forest festival

so for the last few weeks my office has been in a frenzy getting ready for their big annual forest festival. every year for about the last six years they host this event over the course of two days, and for the last week it has been crunch time to make sure that everything is ready to go. i have been real busy working out in the forest gettting the individual sites ready and helping my colleagues with the last minute details. on friday i had my buddy tye come in from burgas and we hung out that night in malko turnovo so that we would be ready to help set up the festival early the next morning.
monday started way to early, and by 7:30 we were all on our way out to the main festival site at this place called petrova niva. its an old monunment symolizing bulgarian resistance to turkish occupation, and it sits on a very spectacular vista over the forested mountains. the place was all ready to go by 10 and then busses of people from around the region began showing up. there was traditional singing and dancing, and they had booths for all sorts of stuff, like traditional tea tasting, rakia tasting, food tasting, local activities, shopping vendors and donkey cart rides. the whole thing was pretty relaxing, and i spend a fair amount of time at they 'high adventure' booth, where they set up a small zip-line and a slack line. i was soo excited to finally have a slack line, and i probibly spent more time on it than anyone else (i was also pretty much the only one that could do it though).
after lunch we set off on a nice/jeep safari. the hike took us down the mountain and to a refreshing river crossing, then back up the other side to where there was a whole bunch of jeeps and soviet transports waiting to take us to the campsite for the night. i was lucky enough to get a spot in the old soviet van, which i can most accuratly describe as a cross between and old VW bus, and an armored troop transport. this thing was a beast.
there ended up being around 40-50 people that stayed the night for the campfire and festivites, and it was a blast. there was a huge campfire roaring all night, and they had a giant all-you-can-eat banquet set up for us as well. soon after that (or before, depending on who you ask) the moonshine rakia and beer started flowing and everyone started singing and dancing the horo (traditional bulgarian dance) around the fire. it was a pretty cool experience, sitting out there under the start listening to the band play and watching all the people dancing and having a good time. this ended up going on until well after midnight, when everyone began heading off to bed to rest for the next day.
sunday was less eventful, and i was pretty exhaused after the last two nights. we drove to another site in the park for a guided hike, and eventually made our way out to the coast, where they had a big lunch banquet set up. by that time i was pretty much ready to go home, show and do nothing that required energy, but turns out that one of my coworkers wanted me to go out with him that night and help set up some bat catching nets to that we could try to catch a specific bat. we eneded up staying out until just after 11, but we had no luck catching anything. thats how it goes sometimes i guess. now its back to work, although this week should be much more laid back. i will try to get some pictures of the festival, but i had forgotten my camera so i will have to get them from somewhere else, so no promises. anyway, catch you all later

pics and stuff

i finally got a chance to post up some pics from my spring break trip. i had to get it done tonight (friday night) because i just found out today that i have to go in to work tomorrow. apparently there is a group of school kids coming to the park tomorrow and i have to help run the zip-line for them. hopefully the weather is nice, because today was rainy.
also, i have to say that currently me and my computer are not on good terms. this thing is like my only link to the world outside of malko turnovo, and by virtue bulgaria, and it has been running just painfully slow. i have no idea what the heck is wrong with this thing, but it is interesting because it shows just how dependent on technology i have become in the last year. one year ago i didnt have cable, tv, internet or a computer capable of running internet and i was just fine. now if i lose my internet, i dont know what i will do. ugh, i hope that day never comes.
anyway, enough about the trials of living in the remote corners of europe, i hope you all enjoy the pics. http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EbOGLZo3cMXgw

