Trouble in Government

Things are not going good these days for the environmental movement here in Bulgaria. Corruption, construction companies and organized crime have long been enemies of the national and nature parks, and have been doing everything they can to try and develop all the remaining land that is protected here.

This situation recently took a turn for the worst when several of these outside vested interests sent in letters to the central government claiming that some of the Nature parks (mine included) were engaging in illegal activities and were working against the local municipalities. Now the parks are under a strict review and there is a strong possibility that the directors of all these parks will be replaced by people more sympathetic to the interests of the outside organizations. These parks have long been the only obstacles standing in the way of mass eradication of protected land in Bulgaria, but even with their sternest effort, they usually manage only to maintain the status quo. However, with the replacement of these directors the focus of these parks could radically change, opening up much of Bulgaria’s remaining forests and sea side to mass construction projects.

Here in Malko Turnovo, hostilities have intensified between the park directorate and the local municipality. Generally, the local governments are more in favor of development than conservation because of the increased money that comes with it, both official and under the table. These municipalities frequently try to undermine the parks and often look the other way during infractions in protected lands.

The outcome of this whole thing could drastically change my working situation. Right now I have a great organization that is here to do good work and protect the environment the best it can. I hope that this park can weather the storm and continue its projects to help protect and promote some of the few remaining areas of pristine nature in the European Union.

A pagan festival

I just got back from the big traditional festival in a town called Shiroka Luka, out in south central Bulgaria. Its a little town located deep in the Rhodopi mountains, surrounded by snow covered pine forests and clear mountain streams. It was my first time out in that region and I have to say that I was impressed. Its a beautiful area and all the little mountain towns have a really cool vibe to them.

The festival itself is called the 'kukuri festival' held every first of March, and it is the largest one in the whole country. Its almost a parade of groups representing their different towns, all dressed up in kukuri costumes and preforming dances and songs. The kukuri costumes are usually made out of goat skins and their dances drive away the evil spirits and help bring a good harvest. They are fascinating to see, but I have to admit that some of them are pretty creepy looking.

(this one is downright creepy)

These kukuri dances are an ancient pagan tradition that have survived the years and have been incorporated into modern Bulgarian culture. The most interesting part about it though is that they have blended slightly with the Bulgarian Orthodox church, so during these pagan dances you would see people dressed up as priests going around blessing the kukuri. Its one of the many examples where religion here is heavily used as a cultural and traditional instrument.

Of course, as with any big Bulgarian festival, this one wouldn't be complete with out the accompaniment of sausage and beer vendors. There were hordes of people dancing around the town with bottles in hand, sometimes giving the feeling of one giant outdoor party. It was a lot of energy and really added to the over all effect of the event.

We also traded martenitsi again like last year. I have to wear them until I see a white stork, at which time I'm supposed to tie them to a tree for good luck for the rest of the year.

You can check out my picasa page for more pics. http://picasaweb.google.com/justinrobarge

Next big trip!

Good news! I just bought plane tickets for my next big trip. Come the end of next month, I will be headed to Italy and Greece. I’m super excited, but also a bit anxious to finish up with my trip preparations. I have to admit though, planning this trip so far has been a breeze, mostly because finding bus and train schedules for these two countries is really simple, and I don’t need to get any visas. Way different than when I went to the Middle East. Visa stuff had to be planned all in advance and transport between cities was sketchy at best.

I also got lucky getting my flights. It was a bit of a hassle booking my flight from Sofia to Milan because the airline I booked my flight with, Wizzair, doesn’t accept American or Bulgarian credit cards, but I ended up getting the flight for only 35 Euro. Can’t beat that.

I think I will be pretty busy until then as well. This weekend I’m headed out to the mountains in south central Bulgaria to attend a big traditional Bulgarian festival. I missed it last year, but apparently it was a really good time and I’m fortunate enough to be able to make it this year. There should be a bunch of other volunteers there, most of whom I haven’t seen since last year. In fact, up until this last weekend, I hadn’t even seen another American since New Year’s Eve. That’s over a month and a half! It’s almost awkward now to hang out with other Americans, especially in big groups.

Still though, I need to get out of my town and do something different. Malko Turnovo still has that lethargic feeling that comes along with winter, and its getting boring. I even though winter was about over, because the weather was finally starting to warm up, but then mother nature pulled a fast one last weekend and dumped a ton of snow all over the country. So now its winter……again. Oh well.

The Great Debate

I just got back today from another weekend in Burgas. It was a fairly uneventful, but last night I had a really good time. It started off like most nights I spend in Burgas, getting a quick bite to eat and then heading out to my favorite pub for a pint and a few games of pool. After a couple hours of watching my skill at billiards steadily decline, we quit playing and met up with some other expats living Burgas that I had never seen before. They were pretty cool, and the five of us ended up sitting around a table for the longest time deeply engaged in a debate about international politics and the state of the economy.

It was really interesting because all of us were from different countries and had different points of view. There was me, the American, and a guy from England, Ireland, Holland and Bulgaria. I think it's experiences like this that I love most about traveling abroad, getting to meet new people and have respectful debates with them. It's enlightening to hear how much we all have in common, as well as gaining insight on different perspectives about issues.

Shkembe Soup

I was sitting in the break room the other morning before work listening to my coworkers start up a conversation about Shkembe soup. They were going on and on about this soup, talking about how good it is, and how good it is for you, and how much they love to eat it. Bulgarians just love the stuff. Its as close to a national dish as you can get without officially declaring it a national dish (which may have actually already happened, but I don't know about it). Listening to my counterpart describe Shkembe, this soup sounds like the end all of soups. Its delicious, nutritious, cheap, and is guaranteed to cure hangovers. Its best served hot, or slightly cold, and for either breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Its pretty much the Bulgarian equivalent of Mac & Cheese. What more could you ask?

