I’m sad. But in sadness often comes reflection and sadness can bring forth the sweetest memories.

All too soon our Bulgarian adventure has come to an end. Several things have come up, which we did not anticipate, and have necessitated our return to Arizona. I am already missing Bulgaria and the friends we made there. I miss Sapareva Banya. And I miss the little town of Koprivshtitsa. I was only there for two days but it seemed like such a wonderful place to spend two years. I hope to go back someday as a visitor, perhaps to stay for a while.

Learning the Bulgarian language was a huge challenge but we were making good progress in learning vocabulary, at least in speaking. It was, however, very stressful when I was trying to hold a conversation because I still hadn’t got to the point where I could understand a lot of what was spoken to me. Maybe with my hearing loss, I would have never reached that point. I’ll never know but it did weigh on my mind.

The good side is that we’re back with our good friends in Arizona. Our own house, our own bed, our own shower, the ability to drive a car again, and above all the opportunity to live with each other both day and night, all make up a familiar refuge from a very intense time in our lives.

We’re now 30 hours back in our home and the jet lag still lingers from being seat-belted in aluminum cocoons for 23 hours on three flights covering one third of the globe. Our bodies are still on Bulgarian time, now ten hours off from the Arizona sun’s cycle.

We’re back home. The warm Arizona air removes the chill from body, mind, and soul. I look forward to getting reacquainted with “my” mountain, finding my friend the cactus wren, and indulging in enchiladas and fajitas at my favorite Mexican restaurant. So many familiar things to do, to see, and to enjoy.

And yet some part of me is still in Bulgaria. My dreams are still in Bulgarian. Part of my soul drifts with the haunting singing of the white brotherhood echoing high in the Rila Mountains. Part of me still walks the narrow cobblestone streets of Koprivshtitsa. In some mysterious way I have become part-Bulgarian and the word “home” now has two different meanings on two different sides of the globe.

Today I am Janus. I am looking forward and I am looking back.

The Rila Monastery, located in the Rila Mountains southeast of Dupnista, is the most important monastery in Bulgaria and is a major tourist destination. Two weeks ago Shirley's host rented a 17-passenger bus to take our group of trainees as well as neighbors on a day trip to the monastery. The cost of the bus for each of us was only 10 leva, about $8. What follows are Shirley's pictures from the trip.

The history of the Rila Monastery goes back over 1000 years. A holy man, St. John of Rila, became a hermit in these mountains because he did not like the way that the people were living. He lived in a small cave on the mountainside and slept on the ground. He began to preach to those who would come to his hermit’s retreat. A group of followers decided to build a monastery nearby and continue to learn from his teaching.

Thus the first Rila Monastery was built in the years of the 10th century. The monastery grew in importance and size and reached it’s apogee in the late 14th and early 15th century when over 300 monks lived here. During the Turkish occupation monastery was burned and destroyed several times beginning in the late 15th century.

By the early 1800s the monastery was again as large as the present day but a devastating fire in 1833 destroyed all the wooden parts of the monastery, particularly the monks living cells. Because of the importance of the monastery to the local people, a group of 3,000 master carpenters came to the site after the fire and rebuilt all the wooden parts in just a couple years.

The main church was built in 1837. We visited the monastery on a Sunday and observed some of the morning church service. Because this was a weekend, there were also hundreds of tourists both from Bulgaria and from around the world.

This is just a small portion of the three story (plus basement) monks quarters that completely surround the interior courtyard. The outside walls of the monastery are stone with a few small windows causing the exterior to look more like a medievil fortress than a religious establishment.

In some sections the monastery is four stories high, plus basement. The whole structure is an irregular rectangle and is huge.

Because this was Sunday morning, there were priests on hand to greet worshipers after the service. He and the woman at left with the pan were giving out small pieces of bread which has religious synificance.

I loved this cupola hanging off the top floor.

This tower inside the courtyard was built in the 1300s and is the oldest part of the structure still extant.

This small chapel with the red stripes was also built in the 1300s and is only a few years younger than the midievil tower.

There were probably more than 1,000 tourists and worshipers here on this day.

The gift shop was mobbed by people wanting to buy icons and other religious items.

Obviously we were enchanted by the design, colors, and size of the monastery. Every picture of the monks quarters on this blog is of a different portion of this huge place.

I know that not everyone is entralled by endless pictures of religious art but if you share my passion you will feast with delight on the hundreds of frescos and paintings that adorn almost every inch of ceilings and walls along the colonades.

