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.