Beach weekend

I have definitely been taking advantage of living close to the sea this summer. This last weekend I got out of work a day early (on account of it being my birthday) and headed up to burgas to celebrate with a bunch of my friends that had come in from out of town. We ended up having a relaxing afternoon at the beach followed by a rather epic night.

The next day we headed up north to a town called Obzor to meet up with more people and spend the weekend relaxing on the coast. There ended up being some 25 people or so in our party and it was a lot of fun just chillin and seeing everyone again. Now that our term is almost up there are only going to be a few more events where we can get together, and I have a feeling that none of these upcoming events will have a majority of the group attend. Its kinda weird knowing that after being here 2 years with some of these people, I will probably never see some of them again.

Today I got back to Malko Turnovo and I realize that I am pretty much finished with work here. All my projects are finished, all my secondary activities are over, and the office has slowed down for august, so I am not sure what I will do to stay productive and fill my time. Office hours are definitely starting to drag. I did get my confirmation on my final day though, and I am happy to announce that on October 7th, I will officially be finished with my job here! Time to start planning my after-service trip.......

The End is Near.....

Last week was my Close of Service conference, the last big gathering of my group to discuss final paperwork and begin preparations for finishing up our work here and heading back to the states. It was good to see everyone again, but going over readjustment information and final tasks for Bulgaria really makes it seem like I am almost finished here. There are a still a few months left before my contract is up, but since work at my office is so slow, I have a feeling that I will spend a fair amount of time in my office getting ready to head back home. There are a number of things I have left to take care of, but they should all be pretty easy and I have already begun to finish them.

I also need to start thinking of what I want to do once I get back to the states. I was hoping that I would have some sort of epiphany while I was here, with my plan for the future instantly becoming clear and laid out before me. Unfortunately, when I was envisioning this scenario, I was not taking into account that these sort of things never actually happen in reality, and I have no more idea of what I want to do in life then I had when I first got here. So much for that plan.

The good news is that I finally got to see the last major site in Bulgaria that I hadn't seen yet but wanted to. Its a place called Belogradchik, and its located only a few hours away from the conference site (which was itself some 13 hours from where I live, and explains why I haven't been there before). Since I was already that close to it, I went the rest of the way with a few friends of mine to go hiking and check out the area.

Belogradchik is a region full of really cool rock formations scattered about in a forest, and the main rock complex has the remains of an old roman fort built right into the rock. It somewhat reminded me of Garden of the Gods (minus the roman fort), right outside Colorado Springs, only this site was not climbable. I had a good time though exploring though and just sitting on the rock pinnacles gazing out at the region.

Falling apart around me

Sometimes I get so frustrated with things here in Bulgaria. I have been having plumbing issues in my apartment ever since I moved in; both my faucets in the bathroom and kitchen leak, and I have had a coworker of mine come over two or three times already to fix them, but then a week later they break again. This time my bathroom faucet handle completely snapped off and started spraying water all over the place. I attempted to turn off the main water valve to my apartment, but that doesn't work either so I had to rush to my office and get help. We ended up having to purchase a whole new faucet assembly and install it, which isn't a hard task, but in Bulgaria sometimes (actually quite often) a simple task can become inexplicably difficult.

Anyway, we finally fixed it and got it working great, but then only a few hours later the hot water gasket sprung a leak and started spraying scalding water all over the room. I shut off the boiler and attempted to fix it myself, but the new faucet that we had just installed was a complete piece of crap, and the bolts on it snapped, leaving me with a faucet that i couldn't reattach. The next day my coworker came back over, equally frustrated, and wanted to know where the old faucet was. I of course had thrown it away since it was busted, but then he got all upset. "why would you throw a broken faucet away?!?"

I have a decent amount of experience doing home repair stuff, but Bulgaria takes it to a whole new level. Stores never sell the part you need, and if they do it will probably break all too soon. Sometimes it seems like everything is in a perpetual state of disrepair. In fact, today I just saw a truck driving down the road with a drivers side door that didn't shut, and the driver had to hold in closed the entire time he was driving.