I am continuing to endulge my passion for this art work that was painted in the 1840s. I hope that you will enjoy it with me. The curved pieces that you see are all ceiling pieces in domes and niches. Even some of the flat pieces are also ceilings but some are on walls.

Endulge me one more time while I share my love of art. Remember that the pictures shown in these blogs are only a small fraction of the religious art at this one monastery.

You have heard of the South Beach Diet. I’m sure somewhere there is a North Beach Diet. In Arizona we have the No Beach Diet. But I have found one weight-loss program that works even better. I call it the Great Bulgarian Diet and Fitness Weight-loss Plan (patent pending). It works like this:

Fitness Program: Five days a week walk one mile to class and each afternoon walk home one mile. For extra points walk back into town in the evening for a Coke date with your favorite Chica and of course walk home again. Each Saturday walk at least four miles bird watching and main street cruising with the afore-mentioned Chica. On Sundays, repeat or add in an extra five miles of mountain hiking.

Diet Program: For breakfast, enjoy one croissant and a Diet Coke. For both lunch and dinner, 70% of food intake should be tomato and cucumber salad with small amounts of oil, parsley, and feta cheese. The remainder of lunch and dinner should be strange tasting unfamiliar food with lots of heavily spiced ground pork. By avoiding all familiar or comfort food, one will naturally restrict themselves to very small portions. Evening meals should include one half liter of beer or a generous shot of homemade brandy. Garnish this diet with a minimum of four ice cream bars per week.

Guaranteed Results: As I can personally attest, this program will generate a weight loss of 12 pounds in only two months. Try it. It works!

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Breaking news: The hot weather of August and the very warm weather of early September has suddenly broken. As late as last Thursday the temperature was 87 degrees. Today, Tuesday, the high was 68 with light rain and the high for rest of the week is forecast for 59 with lows of 52. Some mountain areas received a dusting of snow today.

Super breaking news: The Peace Corps sent us to Dupnista for a two-day training session for all 27 of us. Guess who actually got to share a hotel room together? It sure beats being a bachelor.

Recent news: Our training group, previously 30, has lost one more member and is now down to 27. The stress of the intensive training, particularly language training, has been hard on a number of our group.

Last month’s news: In late August the Peace Corps evacuated all volunteers and staff from the country of Georgia because of the Russian invasion. That Peace Corps program has been shut down and all volunteers sent home except for a few who wanted to transfer to another country and start a new Peace Corps two-year service. Some of the volunteers had been in Georgia for almost two years but others had only arrived nine weeks before to start their training program.

Yesterday’s breaking news: The Peace Corps evacuated all volunteers and staff from Bolivia because of the unstable political climate there with civil unrest and blockades in parts of the country. For a while some volunteers were trapped and unable to leave their towns because of all of the roadblocks set up by protesters who are opposed to the left-wing president of the country, Eva Morales. I read on the internet that Bolivia just expelled the U.S. ambassador. Because it was becoming unsafe for Americans, the Peace Corps pulled out for the safety of its volunteers. The volunteers have been sent home to America and their service is terminated.

Banitsa is a large round pastry 12" or more in diameter. It is great breakfast treat but can be eaten anytime. Although some people buy a commercial banitsa, the best are homemade. A good cook can be judged by her banitsa. The banitsa in these pictures is being prepared by Baba Venetka (and an assistant) in Shirley's house. "Baba" is the word for grandmother and is a title worn with pride and honor.

First the yeast dough is prepared from scratch and allowed to rise in a warm place after being divided in about ten portions.

One portion of dough is placed on a tabletop that has been dusted with flour. This portion of dough is first flatten by hand. Note the low table that is only a little above knee high on a short baba.

No, there is no rolling pin. A long round dowel works better as you will see.

The dowel is not used like a rolling pin. Rather the dowel is used to roll up the dough on the stick.

After the dowel is completely rolled up on the dowel, Baba will roll the dowel back and forth a little and work with her hands to spread out the dough so that it becomes wider on the stick. You can't do that with a rolling pin.

Then Baba unrolls the dough back onto the table so it is a flat circle again. Then she turns the dough 90 degree and starts rolling it back up on the stick again and again will work with her fingers to widen the dough. Of course as the dough is widened it becomes thinner and thinner.

Note how much bigger the dough circle is now.

