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lupestripeWritten Sunday 15 July, around 9pm EET
I seem to have settled into a familiar routine now - getting up around 10am and seeing sights from 11am until 6pm before heading to my accommodation for a three hour siesta. Then it's off out again for the evening's festivities. This does mean touring in the heat of the day but this is when everything is open and a leisurely lunch in a river-side cafe can easily prevent exhaustion. Still, I'm getting used to the heat - it's been sunny and averaging 38C throughout my stay - and I'm surprised my feet and skin have risen to the challenge.
I am now in the town of Zaya, on the other side of Dryanovo. I am staying with the owner of a pension here and its far more swish than the last place, with a swimming pool and hammock too. I have free range of the downstairs while they will be up top for the next two nights, the last of my trip. The village is crawling with British people, as evidenced by the cars with UK plates. Apparently this area is popular with Brits looking to buy property so hopefully it won't become another ghastly Benidorm type place. Having said that, the influx of foreigners has visibly gentrified the depopulated villages here, restoring them to their former glories as well as providing an influx of much needed cash into the local economy. Apparently there are no robberies here though so the doors are left open all the time, harking back to halcyon days which I'm not convinced ever really existed. Hopefully the next two nights will be the same.
Last night we went to Veliko Tarnovo again after Georgi had brought me some rather tasty meat and mash for me to sample that his grandmother had cooked. I'm still unsure about the meat here - it seems to be far more fatty and squidgy than that back home. The chicken in particular looks more like red meat than white too.
When I said I was alone in the last holiday home, this wasn't strictly true as I was sharing it with a rather demanding cat who lived somewhere on the premises. There was a rather loud donkey somewhere too but I only heard that - at one point I was convinced it was humping something. I ate my meals outside as it's still 30 degrees at night so cue cat coming up and meowing in my face, rubbing itself on my legs and jumping on my lap frequently looking for sustenance. It didn't want bread as it turned up its nose at that, sensing meat. I relented and gave it some but the meal was quite uncomfortable due to the cat's sheer unpredictable nature.
It was the same this morning with my banitza - a White cheese and chive affair (they only seem to have two types of cheese here, yellow and white for some reason). I had two and decided to save the third for later, wrapping it up and leaving it on the outside table while I packed. Cue the persistent pussy who punished me for not giving her a morsel as she jumped on the table, tore through the two plastic bags and sturdy container holding my remaining banitza and just ran off with it! I hope the cheese gives her intense constipation.
In Veliko Tarnovo on Saturday night, Kras grabbed an ice cream from a stall whose seller he was particularly enamoured towards. I noticed they were serving Sneakers ice cream rather than Snickers which conjured up images of an offering that tasted more like mouldy feet than chocolate. Then we grabbed a couple of beers and some crisps from a local store before heading to the park to drink them in the midnight heat. In the supermarket I noticed a chocolate product from Turkey called Foxtoy, with an anthropomorphic fox licking its lips on the box so promptly bought it for the lulz (rolls eyeballs at the use of that phrase). The fountains in the park, restored with EU money, were magical as they sprayed jets of water into the air, all lit up by changing red, green, purple and white coloured lights. The sound of the gushing water was therapeutic and cooling while the lights added a serenity and pleasantness to the evening. There were many people there having fun including a large drunk man in a vest who Georgi knew well. Kras, Georgi and I chilled by the fountains until they turned them off just after 12, chatting about football and sports mainly, before we headed to a bar with a beautiful view over the town. By 1.30am things were winding down and we decided to split, with Georgi falling asleep in the back of the car on our way home. A point of note from the fountain area was the mural of 'The Wolf' from Eastern Europe's equivalent to Tom & Jerry. The wolf always fails to catch the clever rabbit but I do feel sorry for the wuffle as he looks so sweet.
The first stop on Sunday after the cat stole my breakfast was the remote town of Tryavna, deep in the Stara Planina mountains and accessible by a single gauge railway track or more twisty turny roads with numerous hairpin turns. The Bulgarian driving is erratic and impetuous at best and some of the maneuvers I have seen while I have been here have been frightening. Roads like this only exaggerate the danger. We arrived safely though, saw the neat municipality building and headed into the old town over a delightful old bridge. Tryavna has always been a crafts town and its existence is due to trade in these commodities. The houses are therefore traditional and neat while the old town is the very definition of picture-book. The clock tower in particular is stunning and ambling around was a very relaxing experience.
