I may be a vegetarian, but I would eat a peacock in a second. I’m not even picky: peacock brownies, peacock pizza, I’d even eat peacock ice cream with a little feather sticking out of the cup for garnish. And then I’d eat the feather. Maybe you’re wondering: why all this spite? Don’t worry, there’s a story to back it up.

I was about 3 years old and I was at the London Zoo with my parents for a day out, as we lived there at the time (in England, not in the zoo). The London Zoo just happens to be the oldest zoo in the world, and opened in 1828. I was in my stroller, buckled in tight. It was then that my parents handed me one of my favorite things: a chocolate chip cookie.

I took a bite and began to smile from the top of my ears to the tips of my toes. And I think it was at this point that my parents turned away, because soon after a peacock waddled over to me, plumage all aflutter. (This frankly was weird, because the male peacocks are only supposed to shake their tailfeathers when they’re trying to find a lady peacock to mate with, and I know I’m not their type.)

Apparently English zookeepers think hungry, horny, 3-foot-tall birds should just be able to mingle amongst the common folk. The peacock stared at me with his beady little eyes, lowering his head so he was almost at my eye level. And then he grabbed the cookie right out of my hand and stood there, just past my reach, chowing down on it. As I was fastened in to my stroller, there was not a damn thing I could do. Like some kind of school bully, he just stood there until he finished the whole cookie before running away. And I wish I had yelled out, “What? Don’t you want to insult my mama while you’re at it!?” as I shook my little fist.

My parents never saw this peacock, or so they say. They just thought I had a very vivid imagination. I know this, because they asked if the peacock could talk and whether he asked for something to drink after he finished the cookie. The valuable lesson I got from this excursion? Never trust a dude who’s into tail.

- by Emily Epstein of b’scuse me? fame.

You really need a car to get around in this part of the world. I eventually returned my Eurailpass unused because there basically are no trains running in the Balkans. I walked across the border from Romania to Bulgaria, hoping to find a guy on the other side who would take me to civilization for a reasonable price and not leave my lifeless body in a ditch somewhere, even though he didn’t speak any English. Remarkably, I did, and soon I was in Varna at the bus station looking at my map and guide book trying to figure out where to go next. A college kid sat down next to me and suggested Veliko Tarnovo, and it turned out that the next bus was leaving soon, so I got on it.

I was somewhat relieved to see that Bulgaria is trying hard to join the Western world. Bulgaria is not a land of peasants and scammers. Bulgaria has fashion and industry. People seem to be working and pulling ahead. There are miles and miles of sunflowers, all with their heads turned in the same direction.

Veliko Tarnovo is a nice little town where no one speaks a word of English except the real-estate agents, who have been selling apartments and farms to the Brits in the past few years. Real Estate is booming as more Brits arrive and make the locals rich by paying 10,000 pounds for an apartment. Next year it will be twice that.

In Bulgaria, everyone over the age of 14 must smoke cigarettes. I was lucky they didn’t throw me in jail for not smoking. Even though smoking is not allowed on the buses, the driver of my bus to Sofia smoked five cigarettes in three hours, and the tour guide woman smoked two. Fortunately, no one else smoked on the bus. Sofia is a complete write-off. Can’t imagine why anyone would go there. But I think the Bulgarians might make it into the EU – I think they have the entrepreneurial drive and the social desire to go forward, not back. So far, so good – I had been spending most of my time in interesting tourist places, not in the big ugly cities. I took a bus to Skopje and found myself in the middle of Macedonia…

- by David Siegel