When she finishes with this one portion of dough, it is almost paper thin. She drapes it on the dowel to carry it. If she tried to carry it by one edge, it would tear because it is so thin.

Now she pours a small amount of vegetable oil on the circle. In Bulgaria vegetable oil is most likely made from sunflowers which are grown in Bulgaria.

After the oil she sprinkles a mixture of egg and feta cheese.

The process will continue on the next post on this blog.

The making of Banitsa is now continued from the previous blog posting.

After sprinkling vegetable oil and a mixture of egg and feta cheese on the large circle of thin dough, Baba thin rolls this circle of dough into a loose rope of dough.

Baba has already finished several ropes of dough, each prepared as I have described. Now she adds the latest rope to the previous ones to continue making a coil in the large baking pan.

Now she starts all over again with another portion of dough that will eventually become another part of the coil.

Now an assistant enters into the picture. Being a novice, she may need some directions and close supervision.

Maybe more advice and direction needs to be given but the assistant is a fast learner.

The coil is finished. It doesn't go all the way to the edge of the pan because it will rise and spread during baking.

The banitsa will bake in the oven on the left. This is also the electric stove where all cooking is done at Shirley's house. The one on the right is wood burning and will only be used in winter when the heat will be appreciated. Wood is the primary source of heat in the winter in many Bulgarian small towns and villages.

The final result was wonderful banitsa, a flaky pastry with cheese inside.

Everyone will want to buy Happy Donuts.

Where are we going for our permanent assignment? This map of Bulgria outlined on a high school gym floor contains paper markers showing the different assignments. In the fron half of the court, our site is the third from the left in the blue.

A street scene in Dupnista.

The Goat Barn Behind Shirley's House

This horse at a neighbor's house doesn't go out for hay. The hay comes to him in a wagon.

Filling the canning kettle for making pickles requires adult supervision.

Welcome to the global economy.

In Arizona many products that I buy have packaging written in English, Spanish, and French so the manufacturer can sell in Mexico, U.S.A., and Canada, including Quebec. Because three languages take up more space than one, there is now very little information written on the package compared with before when only English was listed.

Consider now Bulgaria.

Sometimes at the magazine (store) I buy a croissant with a cream filling for a snack. My regular brand costs 0.55 leva and is made in Greece less than 200 miles away. Today when I bought my snack, the price was 0.65 leva. I was surprised until I noticed that this was a different brand with a larger package. Well, I thought, a bigger package means a bigger croissant which justifies the larger price. But when I opened the package the croissant was the same size as before. Why the larger package?

In Europe, just as in the United States, there are requirements that packaged food products must list their ingredients. Also the name and address of the manufacturer or distributor is usually listed. But here in Eastern Europe there are many small countries, some not larger than a single state in America, and most have their own language. So, a company that sells its product in several countries has to give the same information in several languages.

On my little six-inch long croissant, the package gives all the required ingredient information in 14 languages, each requiring about 15 lines of text. This package then is written in Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech, German, Bosnian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovene, Slovak, Greek, and Russian, plus one additional language written in Cyrillic letters that I cannot identify.

So, here are 14 different languages written in almost 14 different alphabets, some using Cyrillic letters, some using varieties of Latin letters with extra letters for each language, and of course one using the Greek alphabet.

Now I know why my little croissant package is larger than before. Maybe the bigger package justifies a higher price. Who knows?

For those who want more information on the April Uprising which started in Koprivshtitsa, here is a slightly condensed account from Wikipedia.

The April Uprising was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876, which indirectly resulted in the re-establishment of Bulgaria as an independent nation in 1878. The uprising was brutally crushed by the regular Ottoman Army and irregular units, leading to a public outcry in Europe and the United States, with many famous intellectuals condemning the Ottoman atrocities and supporting the oppressed Bulgarian population.

The 1876 uprising involved only parts of the Ottoman territories populated predominantly by Bulgarians. The emergence of Bulgarian national sentiments was closely related to the re-establishment of the independent Bulgarian church in 1870. Together with notions of romantic nationalism the rise of national awareness became known as the Bulgarian National Revival.

In November 1875, activists of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee met in the Romanian town of Giurgiu and decided that the political situation was suitable for a general uprising. The uprising was scheduled for April or May 1876.