Spring break

Things are still going really well. work has been very busy lately because my counterpart had a big project he was working on. some german researchers came in to malko turnovo a few weeks ago to do a bat monitoring project and i got to help out. we went out every night around 7 pm and set up mist nets outside of a different cave entrance every night and captured bats. we then identified them, measured and weighed them, and a few of them we tagged before releasing them. i really enjoyed it and i learned a ton. the first two night we caught over 70 bats each!
they were long days though, and i usually didnt get home until 3 or 4 in the morning. now i have to help write a presentation for my counterpart to present at a bat symposium in romania in august. however, it hasnt just been hard work for me.
I just returned to malko turnovo and started work again yesterday after a short 'spring break' and easter holiday. orthodox easter was on april 27th this year and we had the monday following off (same as in the states). i was fortunate enough to spent a traditional easter with a bulgarian family this year, which was pretty cool. i was in razlog, a beautiful mountain town on the far side of bulgaria visiting my girlfriend Kristen for the weekend and we were invited out to celebrate in traditional festivities.
on saturday night at midnight (technically sunday morning) the entire town went out to the orthodox church and lit small candles from a large candle that the head priest was holding (the head priest in bulgarian orthodox churches is called the 'pope', very confusing at first. my host brother once told me 'look, theres the pope', and i got excited only to find thats not what he meant). however, lighting these candles is harder than it seems. since there is only one church in the whole town, everyone and there mom shows up for this lighting ceremony and all try to rush in through the main doors of the church to get these bad-boys lit. it was by far the most aggressive group of people i have ever seen try to enter a church to celebrate jesus. i was getting elbowed and passed by old hunchback grandmas 2 feet shorter than i was! plus half the people had fire. fortunately it didnt spiral down to chaos and there was no bon-fire that night.
once you get the candle lit and the midnight bells ring, then we had to try and get our candles all the way home without letting them go out. this is a rather difficult task when we had to walk across town with a breeze. i didnt do so hot at that one.
the next day we went over for the big easter feast and spent the day just talking and eating way too much good food. there were painted easter eggs and the egg contest, where everyone takes a hard boiled egg and taps them on each other to see whos egg is the strongest. its supposed to bring good luck for the whole year to the winner. our host even made an american desert for us, strawberry cheese cake. awesome. it was a fun time and interesting to see how similar some of our traditions are.
after easter it was a two day work week before the national spring break. technically its only tow holidays, one on thrusday and one on the preceding tuesday, but they just take off all the days in between and call it good. i sure didnt mind. i did a bit of traveling and visited plovdiv, and ended up in burgas, my usual hangout spot. i met up with friends and went out every night for pints and pool, not a bad way to spent vacation. i even got a day trip up to this town called nessebar, which is out on the coast (the old part of town which i visited is actually on an island 200 meters from shore) and used to be an old byzantine fortress. its a beautiful small island with old fortified walls, quaint little roads between two story original architecture houses and more 5th through 17th century churches than i have ever seen. one out of every like 10 buildings was an old Church. it was a good time though and im glad i got out there early in the season because i heard during summer the place is just a tourist death trap.
anyway, now its back to work and getting ready for summer. hope you all are doing well and i will write you later

spring is here!

hey guys. sorry its been a while since my last post, but i have found that while its fairly easy for me to write about sweet travel stories, it is rather difficult for me to update you on my day to day life when not much really goes on. the longer that i am here the less strange things seem to me and the less likely i am to write about them, even if they are about events that would seem rather odd to people that have not been to bulgaria before.
that being said, life here is still going good. i threw a rockin st patties day party right after my return from turkey, complete with an all you can eat mexican buffet (not very irish, i know, but if we are going to cook a huge feast, i would rather have tacos than Sheppard's pie, because mexican food is a rarity here). after the party, i was fairly busy at work helping my counterpart with a winter bat monitoring project he got funded. it was pretty cool, and consisted of going out to caves in the park and doing bat counts. none of the caves here are too big, but to get into many of them required a bit of subterranean climbing and squeezing through some tight spaces. good thing im still skinny.
since the caving project though, things here at work have slowed down a bit. i go bird monitoring everyday at this local marsh to collect data on the migration, which is fun, but doesnt occupy too much time. my park office is gearing up for a big spring festival in may though, and that should be interesting. starting next month though i think i will be getting busy again. with the nice weather coming tourism should increase to the area, so i will be helping with tour and research groups, in addition to park projects and such.
today also officially marks my first 6 months of service here in malko turnovo. the good news is that i have a feeling that the summer will pass by much faster than the winter did. its finally warm enough outside to go hiking again, and in a month or two all the beaches will open up and i can go hangout on the coast on the weekends.
on another note though, i have been getting much better at cooking things for myself with limited ingredients. i can make a bit of mexican food (i even got out some enchiladas once) and other interesting italian and american dishes. the tough part is that some of the key thing i need to make these dishes are rather hard to come by. like brown sugar. i have been trying to make chocolate chip cookies (ordinary easy thing to cook one would think) only to be thwarted by having no market in my town sell brown sugar. apparently chocolate chip cookies are not that popular here. my solution? sugar cookies with chocolate chips. hey, im doing the best i can here.
well, thats enough culinary rambling for now. take care and i will catch you all later. peace