In other news, this next week is my Close of Service conference, where we have to go over paperwork and things to prepare finishing up our work here and get ready to transfer back to the states. Time has been going by very quickly lately, and I have the feeling that I will be done here before I know it. Only three months left!

parties and injuries

So my brother has been here for just under three days and It has been a fairly crazy adventure so far. I picked him up from the bus station on Wednesday morning around 1:30 am, took him to his new flat to drop off his bags before taking off to celebrate 'july morning'. July morning is a pretty cool tradition here in Bulgaria that started way back in the 70's with the hippie sub-culture, rebelling against the way the people lived and society. It has slowly changed since then and now mostly entails jamming out rock concerts along the black sea coast, dancing around bonfires, and drinking until the sun comes up, at which time everyone goes swimming in the ocean. It is a lot of fun and really cool to party all night long on the beach with so many people.

Unfortunately, Braden had a bit of bad luck and happened to step on a broken glass bottle just an hour or so before sun rise, and cut his foot so bad that we had to take off and get him cleaned up. His was bleeding all over the place, and the apartment looked like a crime scene before we cleaned it up. The next day I ended up taking him to the hospital and had to try to explain to the doctor what happened. He got a few stitches, and other than hobbling around like he has a bum leg, he is ok. In the mean time we have been busy setting up his apartment and taking care of everything he needs to get settled in to the groove of things. Tomorrow we are hosting some people for the 4th of July and hopefully it turns out well.

In other news, I found out what had happened with my computer. Apparently the motherboard crapped out on me, so now im stuck with a broken pc and no sure idea with what to do with it. I will try to take it to another store to see how expensive it is to replace a motherboard, but the guy at the last shop just suggested I buy a new one. That totally sucks because I dont have near enough money to buy a new PC, and malko turnovo is super boring without one. Hopefully the next place I take it to gives me better news. We'll see.

Other than that, the weather is great, the beach is fantastic, and the summer is still young. More updates as the happen. peace out

Disaster has struck!

Misfortune has fallen upon me recently and my computer has died. This is a serious event, since my computer contains pretty much everything that I use on a day to day basis. Malko Turnovo was a boring place to live before, but now it has become mind numbingly so.

(The victim)

I'm not sure what went wrong with it, and I took it into a shop to get it repaired last Wednesday but I don't even think they have looked at it yet. I'm hoping its something easy and cheap to repair and I can have it back and working again by the middle of this week. My worst fear is that its some major issue with the hard drive and the computer place loses all my information. Music and movies aside, this would mean the loss of all my trip pictures, all my documents and pretty much all my important information. I had been getting ready to back up all my info when the 'incident' took place, and in retrospect I should have been a bit quicker with it.

Aside from that though, things are going well. Tourism in Bulgaria this year is slower than normal and as a result we are getting less visitors in the park. It means less work for me because last year I spent a good deal of time working with foreign visitors and this year not so much. The flip side is that I have more time to hike, work on projects, and do other things. Still though, work in general is slower than I would like it to be. Things seem to be winding down already though, and I recently received a packet of information on stuff I have to do to prepare for my 'close of service' seminar, which will be held next month. I have less than four months left here and I have a feeling that the time will just fly by. It seems that it was just beginning of May a few weeks ago and now its moving into July. The summer will be over way too quickly.

(The Black sea)

My brother is also on his way over here to spend a bit of time, and I am super excited for it. I secured a pretty sweet apartment for him in Burgas and he should arrive here tomorrow or the day after. After that, it will be a lot of laid back beach weekends with him and my friends from the coast. Cant wait!

(the brother)

East of East

I have just returned from the last big trip I will take during my service here, and quite the trip it was. I traveled more than 2,200 miles by car, bus, train, taxi, hitchhiking, walking, and running (only one time when I was late for my train) in about a week. I set out on this adventure by myself, but I met so many people all along the way that other than my time spent in transport, I was almost never alone. My goal for this trip was to really get out there and go places that no one goes to, to get the 'real' experience, away from all the tourist infrastructure, away from food menus written in English, travel around country where I cant read the signs. Turns out, I should have gone to Africa, because this place I had envisioned doesn't actually exist for me in Europe. Transport was easy, signs in Romania are in English, and while the signs in Moldova and Ukraine are in Russian, I can read Russian so it wasn't a hindrance.

I think that with globalization proceeding the way it is, the far far away destination spots no longer exist. Everywhere you go you can find the same products, the same services, and the same foods. McDonald's in Odessa, Andy's pizza in Chisinau, the list goes on. This trade and connectivity is of course a good thing, but sometimes makes me wonder what it would have been like to travel abroad some 100 years ago, before everything became so homogenized.

