Last year, at about this time, maybe a little eariler, I helped run a boy's summer camp in a small seaside town called Obzor. It was a nice enough place, cheaper than the surrounding resorts and quiet. This past weekend I went back with a group of friends because it would be a nice place to spend a weekend.
It's still a nice town, but the resorts are creeping in. A new, massive hotel has recently opened and is charging 240 leva a night. Cheap if you're a package tourist looking for a nice 4-star hotel, but horribly expensive if you're a Bulgarian or a Peace Corps vounteer and know that there are people a block up from the beach renting rooms for as little as 8 leva a night. So the bit of the beach we spent most of our time on last summer has been completely overtaken by tourists from Germany, Russia, and Sweden, and as nice as it is to hang out with people who aren't American or Bulgarian, a crowded beach is still no fun. This summer we were "forced" to set up shop under the relatively quiet Helios Hotel, which I praised last summer for its hospitality. There were still Swedes (More than I remember from last year), and Germans, and Russians. But the beach wsa much quieter, and the water almost eerily empty.
It was a great weekend to be at the beach. And although my saying such a thing is about the equal of "It was a great night to be taking heroin" (Various health issues related to the sun, for those not in the know), I took care of myself, used sunscreen, and had fun. The problem is that the sun, while a lifelong enemy, also supports most of the things I have fun doing, like having fun at the beach. I'm not the kind who lays on the beach or reads, there are better places for that. But swimming, throwing things around in the water (frisbees, volleyballs, etc.), and all of a sudden, for me, beach volleyball are things that I have a great amount of fun doing and are pretty hard to do anywhere else.
So I just buck up, feel guilty, wear a shirt as much as possible, and slather myself in sunscreen every other hour or so. And occasionally I reminded myself I was in the Peace Corps and tried to make a good impression on the other beachgoers. That's important, too. In a completely modest way, of course.
Back in my first year here, I went to a party for the class that would be graduating in spring. That night, I was surprised when I heard "Soldier of Fortune" being sung and danced to by a group of 18 and 19 year-olds. I took it as an odd little quirk of the class. A song they had somehow attached themselves to at some point in their five years together.
Little did I know then the power Deep Purple holds over Bulgaria. For those of you unfamiliar with their history, Wikipedia has a solid detailing here. I bring this up because last night there was a Deep Purple concert in the small, coastal town of Kavarna and Silistra shut down because of it. Bars all over town shut down on a Thursday night, the streets were empty during the day, and the only question anyone asked all day was "Why aren't you going to see Deep Purple?"
When I said I wasn't going because the price of gas and ticket--around 30 leva--wasn't justified relative to my interest in the group, they looked at me like, well, a foreigner. Granted, I've played and listened to "Smoke on the Water" a lot in my life, but it isn't one of those songs that gets me fired up or means a great deal to me, and it and "Soldier of Fortune" are probably the only songs I'd recognize in the concert. Deep Purple just isn't my group.
Deep Purple is popular here, apparently, because it was one of the few Western groups allowed during the communist regime during the 80s. The Beatles, for example, had been banned since their beginning. This has given the songs a link to the ideals of freedom, Bulgarians say, and so they still deserve to be listened to today. Fine by me, I suppose, but I really wish that they wouldn't look at me like an alien when I don't get celebratory when I hear "Shades of Deep Purple" for the 1,987,654th time at the cafe.
Everything turned out fine on Monday. I got back into Silistra Monday night, ATM card in hand. I had to do some yelling in Bulgarian on the phone, but the bank came through for me. To my surprise. Dealing with a bank in Bulgaria seems to be a lot like dealing with one in America, only in a different language. Which makes it harder, but not so much you really notice. It's still a bank after all and the pains of bureaucracy seem to be universal.
I realize now, and finally, that this site has more or less turned into a description of my life here. I'm sure there are people who enjoy that, but I imagine most people want a description of, well, Bulgaria. It is in the title after all. Mostly, I've been trying to use the site to vent. And it has done its job, but today, we discuss the rams in Sofia, which will, coincidentally, also give me a chance to vent.
The trams in Sofia are part of the city's public transportation system, which means that, like the buses, they operate on a self-punching ticket system. This system is, for the most part and especially in theory, convenient. You walk on the tram, put your ticket in a little punching machine, and punch a pattern of holes into it.
If you don't punch your ticket or have no ticket, you may be caught by one of the control people, who hang out on the trams, and at an opportune moment stand up, throw on an official vest, and check and tear everybody's ticket on the tram. If they catch you, you pay 5 leva for one of their tickets (A set of five tickets normally runs 2 leva throughtout Sofia).