istanbul and back

Well, just got back from my first trip outside of Bulgaria since i got here, and i had a blast. me and my friend Tyler went down to Istanbul for 5 days of sightseeing and soaking in the local culture and let me tell you that Istanbul is a kick-ass city. its actually the 4th largest city in the world, and is a very modern and liberal city when compared with both the rest of turkey and bulgaria. istanbul (the only city that i know of that spans across into two continents) is an interesting mix of everything European and middle-eastern; the food, music, architecture, culture, etc. not to mention that istanbul (byzantium/augusta antonina/constantanople) has more historical places and history than most other cities anywhere in the world.
we took an overnight bus into istanbul on sunday and arrived at around 6 a.m. in the main bus terminal in the city, which size-wise resembles more of an airport than a bus terminal. from there we took the metro into the main part of town and spent the morning just walking around town getting a feel for the sights, sounds, and layout of the city. the main part of istanbul is relatively easy to navigate, and mass transit is surprisingly convenient, with light rails, metros and ferries servicing all the major tourist and shopping areas.
around noon we visited our first sight, the topkapi palace. this immense complex used to be the residence and main adminastrative center of the sultans, and is a very lavishly decorated place. it also holds some very impressive collections of china, armor, and jewels (including one piece that is inlaid with the worlds 4th largest cut diamond surrounded by 22 other large diamonds). the palace was interesting to me because of the middle eastern style of architecture and art that decorated it.
after a late lunch of turkish kabob, we went to the blue mosque, one of Istanbul's most prominent landmarks. this 400 year old structure is massive, with a large dome 140 high, supported by 16 ft thick stone columns. it is adorned with intricate paintings and stained glass windows that rival that of the notre dame. we had to wait until after prayer time to enter (there are 5 prayer times a day in islam) to see the mosque, but it is a most impressive building.
prayer time itself was interesting as well, since most of the large mosques (there are more mosques than you can count in istanbul) broadcast the daily prayers from large speakers mounted on the minarets. the prayers are sung though, and from in front of the blue mosque you can hear the prayers go back and and forth between buildings.
we eventually made our way across the city to where we were staying with a couch surfer. he was a super cool guy and and most nights we ended up going out with him for dinner and to see the town. it was also cool to get advice on where to go and have conversations with him about various things such as religion (turkey is like 90 percent muslim) and turkish accention into the EU.
on our second day we spent the morning browsing around the egyptian spice market and the grand bazaar. the grand bazaar is immense, comprised of over 4,000 shops, cafes, restaurants selling pretty much anything you could need to buy. the center of the bazaar is all covered, and you could get lost wandering around all the little paths packed with shops and shop keepers telling you that they have just what you are looking for. i did my fare share of price negotiating when was there, and i have to admit that it was a lot of fun.
after a quick dooner for lunch we went and visited the basilica cisterns, a huge underground aqueduct fed water storage chamber built in the 6th century. the room has all arched ceilings supported by rows and rows of columns, and raised walkways span over the fish filled water that is still covers the base of the cistern. in one corner of the room are two columns carved with Medusa's head. from there we went across the street to the hagia sofia. built over 1,500 years ago, the hagia sofia was the largest cathedral in the world for about 1,000 years and was converted into a mosque after the the fall of Constantinople. the size of the room is amazing, and makes even the blue mosque seem small in comparison. we walked around the building for almost an hour before heading off to visit other sites around the city.
on our third day we visited the dolmabanche palace, which is the new palace that was built for the sultans and is a curious mix of european and asian architecture. it is just as impressive as the tokapi palace, but more modern amenities added to it through the years. that evening we took a ferry across the bosphorus to asia to a traditional turkish bath that our host had recommended to us. the turkish bath was quite the experience, let me tell you. first off, the place we went to, while very popular with locals, was not a huge tourist spot so none of the staff spoke english. there was a lot of confusion on our part of what the heck we were doing, but they were nice and helped us out. we got the whole package deal, which included relaxing in the main sauna room, then a full scrub down and rough massage by a large mustachioed turk. normally i dont go for this kinda thing, but it was an interesting cultural experience and i have to admit that afterward i felt a lot better.
the last day we just spent wandering around seeing little things here and there. overall i had a fantastic time on our trip, and aside from visiting huge tourist spots, i had a great time eating the food (they have a pizza hut all you can eat buffet, first real pizza i have had since july!) talking with our turkish host, and just sitting around cafes smoking hookah and playing backgammon. i got back to bulgaria just in time to throw a st patties day party, and now im ready to start planning my next trip. hmm, where to?
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Baba mart

