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?
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EbOGLZo3cMXfA

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

snowboarding!

So I had a fantastic time this last weekend. I got invited to go snowboarding with three other people in a town called dobernishte, which is a good ten hour trip from borgas. I arrived in borgas from where i had spent the week working in tsarevo and went out with some friends for pizza and pool (see how much my life has changed). early the next day we took a train out across the country to a mountain town called razgrad, where we stayed with one of the other volunteers that boarded with us. razgrad sits in this little valley right between three of the largest mountain ranges in bulgaria, and the view was awesome. unfortunatly i neglected to bring a camera so you all will have to take my work on that one.
rentals and lift tickets at the slope combined only cost us 25 leva (around $15) a day, and food and drink on the mountain was another 3 leva ($2). not too bad at all. the place we boarded at was pretty small, but for the price im not complaining. the weather was great and it was good to get back on the mountain. i was really missing my snowboard, so this was just what i needed. if the mountain gets more snow i might head back out again in febuary for one more weekend of riding before my season ends, but not sure yet. the trip back to malko turnovo was probibly the only bad part of the trip. we left razgrad on a 6 pm bus to sofia, where we arrived just in time to catch the 10:15 night train to borgas. unfortunatly all the sleeping cars were full so we had to get regular seats, and happened to sit in the car with a broken heater. the train arrived at 6 in the morning and i walked across town to the bus station to take the 8:00 bus home. went straight from the bus station in malko turnovo to the office to start my day. a small sacrifice for a great weekend though.

The Black Sea coast

so, im writing this update from the town of tsarevo, on the southern black sea coast where I have been working this last week. I arrived monday morning and have spent the last couple of days seeing the towns in the region and the two park protected areas along the coast. Most of the shoreline is small rocky cliffs punctuated by occasional sand beaches, and the water is a clear dark blue. the weather has been a bit cold, but today is nice and sunny. this place is beautiful, where forest and mountains meet the sea, but recently foreign real estate investment has turned a lot of these small towns into cities of huge hotels, scarring the landscape. none of these hotels will be filled, and they are putting them up as fast as possible. A lot of these investments are an easy way to launder money, so they dont care about the environmental impacts or whether they are financially viable in the long run. But now because there is so much money flowing in to the area the local municipality is squared off against the nature park and is trying to develop as much land as possible. Now there is a case in court that would seek to remove all the land on the coast from under strandja nature park control south of tsarevo so it can be developed into even more hotels.
it seems sometimes that the majority of people here are either uninformed about the importance of the environment, or want the money more. i know thats not always true, but its frustrating none the less. another thing that is kind of disturbing is the sewage system. along the coast there are random tubes that dump untreated waste from the hotels and buildings into the water. these spots are, more often than not, located nearby tsarevos famous beaches, and they are disaster for the marine species here. the waste kills off all the shell fish and there are literal dunes of fine shell bits that have washed up on shore from the dead animals.
i mean not to paint the picture too bad, but it is depressing sometimes. however, there are a lot of environmental NGO's that are working hard to convince the government to increase protection and do something about it. and the two protected areas along the Black Sea do cover a good amount of coastline, so thats good news. anyway, today is my last day here and tomorrow I head out for more adventures, so i will keep you all posted.

new years party!

This year i spent new years in Plovdiv, the second largest city and my favorite to date. there were about 20 people in our group, making it one crazy party when we were all together, but for the most time we just roved around in smaller groups. i arrived the day before and spent two days sightseeing around the city. there are several old roman ruins, including a large ampatheatre close to where our hostel was. we stayed in the old part of town that still had old cobble stone roads and old style architecture built on stone walls from times past. it is a very interesting city and despite being farily upscale still does well at preserving its history and atmosphere.
for new years eve a few of us had an early dinner at a very good arabic resturant before heading down town to the bars to relax till midnight. before too long all of us where there and the energy was awesome. just before midnight we went down the town center where they had a stage set up and watched them do the countdown. when the new year arrived they shot off fireworks and everyone in the crowd started dancing the horo. we all joined in and stayed out there dancing and singing with everyone for almost two hours. there was even some light snow falling on and off for most of the night, which made it even better. i ended up heading to bed around 3 because i had an early train to catch the next day, but i still had a great time. i always love spending new years in a new city, especially with good friends. i posted a few pics from new years and christmas up, so feel free to take a look. http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EbOGLZo3cMXXg

well, thats about it, talk to you all later