Boring Bulgaria? NO WAY!
Monday, September 28th, 2009Biser, Bulgaria
We’re supposed to be having a quiet relaxing stay here on the outskirts of a small village. So how is it that there is so much to say about it?
It all started with bicycle-horses being manoeuvred around the field at Mongolian commands….actually, even before that was the excitement of the donkey-next-door paying us a visit over our side of the fence.
The “horses” ended up being trained for a comprehensively-staged polo game, which morphed into jousting practice and show, complete with squires and parades and hurriedly-erected tent and flying flag.
This lasted all the way to lunchtime, although partway through some of us took a wander to town to buy bread (“turn right out of the gate, take the first left and at the bottom of the hill is the shop” – yes, that’s right THE shop, not shops plural). Maybe we’ll take you virtually into The Shop another day. For now, suffice to say it was the place I learnt my first two Bulgarian words – bread: the same as in Polish, and thanks: the same as in French. Go figure!
We detoured to admire pumpkin piles and a resting horse-n-cart and another quarter of an hour flew by.
When we returned to “camp” the guy who lives here was sorting through his arrow collection and that turned into three archery sessions over the course of the day. But first, a little about the camp. Set on a couple of acres mostly in grass, there is a large dwelling for the owners (and whoever else is staying with them), a nicely tiled shower and toilet block, a couple of outdoor sinks, a washing machine (woohoo!!) and a wooden gazebo covering an outdoor eating area. It’s a fantastic set-up and we’re the only “campers” here to enjoy it.
Lunchtime saw the-guy-who-lives-here’s British father arriving, and conversation about local sites and routes to Berlin accompanied by poring over maps whiled away another good chunk of day.
Meanwhile, the second archery session got underway and was interrupted by the arrival of a flamboyant no-longer-middle-aged-but-definitely-not-old-and-not-even-really-“aging” Bulgarian fruit farmer. After a conversation, in which we discovered Bulgarian to be remarkably similar to Polish (although of course if we were to see it written we would not understand a word, given that the Cyrillic alphabet is used here – yea indeed, was invented here), we all piled into a landrover and headed over to one of Farmer Ivan’s holdings, where we kissed his wife (once on each cheek) and listened to the same conversation over again. Soon we’ll be able to say, “They come from New Zealand, they have eight children, yes eight, yes really eight, no they are not two families, they are one family.”
With his ever-present grin, Farmer Ivan handed out boxes and set everyone to work picking his apples for him. But not before he had pressed a freshly-picked one into each of our hands and urged us to bite. My oh my. Fresh. Crisp. Crunchy. Juicy. Tasty. Never have we eaten apples like these. In next to no time a dozen boxes were filled and we had to stop him from sending us home with all of them.
She looks reluctant, but readily called out, “Ciao ciao!”
to everyone when we left!
By the way, what is this Bulgarian? Polish? French? Italian?
Already we had plenty of “stories” from the day, any one of which had the potential to become a fullblown blogpost, but there was more to come. People started turning up. Someone suggested having a BBQ. More people were invited. And came. A policeman dropped in too. There was no question of us not being invited – we were treated like friends rather than paying camp customers. There were Bulgarians and Brits and one guy, who has lived in so many countries he doesn’t know where he comes from and is flying to New Zealand tomorrow. The Bulgarian children, who wanted a drink were required to ask for it in English, the English speakers didn’t get any until they spoke Bulgarian, even the three-year-old!
The sun set, the food stretched, laughs rang out, the temperature dropped (28 during the day, but when we get up at seven in the morning it will only be five degrees, and once the sun goes it plummets rapidly) and all the kids played hard until they were eventually called for bed.
rayres