Hate women?

Is this ...

...misogynistic or simple fun? Discuss amongst yourselves.

In which we travel to "Bridge of the first shot" and I buy peaches

(Koprivshitsa, Bularia 4 weeks ago) - OK back to the trip... we were then next off to spend a night in Koprivshitsa. This is a cute lil' place tucked into the Stara Zagora mtns.

Approximately 150 years ago, as the Ottoman turk control relaxed in Bulgaria due to institutional decay the Bulgars started to get their nationalist hackles up and start to revive their culture... This is called the National Revivalist periond, but I think that in truth it was more like a period of cultural invention as they really hadn't been out of foreign yoke since 1200 AD. But anyway.

Koprivshitsa was a prosperous merchant town during this period and today shows some of the best presevered examples of "Bulgarian revivalist" style architecture. It is way way out in the countryside and took us 2.5 hours by bus to get there. A few items of note:

-The bus stopped for a 20 min break and I got out and bought peaches from some old lady's veggie stand. I asked how much and she showed me seven fingers. By my reckoning this was a little steep as it translated into almost Whole Foods Prices. I gave her the money and she looked confused and then said something to her friend and lauged and the handed me back change that was almost the same amount I had handed her. I had overestimate the price by a factor of 100! WOW! One of the best things about Bulgaria was how cheap everything was. I loved spending money there. They were almost some of the best peaches I ever had.

-Over the next 2 days we saw lots of donkeys. And horses. And mules. Being used for work. Ploughing fields. Pulling carts with families in them etc. The Bulgaria countryside was the first place I have ever been were animals were being used for non romantic or fun reasons. People probably would have rather had a pickup truck, but they went with what they had. A donkey. We saw lots of families in rickety old hay filled carts on some old road on their way into town.

-We saw gypsies. Real honest-to-goodness gypsies. Lots of them. Walking by the side of the road. At the bus depot. Begging in the street. And everywhere we went they were begging, malnourished looking, and filthy. We would see whole clans of them later in the week just sitting aimless staring off into space on train platforms as we would speed through en route to the coast. I saw no fat gypsies. It is amazing the these people have not been absorbed into the local culture after 800 years after having left the Indian subcontinent. Bulgaria has more gypsies than any other country with the exception of Romania.

-Speaking of cheap. We had the cheapest meal of our whole trip that night in Koprivshitsa. Nicola and I had salad, soup, dessert, main meals, and beer and it came to the equivalent of $4. It wasn't our best meal, but it was a real restaurant and the price was right.

We had a lovely time there. Found our hotel rightaway, but got in late enough that we mostly just went to bed after dinner.

the next morning we toured the revivalist houses and saw various historical sites. This town is also famous for being the site of the "First Shot" of the Bulgaria uprising against the Turks. I had to do a bit of digging, but found out that this wasnt actually the revolution that got Bulgaria its independence. They had to wait many years for that. In fact the uprising was put down quickly and many of the conspirators met with an extremely unpleasant end. The guides leave that out.

But Koprivshitsa was lovely. In general Bulgaria is not overrun with tourists and 'not to miss' but out of thee way spots like this are still pretty genuine.

From there we were onto Plovdiv which a number of people told us we could not miss. But first we had to get there. We knew that it wasnt going to easy to get there, as people dont usually go the route we were going and the way were going it. The bus drivers, speaking no english, were little help. Finally we ran into some Polish girl backpackers, one of whome spoke Bulgaria and she talked to the bus driver and we found a bus and what stop we need to get off at and we were on our way. We took one bus for 20k the wrong way. Stayed in Pirdop for a few hours and then caught another bus to Karlovo and then another to Plovidic. Beautiful countryside and it was a great place to travel slowly through.

Infinite Time!, Kick ASS!

(Geneve, Switzerland) - In keeping with our "faster-cheaper-better" new look here at the CleverBlog "we" bring you our comic of the week which I came across on Cosmic Variance

Click on the pciture for the whole comic. Infinite Time. Kick ASS. Indeed.

In which I start to tell you about the land of the Bulgars

(Sofia, Bulgaria, about 3.5 weeks ago) - Landed in Sofia, coming from Geneve via Paris no problem and was welcomed by a suspicious passport control lady as well as immediately being struck by the Cyrillic lettering on everything. The Cyrillic would turn out to be pretty exhuasting in the end and although I would love Bulgaria, I would happy to be heading to Turkey. Although you quickly learn to translate various characters, in these Slavic countries one cannot even count on coming up with ones accepted misprounciation of place names. You just have to memorize shapes.

We were met at the airport by an excitable and very enthusiastic kid who would take us to the hotel. He wanted to know if they really have "hundreds and hundreds of cheese in Switzerland." I told him, "yes probably thousands even." Our hotel that first night was our first in a series of immpecabley clean, newly remodled, and very cheap hotels that we had found via the web. As with many things, this was indicative of the dichotomy that exists in Bulgaria between the old and the new, between those preparing for EU membership and those - unfortunately - probably getting left behind.