yesterday was the first of march, and while not quite a holiday, it is still kinda celebrated as such. for the two weeks or so leading up to it, vendors crowd the side of the pedestrian streets selling martinitsi, red and white braided bracelets. everyone buys tons of these martinitsi (or many make their own from yarn) and on the first of may you hand them out to all your friends and say chestit Baba Mart (happy grandma march). i even got one from the billiards bar that we go to pretty often.
anyway, i am supposed to keep these bracelets on until i see either a stork, or the first buds of spring, afterwhich i am to tie them on to a young tree for good luck. i imagine i may see a stork first, as i have been going bird watching about every day for work lately, but we will see.
overall i think it is a pretty cool tradition, and kinda reminded me of valentines day in elementry school because then everyone gets tons of cards. my bulgarian friend that is a teacher here in burgas says he has enough of these things to fill up one arm (although he only wears like 5).
monday though is actually a real holiday. its national liberation day, marking the time when bulgaria was liberated from control of the ottoman empire, ending about 500 years of turkish rule. bulgarians still get pissed when they talk about 'living under the turkish yolk' and this is undoubtedly a big holiday for them. however, i dont think there is any specific tradition that they do for it, just get out of work and spend time with the families. should be fun though

A week of workshops and travel

Just got back from another week and a half of traveling around the country. two weekends ago i set out to bourgas and stara zagora to see some friends before heading to our In Service Training and Project Design Managment workshops out in Hissar, Bulgaria. Hissar is an old resort town located out in central bulgaria, famous for its mineral water and hot springs. it also has the remains of an impressive old stone fortified wall surrounding the center of town. we stayed at a nice three star hotel from sunday til friday, complete with an indoor pool and water slide! the meetings were informative, but the most beneficial was getting to work on project ideas with my colleague. hopefully this will lead to some new exciting projects getting implimented and better cooperation between me and my office. The other good part about the meetings was getting to hangout with all the other volunteers in the evenings and catch up on whats been going on. some of the people there i hadnt seen since i first came to malko turnovo. after the workshops ended on friday morning, i traveled down to plovdiv to meet more people and see some more sights. the weather was much better this time around than it was over new years, and i got a good view of the city from one of the overlooking hills. it was a pretty lazy weekend of sleeping in and eating tons of good food. i even made it out to my favorite arabic resturant and filled myself up on humus, baba gnoush, nan, greek salads, and falil dunors. fantastic. anyway, headed up to the mountains for a day after that (sadly, snowboarding season is over for me) before heading out to the main office in sofia to get some stuff done. boarded the train there to bourgas, and finally got back home around lunch time today. Everyone in the office is gone traveling for various reasons, but that at least gives me some time to get caught up on work and get ready for tomorrow. I just submitted my first project proposal that i am hoping will get accepted, and i have ideas for a few more. hopefully it will be a busy couple of weeks getting things taken care of. i also heard that my real counterpart finally got back in town from germany, so that should be nice as well. other than that, im just waiting for spring to come so that i can start getting outdoors again and out of my apartment. I also finally posted more pics, including my time on the coast in tsarevo, and my adventrues around hissar, plovdiv and up in the mountains. enjoy. http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EbOGLZo3cMXbQ