I went a ways south for the weekend, to the small town of Veliki Preslav. My mission: To help another volunteer get a webpage up and running and show her the ropes of updating such a thing. The result: The Veliki Preslav Museum Webpage.
The town is a great place, similar in many ways to the old stomping ground Sitka, in Alaska. It used to be Bulgaria's capital, long ago, just as Sitka was Alaska's capital long ago. Since those days, it has come off its pedestal and settled into a town of about 8 or 9 thousand, just like Sitka. And also just like Sitka, it relies, in part, on tourism. It just doesn't do the tourism thing as well as Sitka at this point, getting only an estimated 10,000 a year, which is probably very optomistic.
Nevertheless, it's a beautiful town. Rolling hills run from one to another and in the valley sits the old palace of The Great Preslav, now mostly in ruins. It has an interesting history, does the palace. The man who found it was running on less than they had when they found Troy. There was a line in a poem about it, and in the 1910's an archaeologist decided to treasure hunt on that clue and a hunch.
Turned out to be a pretty good hunch. The palace is massive and turned up a lot of gold and medieval Bulgarian pottery, all very valuable finds. Now there are excavations all over the site and a beautiful museum nearby. All very interesting, too.
So we hung out there for a weekend. Sheryl, the volunteer in Veliki Preslav, and Tiffany did most of the cooking while I babysat Sheryl's puppy, an explosive ball of legs Sheryl picked up at the Shumen bus station and nursed back to health. It was nice being around a dog again. There's something universally comforting about a dog that I can't go long without.
And then after all the work and play was done, I had to head home yesterday afternoon by bus. It was a small, old "Busoil" covered in grime and making a sound like a coughing hippo when we ten passengers got on board. It died 45 minutes into the trip. Dumping oil onto the street, apparently.
So we waited 2 hours in the middle of nowhere before a minbus come from Shumen, picked us up, and took us on to Silistra. During the whole thing, I sat back in my chair and read. The weekend had been far too peaceful and relaxing to let an ancient Bulgarian bus stress me out. And I figured everything would work. Fortunately, everything did.
Posted by Rob at March 15, 2004 05:45 PM