Selling silk, rugs, rose oil and gold were the main ways of life in the 18th and 19th century and the money made meant woodcarvers, artists and builders also became hot property. At Daskalov House, built in 1804 for wealthy merchant Hristo Daskalov who traded in silk and rose oil, the wood carving reaches its zenith with two giant suns - the fiery July Sun and the serene May Sun - carved into the roofs of the two main upstairs rooms. This was a result of a competition between master and apprentice, Dimitur Oshanetsa and Ivan Bochukovesta respectively. The former won but the latter graduated to a master as a result of his work here. There is an exhibition here of wood carving too with icon frames, portrait busts and statues of kings and bishops worthy of particular mention. The roof was also of traditional stone, built like a dry-stone wall but with even greater craftsmanship due to the need for the ceiling to remain watertight.
At Shkoloto we entered a beautiful courtyard underneath a low stone archway. This building was opened in 1839 originally as a school and had a Beamish type quality to it with a school room laid out as it used to be, with younger kids writing letters in sand, older ones on slate and older still using quill and parchment. The old school rooms also hold exhibitions of the paintings of Dimitur Kazakov, who seemed to draw the same moody constipated face repeatedly but had a varied and vivid use of colour, and the wooden carvings of his brother Nikola, including one of a man with a humongous penis. Another room contains some antique clocks for no discernible reason but this area was an industrial centre for a long time so perhaps there is relevance there.
Our next stop saw us - that's Georgi, his sister and I if I failed to qualify earlier - head back to the outskirts of Dryanovo towards the monastery which is set deep in the hills and has had a tumultuous history. After a lunch at a place where the waiter was a joker whose only English he knew was the menu and we sat with the boss of an adjacent adventure assault course who spent most of his time drinking, smoking and playing football than working, we leisurely strode through the whitewashed buildings and into the church where candle lighting and chanting seemed to be the order of the day. The monastery was torched by Ottoman troops in the 15th and 17th centuries and was also a key site in the Ottoman-Russian war after the April Rising of 1876. Veliko Turnovo's Central Revolutionary Committee used the monastery as a base and 100 rebels were besieged there for nine days up until 8 May. Most were killed by the Ottomans and there is a poignant white memorial in their honour. The monastery was subsequently torched while the nearby Bacho Kiro cave was named after a rebel who committed suicide by jumping into the sluicing river rather than be captured or killed by the enemy.
The cave itself is set deep into one of the cliff faces that surround the monastery. We walked up to it and entered to observe a world of awesome rock formations, stalagmites, stalactites and wondrous acoustics. Green Christmas lights were guiding the way on the short route - we couldn't go on the long one as it's ridiculously expensive without a cast of 10 people and we were but three - but we still got a good flavour of the caves, seeing places like Purgatory and The Concert Room where some musicians record their vocals due to the excellence of the acoustics. There were coins everywhere too, pushed into the crystalline walls and the sodden ground assumedly for luck. It was lucky for us we found a good place to keep cool and with museum prices so low - typically less than £1 - it was money well spent.
Our final act of the day before heading to Zaya was to walk up to a dam where loads of people were swimming. I noticed a couple of memorials too, perhaps after tragedy struck when people hit the rocks after jumping from 12m into the river, but mostly the families were relaxed and having fun, swimming or cooking food on a barbecue. Meanwhile hearing of a prevalence of snakes in the area I was a bit edgy and refused to wall up the mountain to get a view of the valley afterwards. It was a shame but the heat was also sapping my energy so we headed back after another busy day. On the way back we saw loads of monuments by the roadside - many commemorating the Russian victory over the Ottomans which liberated Bulgaria - as well as a sign saying "Attention Children Cross" rather than Crossing which I thought was quite amusing. The use of English here is generally good when people know how to speak it but amusing mistakes sometimes slip through. Still, perhaps it is a good warning as hell hath no fury like an angry child.
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Date: 2012-07-18 08:29 pm (UTC)Do you have a Flickr account? Sounds like you'll be able to populate a new Set just with this trip! (I regret I'm terrible at remembering to check others' accounts there, though - when I think of Flickr, I'm always thinking what more I can upload that's particularly worthwhile. There's such a lovely fuzzy feeling about comments and faves, let alone hitting Explore =:)
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Date: 2012-07-19 10:11 pm (UTC)Yep I have a flickr account but have used all my space up. Must either get a new one or pay to enhance the one I have.