Alaskan Bulgarian

Moving Around

Well, I was in a nice little mountain town called Bratsigovo Monday and Tuesday, I spent Wednesday travelling, and now I'm at an internet club in a valley town on the main rail line between Sofia and Burgas called Stamboliski. I'm hopping around the south end of Bulgaria preaching the benifits of cheese, and lots of it. Good wholesome, American cheese. With the occasional gouda...I'm sorry, I thought that joke would work out somehow, but it wasn't going anywhere. I'm teaching the new volunteers (the B-15s) a thing or two about teaching. The new sitemate, the person who will teach in Silistra in September and henceforth to be dubbed "The New Sitemate," is one of them. But The New Sitemate is in Batak, and a primary school teacher, and so out of my experience. I'm sure he'll live somehow.

I was impressed by Bratsigovo. It's a town that knows where it's going and what it wants. That may well be because it has a population of less than two thousand and a collective idea is easier to hold on to with a population that size, but it's also because the place has a philosophy. It's a mountain town with many nice trails to small monasteries in the hills and a small bottling plant that pushes out good, clean "Bratsigovo" brand mineral water.

On the upper end of the town, near a church with a belfry that houses a thousand swallows and a bell that tolls not on the hour but at twenty till or a quarter of (or whenever really, and always very early in the morning), is one of the finer hotels I've visited in Bulgaria. You could call it a bed and breakfast, but that would really be doing it a disservice. The hotel is built like a late-nineteenth century Rodopi villa. It has a restaurant in the front garden where the serving staff is always willing to chat about how tall you are or how big your shoes might be, and they dress in period costume. It's like eating at a Disneyland restaurant! The food was great, the bed comfortable, and no TV, but one in the bullpen on demand if I thought I needed it (I never did). If you're ever in Bratsigovo, ask around for the Damova Kushta. I don't think anyone in the town wouldn't know about it.

And thus far, I've decided that Stamboliski reminds me a lot of Hill Valley. There doesn't seem to be a clock tower that hasn't worked since the Great Lightning Storm of November 12th, 1955, but honestly, who needs one if you aren't travelling around in a time machine that requires x amount of [g]igawatts to function properly? See? It would just be wasted space. Strangely, a lot of towns in Bulgaria remind me of Hill Valley. Either I'm living in a country modelled on the ideas inherent in a backlot or the aging process in Bulgaria is eerily similar to the one they used to age the buildings thirty years in that honored town.

So yeah, um, Stamboliski is your standard Bulgarian town, a more detailed description of which sounds like a great idea for one of those times when I find myself with nothing to write. The volunteers here are great, green, and solid teachers. Good, hearty stock like all PC people. And they come from all over the place. Seattle, Kansas, Virgina, Boston, Ohio, you name it, we have a volunteer here...Except Hawaii, I can't think of anyone I've met from Hawaii. I'll bet there are reasons for that, but they probably don't need to be dug into.

In fact, I'm on the road, and I could visit an internet club anywhere really, so I'd best take advantage of the joys of a rainy Stamboliski night and sign off. Photos to come some time next week. Maybe. If I remember.

Posted by Rob at June 3, 2004 06:12 PM