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Mark has a business partner in Canada, who came here to Bulgaria for the first time a couple of weeks ago. He flew in on a Friday, and promptly received the Bulgarian welcome….drinks, dinner, more drinks, more drinks, more drinks. You get the idea. The next day Mark and I headed over to the apartment we had rented for Canuck-y (it was cheaper to rent an apartment for a couple of weeks than to stay in a hotel) to make sure he had food and basic necessities. We dropped off a sandwich, some bread, some liquid replenishment, and made plans to pick him up later in the evening for dinner and poker with the other partners in the company.

After a nice dinner and a friendly game of poker–which we lost….don’t ask!–we dropped Canuck-y back at his flat with the admonishment that he needed some rest to recover from the jet lag and we would get a hold of him the next morning. Mark and I went home and slept away.

Until 8:30 in the morning. When Canuck-y called us and informed us he hadn’t slept all night, he had met up with some of the employees AFTER we had tucked him in for the night, and they had gotten home at like 7:00ish in the morning. He said he would sleep another time, but for now, he wanted to go up Vitosha Mountain and see what there is to see. We agreed to meet him in an hour.

Exactly one hour later, we were at his building pressing the buzzer for him to let us in. No response. More pressing. No response. Calling the phone in his flat. No response. Finally, we got into the building as someone else came out, and we knocked and rang his doorbell. No response.

“Maybe he went out and about”, we thought, then quickly realized that could be dangerous. He does not know the city, nor a word of Bulgarian, nor does he have a cell phone. Should he get lost, he wouldn’t even know where he was staying, since he was staying in a flat and not a hotel. Things were not looking good.

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Like any good detective, we decided to contact the people with whom he was last seen. They told us he had been fine, was just planning on taking a shower, and then they, too, were supposed to meet him to go up Vitosha. We explained that we couldn’t find Canuck-y and he wasn’t answering the door despite all the racket we were making.

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“I’m 80% sure he is in there asleep”, explained the guy. Well….as any mathematician could tell you , that leaves 20% of uncertainty. And then my imagination began. I imagined him wandering the streets haphazardly, trying to find the Canadian (or even British) Embassy, which of course, would be closed on a Sunday. I imagined him dead in the flat and no one able to access his limp, lifeless body. And I did what any good wife would do….I alerted Mark to all my imaginings, instilling fear and worry where once there had been none.

And Mark did what any god friend would do. He flew into action. He called the property manager and asked for a key. The manager said he could get us one by…say….oh….4:00 in the afternoon (this was at, like 11:00 in the morning). And Mark said, “sounds great, I’ll see you then”. Yep. There he goes, whisking off to save people in an instant, Superman style.

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I reminded Mark that Canuck-y could be DEAD in there, or off wandering the streets, and he could NOT be content just waiting FIVE FULL HOURS to find out. So, he sighed deeply, and reluctantly called the property manager right back and demanded politely asked for a key sooner. So a cleaning lady met him at 1:00 and let him in.


And what did he find? Yep. You guessed it. The Canuck, face down in his bed. Snoring. Heavily. Dead to the world.

Because, as it turns out….jet lag WILL win every time!