This is a fine system, and runs well enough in most of my experience. But on a hot, difficult, and long Monday, it failed. I had a perfectly good, punched ticket and was having a pleasant tram ride when one of the control people, an elderly woman in this case, came up to me, and tore my ticket, leaving me with a stub. She then turned to talk to someone who was complaining to her about being caught without a ticket. "Take your punishment and move on with life," I thought. After finishing with the complainer, the control women turned to me and I showed her that she had already ripped the ticket.
This was critical, as I did not tell her that she, herself, had ripped the ticket 10 seconds earlier. Or maybe it wasn't critical, I still don't know.
She walked down the tram, tore two more tickets, then came back to me. She asked to see my stub again. I gave it to her. "No, the tear is wrong," she said. "five leva."
"What?"
"You just have the stub," she replied. "And I've been tearing them upside down. They tore them rightside up going in the other direction. 5 leva!"
Despite the fact that seeing my cat walking around tearing tickets would have made more logical sense than that statement, she was raising her voice. Not wanting to make a scene, I made another mistake and gave her the five leva. After I did that she refused to listen to any argument I made. She refused to believe that I could show her the other half of my ticket in her pile, she just wrote out her 5 leva ticket, gave it to me, and shuffled along down the tram, lifting her head and saying "no" whenever I said something.
Frustrating.
Let's go back to Tuesday. Sometime Tuesday morning, I called the internet company in town because, once again and lo and behold, there was no working internet connection in my apartment. Normally, this wouldn't peeve me, but because I had a guest, it deprived two people of internet and that was unacceptable. The guy on the phone told me that he would put my name on the maintenance list and that another guy would swing by to check it out that afternoon.
So Owen and I waited in the apartment all afternoon, watching DVDs Owen hadn't seen or not seen in a while, and when 6:00 came around, we finally gave up on the internet guy. We walked around town and hung out in cafes like we did most nights of the week, and then went home, hoping for a better internet day on Wednesday.
It didn't come. Despite my going down to the office and asking very politely and seeing them put my name and address on the list, no one came to the apartment Wednesday afternoon either. Another afternoon was spent watching DVDs and lounging around the apartment. "Wasted" is a bit harsh, since there were conversations and the cat got lots of play and attention. All week long it was boiling hot outside when it wasn't pouring rain and thundering. And maybe relaxing was just what Owen was looking for at the end of his trip.
Thursday fooled us. The internet connection mysteriously reappeared around noon and disappeared just as mysteriously around 6:30. We never got a chance to go to the office to tell them what was happening. Anyway, we spent another afternoon in the apartment absorbed in the internet. We pulled ourselves away from the internet to play poker with the guys and saw the night melt away into Friday.
Friday came. I returned to the office in the morning and told an entirely different staffer what was happening. We waited all afternoon, and around 6 a guy showed up to help. We stopped the DVD we were watching, and I turned on the computer to show him what was happening. The internet, magically, was working. Frustrated, I asked him what could be causing so many irregular failures and he told me it might be power outages or something to do with electrical storms. He was guessing.
That night we left for Sofia so Owen could catch up on current movies with subtitles instead of Russia's dubbing (he hadn't planned on staying inside all week watching DVDs). Saturday morning we arrived in Sofia, and I went to an ATM in the center to withdraw some money for the weekend. What I didn't notice was that the main screen was frozen and that the machine wasn't really working. It swallowed my card and no amount of button pressing got the card back.
I went into the pharmacy where the machine was based and we waited (between trips to check in to a hostel) while the pharmacists working there tried to get the bank to come down and fix the situation. It was a Saturday and the bank wasn't going to do anything.
Four hours later, and with the clock approaching noon, we left the pharmacy and went to a nearby major branch of the bank owning the ATM (It's also the bank Peace Corps uses, so the card matched the ATM. I thought I had that on my side). After talking to one ineffective and one kindly security guard, I learned that there were no people of importance in the building, that there wouldn't be until Monday, that--no--there weren't any emergency numbers to call when a traveller needed assistance in a big, mildly expensive city like Sofia, and that I'd be able to do something about the whole thing if I showed up at the bank on Monday morning at 9:00.
On to the movies, then! Fortunately, Owen and I had enough pocket money to get both of us through the day as planned. We saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Batman Begins, and Sideways. I'm not sure if Sideways quite deserved all the praise it received last year, but that's not to say it wasn't a great flick. The Smiths were fun, and Batman Begins is easily my favorite of the series. I was a great day for movies, if a bad one for ATM cards.
A cheap dinner and a walk around town later, we were at the hostel and konked out after a long movie day following a long red-eye bus ride.
