottomans in 1878 and 1944, when Bulgaria has joined the Eastern socialist block was full of rapid development both in social and cultural aspect.
Today, all those marvelous old buildings are virtually blended with the new and modern type architecture ones. That's typical of Sofia. Nothing like, let's say, Prague where you could spend hours in the old central part of the city.

But now back to our walk! :)
It took us about ten minutes to go to the garden and at the time we found a place to rest our bottom parts around the beautiful fountain there, nobody was eating anymore. That is just in case you wonder why there isn't any ice-cream in the photos I'm going to share next with you. This garden is very famous, it is usually packed with people: wanderers, street musicians, some just meeting their friends, and the local chess society has a constant presence there and you could always challenge a player. Or be challenged ;)

That day I decided to take a photo of everyone from our group, so here they come below. All black and white, because, you know, imagination does colors better than eyes!

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Villy, beautifully smiling at me for being surprised by my camera

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Emo, the "generator and the main engine" of Club Photo World, obviously I was not able to surprise him. :P

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Veronica, also smiling at me thus helping me improve the photo :D

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Konstantin, holding Veronica tightly :)

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Asya, I think she's trying to figure out what am I doing :)))

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Viara, always making funny faces at me, and Emo trying to photo-bomb :)

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Elly, telling me "Stop taking those photos" politely with her body language :P

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My favorite glass type of self-portrait, with Viara

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Another selfie, this time in the designer glasses of Kass, me and Viara posing and enjoying the deformations :)

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And the last selfie, me and Sanny :*

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While we were sitting there and enjoying the relaxing summer evening, I managed to create a short time-lapse, so many interesting people were passing by:

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Finally, it was about time we split and go home but not without taking few more photos on our way to our cars and the city transport:

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"
Indeed, an excellent question! In my case, that would depend on the day, I would say! :P
Somewhere between 7 and 100 years old, go figure! :)

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Some common roman soldier dude in his chariot on the National Theater roof, trying to blow off the Moon with his ultrasonic trumpet. He's partly succeeded, I guess...

In the end, a beautiful time in a place to remember!
I hope you've enjoyed this short story.

You could find out more about "Club Photo World" Bulgaria, a non-profit organization that works to create a united photographic community in Bulgaria, contributing to the development and popularization of photography. Club Photo World is created by people loving photography for people loving photography.

https://photoworld.bg/

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Copyright: Damian Hadjiyvanov, Light Captured

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