Still, my trip was a good time, and Moldova and the Ukraine are about as different from the states as you can get in Europe without going to Belarus (good luck getting visas to that place). These places are still dotted with reminders of the communist rule; the soviet star adorning the train station in Chisiau, the hammer and sickle on top of every column in an art gallery, and good old fashioned soviet style tenement apartments everywhere you look.


Of all the places I visited though, I enjoyed Braşov the most. It is an absolutely beautiful town nestled up in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania that has preserved its original character, feel and architecture from when it used to be fortified. There is lots of hiking around the town, and in the center is seems there is always something interesting going on. Its just a good time walking around the streets exploring.

(Brasov)

Moldova was a good time as well. I didn't spent all that much time there, but for my first day I met up with a volunteer who is working there and he showed me all around Chisinau (pronounced Kishe-now). Its an interesting city with a surprisingly large number of parks and shaded boulevards. In fact, the entire city looks like it was almost built in a forest from the number of trees that are present. It make for a pleasant place to wander around and relax at. It was nice though being there with someone that was familiar with the area because I was able to learn a lot about the place in a very short amount of time.

(Train Station in Chisinau)

From Chisinau I was off to Odessa. It turns out that pretty much everyone that lives in Odessa speaks Russian instead of Ukrainian, so I got plenty of chances to brush up (aka 'start learning') Russian. Actually, I can already understand some Russian because of its similarities to Bulgarian, so I was able to get my point across most of the time without too much difficulty. I was also able to somewhat follow along with the topics of conversations, if not any of the details.

(Learning Russian in Odessa)

From Odessa it was a long and tiring trip back down to Bulgaria, and I got stuck one night in Varna before I finally made it home. It ended up being a sweet trip though and it was over way to quickly. Now its back to work again and, unfortunately, it looks like I will be doing some in-country travel for work as well, which means even more time stuck in trains and buses. No rest for the weary I suppose. The good news though is that my brother should be here in just over a week and then summer beach weekends can begin! Summer here rocks.


Check out all the pics on my picasa page http://picasaweb.google.com/justinrobarge

festivals and adventures

Its been a busy last few weeks and it doesn't look like things are going to change in the near future. The end of last month I got invited by my counterpart to go camping for a night along the sea with a couple of other friends. I had nothing else going on that weekend so I joined him and it was a good time. The weather was great and the black sea is just finally starting to warm up. We spent most of the day relaxing and catching crabs and shells out of the water to cook for dinner. I had never caught (or cooked) crab before, but it turns out it isn't too hard. We boiled them all over an open campfire that night and everything was delicious.

The next day we had to attend the traditional festival for the fire walking people out at a sacred site in the forest. There were a lot of people that attended, and once the main icon blessing ceremony was over, we spent the next few hours just hanging around eating and drinking. I took some video of the event, but unfortunately (and rather ironically) my offices video camera that I used is too advanced for the computers here, and I cant transfer any of the footage (If anyone knows anything about using a canon XM2, let me know...). It was a great day though and a good finish to a great weekend.

Last week I had some friends come out and visit me for a few days to attend the main fire walking festival that is held on the 3rd of June and is open to a lot more people than the first one was. It was a good time, and I got to guide my friends around the park for a few days before and we even got invited to a banquet out in the forest with a group of Irish folk singers. Needless to say that It was a crazy time, and we spent the whole night learning Irish folk dances. The next day we made it out to the main festival and aside from a bit of rain in the afternoon, it was a great time.
This last weekend I traveled out to the other side of Bulgaria to visit another volunteers eco-center that his organization is working on. To make it worth my time to travel 12 hours by train across the country though, I also coupled it with a white water rafting trip down the struma river. The rapids were nothing intense, mostly 2s and 3s, but it was still a good time and nice to finally get back out on the water like that. My guide was super cool, and told me that I was the best in the boat after only the first set of rapids (Not much of a statement though if you had seen the other guys I was with). It was definitely worth the money.

The day after rafting I went out to see the green eco-center. I got some good ideas I want to try and introduce to my coworkers after seeing the place, and it was refreshing to see a project like that underway out here in Bulgaria. After visiting the eco-center and learning about the work going on there, we took a short hike out to a cool waterfall and took a reprieve from the oppressive sun by swimming in a small pool between a smaller 10ft fall and a larger 100ft fall. It was a great time.