Sofia can be seen mostly in a day. We hit most of the major sites in fact that afternoon and early evening ... various Orthodox churches, the HUGE monument to the Soviet 'Liberators'. These kind of monuments are all over Bulgaria, with many local communities wanting to remove these reminders of ugly times, but not having the funds to do so. I rather like them and so we took pictures of them all over the country. They usually have a 'workers unite' theme with strong jawed men laborer welcoming similarly strong jawed soldiers with hugs and sometimes even ...

... more. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

I really liked them, although many Bulgarians we spoke with couldn't understand what there was to like. I understand that I guess, but still it is living history... in the same way that I love the fascist inspired archetecture of the Milano train station. These were structures built to awe and impress.

The next day having hit most of the major sites, we decided to get out of town a bit. If I could plan the trip again, I would have had us spend a day in the mtns. of the southwest. The best we could do under the circumstances, was to so some hiking on the big Mt. Vitosha south of town. This mt. rises almost 8000 ft and even showed a patch of snow near its summit. I thought to take a bus out there, but the concierge at the hotel talked me into taking a taxi. Normally this would be too pricey of an option, but in the end the 45 min ride way way out on a cobblestone mtn road was only the equivalent of about $4. This road, btw was amazing. It went out for more than 50km out into the mtns and was perfect rainbow pattered cobblestones the whole way and wide enough to drive 4 semis side by side on. I was told later than it had been paid for my the Nazis in WWII, but put in by local craftsmen. Why they didn't just gravel it, I cannot fathom, but it was impressive.

We spend the next 4 hours hiking up parts of Mt. Vitosha. We saw some beautiful woods and got some great views of the city below us. Sofia looks weird from high up. It is on a great flat plain between two mtn. ranges and the city looks to be a mix of old town areas and where the central planning authorities just aribritrarily put up buildings. There are large tracks of land with big project apt. buildings and then 1km of meadow and then more city again... It is a weird look for a capital city.

Sofia from the mtns.

The area we hiked is a ski area in the winter and we walked along the most wonderfully decrepit ski lift part of the time. It works in the winter, but it looks like circa 1960. Kinda cool, but I am sure the locals would appreciate a high speed quad.

Looking kinda lost at a trail junction, a guy offered in very good english to help us find out way. We were fine, but ended walking with him for awhile. He was evidently some kind of medical device entreprener and bemoaned the lack of opportunities in the country. He hoped for a better life for his son in 20 years, and then glumly noted that his father had hoped the same for him... meaning that things don't change. We wished him luck at their turn off and continued back down our hill.

We caught our taxi back into sofia (our cab driver having agreed to meet us there 6 hours after she dropped us off at the trail head), picked up our bags and the hotel and made it to our bus to get to Koprivshtisa.

In which I start to post about my trip...

(Geneve, Switzerland) - This is the first of several installments about my recent trips. I am little busy nowadays, as I was gone for 3.5 weeks ... but I figured I better get something up lest I start to lose some of my extensive readership.

Nicola and I took a trip through Bulgaria and Turkey. Originally this was supposed to be a tidy little visit to see friends and collegues of hers at there summer house in Varna on the black sea, but it quickly morfed and expanded on both ends to become a more phantasmagoric version of itself. Both countries were fantastically beautiful and it was wonderful to see this part of the world.

Monday the 18th, we would fly the Sofia and spend 1.5 days there. Then travel to the quaint little country town of Koprivshitsa to see the Bulgarian revialist buildings there. Then onto Plovdiv... an ancient city built on 7 hills and first fortified by Philip of Macedon (Alex the Great's father). From there we would take trains across Bulgaria to Varna and spend 3 nights there on the Black sea. Then we would bus it to the Turkish Aegean and stay in Cannakale, seeing WWI battlefield Gallipoli and Troy, before heading along the south side of the Sea of Marmara and approaching Instanbul (not Constantinople... why did Constantinople get the works .... It is noone's business but the Tuuuuuurrrkkks) by the sea. 4 nights and 3 full days in Instanbul and we would head home.

I - not "will be", but instead "am" - back

(Geneve, Switz.)- Whew! I am back. Among other places, in the last 4.5 weeks I have seen or been to ...

-Stonehenge
-Istanbul
-Hiking in the Rila Mtns. of Bulgaria
-The top of Mt. Blanc
-the ancient city of Troy
-Swimming in the Black Sea
-Across the Dardanelles straits via boat from Europe to Asia and back.

... in no particular order.

I broke my pledge to post more regularly pretty much right away, in part due a hectic travel schedule and in part due to little Internet access in places like Sofia Bulgaria. Many stories to tell and I will tell a bunch of them in the space over the next few days.