This morning, I sent Owen off to the airport so he could get back home to St. Petersburg, told the hostel people that I'd be staying another night, and came here--to Peace Corps headquarters--to catch up on a week with weak internet and to pass the time during a day when I'm short on cash and things to do. The results of Monday morning's bank stakeout will probably be revealed when I get back to Silistra Monday night. If the internet gods are smiling upon me.
Posts have been rare/non-existent over the past few days because Owen has arrived again in Bulgaria from his excursion into Moldova and the internet service that I currently subscribe to is absolutely terrible. Most of the weekend saw little or no internet. I subscribed to a new service Sunday and hopefully I'll have it running by the end of the week.
Yesterday, we left the horrible frustration of Silistra to escape to the coast. Varna in July is invaluable and worth the price of a bus fare there and back and the two hour trip that we needed to do twice in the same day. The sunflower fields are at their peak and there are miles of gold along the country roads leading out to the coast. The weather started out overcast, but the sun burned the clouds away and left a day that was warm, but not to hot. And Varna's air is much drier than the air on the Danube, so it felt much, much cooler.
After the entire Silistra American corps got off the bus, we allowed ourselves to be ripped off by a Varna cab before we learned that a standard cab fare is the same in Varna as it is in any Bulgarian town (50 stotinki per kilometer. If you're curious). We spent four hours on the beach near the sports arena, which we went to on recommenation and was much cleaner and quieter than the beaches in the center. Then we turned around for the bus station, paid less than half the price for a cab, and went back to Silistra refreshed. Good, solid times.
Since then, it's been all home, most of the time. There was a little administrative work to be done today, but relaxing at home is good, and in Silistra's 90 degree weather, I think it's wholly appropriate. Thunderstorms will come tonight though, and although it's always a gamble, they may cool things down around here. But that's really summer in Bulgaria, hot days and stormy nights and the weekends on the coast that make it all worth it.
I wouldn't write about my ongoing struggle with internet at home if it wasn't such a singular part of my life here and an example of life in Bulgaria in general. It's back now, hopefully for a while.
I went in yesterday to change my account to a pay by the month system instead of the data transfer pay system I've been on. My internet had been out all weekend, but I assumed that changing my account would mean a reset in the their system and that my account would come up fresh. Or something like that. Anyway, I didn't mention that I had no internet.
It was still gone today. So I went back to the office and asked about it. They said it should be working, and that I no longer needed to use the virtual private network (VPN) everybody still seems to be using. I went home, tried accessing the internet without the VPN, and had no luck. So I called a Bulgarian friend who I've pestered about this internet stuff because he uses the company to and, even though it's the only legitimate ISP in Silistra, he recommended it. So he must pay.
So we both went to the office, and he was surprised to hear that, yes, we no longer needed to use the VPN. That made his day, but I still had no internet. So they said they would send a guy "sometime in the afternoon." That was at 12:00. 5 hours of waiting in my apartment later, the guy showed up. He fiddled around outside for a while and apparently reconnected a wire or two.
Yay! I had internet again. I can kind of understand a connection issue like that. I'mon the outskirts of town (more or less), and my building is filled with senior citizens, so if a wire goes down, I'm the only one that can tell the company about it.
Unfortunately, that joy went away when the connection failed again, but this time I knew it was the company's fault because I was still on the network, I just couldn't access sites outside of the network. Anyway, it's been on and off for the last few hours and I just wanted to toss this update on before it disappears again.
First the great news and the resolution to the exciting cliffhanger. Yuli has been found. Turns out she was hiding in a box on a balcony three floors below mine after falling down there. When the people in the apartment brought me to her, she was scared stiff and didn't really know what was going on until I returned her home and she was able to scratch up the carpet and bother my neighbors with her roaring once again.
Since then she's been her normal self. She curls up on me a little more than usual though, and seems a little quicker to cry when I leave the apartment. Which hasn't been that often these past few days because I've been trapped inside with some kind of virus. It has meant a nasty fever that kept me in bed all day Thursday, and the kind of activity which leads to massive dehydration even while drinking gallons of water, which is how I find myself today. I have a nasty little headache.
And since the internet in my apartment was knocked out in Thursday's thunderstorm, I wasn't able to get the news about Yuli to you until today. I have absolutely no idea what I'm paying for when it comes to the internet in my apartment, but I suppose I forget all the frustration of not having it when it comes back on and I don't have to walk to the internet club and deal with 8 year-old kids slapping each other and screaming while I type.
So that's the scoop. That cat's back and he's not pregnant (glory upon glories), and I'm on the downslope of a nasty virus. Oh, and school's finally out, which is just, plain gravy.