Our meeting took place just days after a stray Nato bomb destined for Serbia had landed on a house in the suburbs of Sofia - in Rose Street, no less - piercing through an attic roof and heading out of the living room while a baby slept upstairs.
It was in some ways, a time to celebrate, joked some of my Bulgarian friends. At least it got the Balkan country on the front page of the world's newspapers.
The historically strife-ridden country found itself thrust in the limelight once again earlier this week after a general election which has no known precedent anywhere in the world.
The man who was born to be king - and spent only a few years on the throne as a boy before communists turfed his family out - returned to power, but this time via the ballot box, rather than by divine right.
Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburgotski II says he has set Bulgaria on a new course of reforms which will transform the country forever.
On Sunday he announced he favoured a broad coalition government with those who shared his priorities: speedy economic growth, and the push to join the European Union and Nato. He has yet to declare which parties he wishes to bring into his coalition or what his position will be.
But political analysts and those not among the 43% who voted for him (his nearest rivals, UDF, got 18%) are now asking just what the man who would be king can do for his country. The riveting election campaign was as much about celebrating the return of an exiled king as it was about putting Bulgaria, a stable Balkan country for the past four years, back on economic track.
''Their problem from now on will be the need to respond to expectations of a miracle and the impossibility of this happening,'' Krassen Stanchev, head of the Institute of Market Economics thinktank said on Bulgarian television. ''A debate on the future agenda of society has yet to begin,'' he added.
The king's party, the National Movement for Simeon II, was voted in following more than a decade of slow-moving reforms and the latest legislative period during which many found their living standards slipping lower than ever before. The average Bulgarian spends 50% of his or her earnings just on food.
But Simeon's critics accuse him of not having clearly defined his future role and for delivering vague promises.
The 64-year old businessman, who was until recently based in Madrid, has said that within the next 800 days he will have made a significant difference to people's lives. In some quarters of Bulgaria the word was that countdown clocks were being manufactured to measure the days.
In that time he wants to improve living standards, increase pensions and the average £60 a month salaries, boost the standing of ethnic groups, increase foreign trade, uproot corruption and reduce the 20% unemployment rate. Within the next year he aims to have created 10% growth, a goal which economists have thoroughly pooh-poohed.
Some say he has been reading too many fairy tales. Others say the problem is that he is part of a fairy tale himself and thus cannot see clearly.
''The tsar's 800 days start today,'' wrote the popular tabloid 24 Hours. ''He will govern us, whether we believe him or not. But we will remind him of the lessons given to those who have tried to govern us before.''
The question is, just how much of his power is simply symbolic? Staunch republicans say that in Bulgaria's case it's dangerous if many people have voted for Simeon simply because they think that he has a right to be in power. Some have accused Simeon of trying to brainwash the electorate.
In some ways it is hardly surprising that the impoverished electorate has fallen for the fairy tale, which goes, if we are sitting comfortably, as follows.
Once upon a time - in 1937 - a baby boy was born to King Boris. Simeon was considered special - by his parents at least - from the start. To celebrate his son's arrival, Boris granted amnesty to 4,000 prisoners, upgraded the exam results of every schoolchild and sent an air force major to the River Jordan to collect the baptism waters.
In 1943 Boris died - he was allegedly poisoned by Hitler - after which the boy king took to the throne. Just two years later, a communist-rigged referendum led to the abolition of the monarchy and he fled into exile.
His country was battered by decades of communism. It became grey and bleak.
And then, one day, the boy king returned. The sun came out; the gypsies in their shanty towns came out to cheer him on, his voter-subjects broke down police barriers to glimpse him, and a team of young lawyers and economists, a popular singer, an actress as well as (what else) a magician, were on his parliamentary list to bring him back to a position of power.
Following his election victory, the king mulled over whether he should become prime minister, or remain an éminence grise, ruling from the sidelines.
It is too soon to say " and they all lived happily ever after".
As one newspaper quipped prior to the election: ''We hope it's not the case of the emperor who has no clothes.''
Or, as a Bulgarian phrase puts it, he's a bit of a "cat in a bag" - a reference to accepting a pet kitten before you've even taken a look at it.
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