Well, as with many a big-name summer blockbuster movie, it turns out that this soup may be a bit over-hyped. I realized something was suspicious when I first saw a bowl of this much revered elixir. At first glance it is not the most appealing nourishment, and at second glance, it is still not the most appealing nourishment. In fact, after a carefully executed scientific study, I have concluded that no matter how many times you see shkembe, it will never become more appealing, and actually runs the risk of becoming increasingly less so.

(mmm, look at all that flavor)

That being said, I have loved many a dish that didn't look the best, but that made up for it with taste. At this point I was still giving Shkembe soup the benefit of the doubt, that is, until I found out what Shkembe means. Its from the Turkish word for tripe. For those of you who don't know what tripe is (I also had no idea what this word meant), it pretty much means mixed stomach parts. So, shkembe soup can roughly translated as 'insert animal name here' stomach soup. Yup, just like mom used to make. Shkembe soup is made out of any animal that happens to be available at the time. Pig, cow, chicken, goat, mastodon, you name it, its probably in that bowl of soup.

A point of pride that I have with myself is that I'm always up for trying something once; heck, I even ate brain sandwiches from a street-side vendor in Cairo, which is about as sketchy as one can get, but I have to admit that I have still never tried the shkembe soup. There is something about it that every time I muster up the confidence and resolve to delve in to a bowl of it, it still manages to fend me off that the last minute. And as for the claim that it is the perfect cure for a hangover, well, let me just say that I have no reservations that it would forcefully induce the immediate evacuation of any remaining alcholol (and other contents) from my stomach, but I doubt the validity of the claim that it would work toward ameliorating the lasting effects of already absorbed booze. In fact, I can only envision this specific concoction as making the situation (and my relative health) worse. I know these statements come off as rather strong, especially when I have admitted the fact that I have never actually tried this dish, but they perfectly convey my opinion of the matter.


However, I appreciate the argument that to fully understand a dish, it must be actually tasted, so for the sake of an un-biased control group, I have devised a plan to feed this dish to my younger brother, whom I expect to arrive on vacation in this country sometime this summer (Mom, if you are reading this blog, please, in the name of science and human understanding, refrain from telling him about this, as it would completely ruin this plan. I promise, whatever may happen, he won't die from it). Upon conclusion of this trial, I will appraise you of the results so that you too can decide, with all the data at your disposal, what you actually think of this horrid soup.

I don't mean to give the wrong impression of Bulgarian food in general, because many of the dishes here are fantastic and I reckon that the vegetables are second to none, but shkembe may be one of the worst dishes that I have ever been introduced with. I also realize that, after living in this country for about a year and a half, it may seem random that I have only just now brought this up, but it was hearing the conversation between my coworkers in the break room that prompted me to ponder this food once more. So, if you ever happen to find yourself in a Bulgarian restaurant and you see shkembe on the menu, order something else.

The Vanishing Oasis

One of my long term projects that I have been working on most days while living out here in Malko Turnovo has been bird monitoring. Its actually pretty sweet, and it gets me outside for at least a little while during my day. I haven't been going lately because during the winter there are no birds migrating, but now that its starting to get a bit warmer, migration time has finally come. I have been doing this now for almost a year an a half, and all it really entails is going out to this marsh just outside of town with a pair of binoculars and seeing what (if any) migratory birds are hanging out. I then compile the data of number of birds, species of birds, and if possible, other attributes such as sex, relative age, ect. This data will be given to a regional NGO that works with bird migration, and it can also be used to show the affect that the local marsh has on the bird migration patterns.

The big issue right now with the marsh is that it leaks. Badly. I know it sounds funny, but the terrain that it sits on (and most of the terrain in Strandja actually) is very permeable to water and as a result, there are countless caves, tunnels and other subterranean water passages that make it next to impossible for lakes and ponds to form. This marsh right outside Malko Turnovo is the one exception, but even it is having problems retaining its water. Even though its steadily fed by a stream and has no outlets, it loses water every day it doesn't rain, and during the summer almost dries up completely. It stays dry until the winter rains and snows fill it up in time for the migration.

Strandja Nature Park has looked in to cementing parts of the marsh so that it better retains water and can therefore host more migratory birds longer into the summer. Sounds like a great idea, and I was all for it, until just recently. The reason I'm a bit unsure now is because I have noticed that a lot of locals come out here to the marsh to shoot the birds that come in, and since the marsh is never particularly large, it makes hunting them super easy. Some birds such as storks are not hunted, but all the ducks that come in are pretty much fair game, despite laws that restrict hunting. None of these laws are enforced, so pretty much anyone can head out to the marsh whenever they feel like it and shoot away.

So the question is, is the marsh better off being fixed so it can host more birds, some of which will be illegally hunted, or should it be left alone to slowly drain away, depriving the migratory birds of a feeding ground but also keeping them out of reach from local poachers? Its a rather tricky scenario, and there is no perfect solution, but its frustrating to put all this work into something and hoping that more birds come, only to realize that everyone else is killing them all off. Chances are that I wont really be in a position to influence the outcome of all this, but I still think about it everyday that I head out bird monitoring.

My blog is lame

So, This morning I was reading some blogs of some friends of mine and what struck me about them was that they all looked cooler than mine. I realize now that I didnt do anything to make my blog format interesting, or add any other information. Its the most basic boring layout I could possibly have.

You should have already noticed something about this already; I have decided to write about this on my blog instead of using the time to change it. This is because I sat looking at my blog today wondering what I should do to make it cooler, and I came up with..........nothing. So here I am writing and complaining about it instead. Ugh, Im going to go make maps now. later