On April 14, 1876, a general meeting was held in Oborishte to discuss the proclamation of the insurrection. One of the delegates, however, disclosed the plot to the Ottoman authorities. Ottoman police made an attempt to arrest the leader of the local revolutionary committee in Koprivshtitsa, Todor Kableshkov.

In conformity with the decisions taken at Oborishte, the local committee attacked the headquarters of the Ottoman police in the town and proclaimed the insurrection. Within several days, the rebellion spread to the whole Sredna Gora and to a number of towns and villages in the northwestern Rhodope Mountains. The insurrection broke out in the other revolutionary districts, as well, though on a much smaller scale.

The reaction of the Ottoman authorities was quick and ruthless. Detachments of regular and irregular Ottoman troops were mobilised and attacked the first insurgent towns as early as April 25th. By the middle of May, the insurrection was completely suppressed. One of the last sparks of resistance was poet Hristo Botev’s attempt to come to the rebels' rescue with a detachment of Bulgarian political emigrees resident in Romania, ending with the unit's rout and Botev's death. As few records were kept at the time, it is impossible to know exactly how many people were killed. The figure ranges from around 3,000 to over 12,000 with the latter being the generally accepted figure.

News of massacres of Bulgarians reached Istanbul in May and June 1876 through Bulgarian students at Robert College the American college in the city. Faculty members at Robert College wrote to the British Ambassador and to the Istanbul correspondents of The Times and the London Daily News.

An article about the massacres in the Daily News on June 23 provoked a question in Parliament about Britain's support for Turkey, and demands for an investigation. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli promised to conduct an investigation about what had really happened.

In July, the British Embassy in Istanbul sent a second secretary, Walter Baring, to Bulgaria to investigate the stories of atrocities. Baring did not speak Bulgarian and British policy was officially pro-Turkish, so the Bulgarian community in Istanbul feared he would not report the complete story. They asked the American Consul in Istanbul, Eugene Schuyler, to conduct his own investigation.

Schuyler set off for Bulgaria on July 23, four days after Baring. He was accompanied by a well-known American war correspondent, Januarius MacGahan, by a German correspondent, and by a Russian diplomat, Prince Aleksei Tseretelev.

Schuyler's group spent three weeks visiting Batak and other villages where massacres had taken place. Schuyler's official report, published in November 1876, said that fifty-eight villages in Bulgaria had been destroyed, five monasteries demolished, and fifteen thousand people in all massacred. The report was reprinted as a booklet and widely circulated in Europe.

Baring's report to the British government about the massacres was similar, but put the number of victims at about twelve thousand.

No other investigation of the massacres was made. A century later, one historian claimed that the number killed was exaggerated, and was closer to three thousand. But it is difficult to ignore the accounts of MacGahan, Schuyler and Baring, who visited the massacre sites three months after they occurred, and saw many of the unburied corpses. The actual number of victims will never be known.

MacGahan's vivid articles from Bulgaria moved British public opinion against Turkey. He described in particular what he had seen in the town of Batak, where five thousand of a total of seven thousand residents had been slaughtered, beheaded or burned alive by Turkish irregulars, and their bodies left in piles around the town square and the church. He described "Skulls with gray hair still attached to them, dark tresses which had once adorned the heads of maidens, the mutilated trunks of men, the rotting limbs of children..."

The political impact of the reports was immediate and dramatic. The leader of the British opposition, William Gladstone, wrote a booklet denouncing what he called "the Bulgarian Horrors," and calling upon Britain to withdraw its support for Turkey. "I entreat my countrymen," he wrote, "upon whom far more than upon any other people in Europe it depends, to require and to insist that our government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigour to concur with the states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves...."

Prominent Europeans, including Charles, Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Garibaldi spoke against the Turkish behavior in Bulgaria. When Russia invaded Romania and Bulgaria in 1877, the Turkish Government asked Britain for help, but the British government refused, citing public outrage caused by the Bulgarian massacres as the reason.

The April uprising was a tragic failure as a revolution, but, thanks to publicity that was given to the reprisals that followed, it led directly to European demands for reform of the Ottoman Empire, and the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78, , which ended in Turkish defeat, and the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, followed in July that year by the Treaty of Berlin. It thus ultimately achieved its original purpose, the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

“But let me tell you what we saw at Batak … The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be … It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odor, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them … The ground is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odor, that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible.”

Eyewitness account of J. A. MacGahan on Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria in a letter to the London Daily News of August 22, 1876.

To tell you about what makes the town of Koprivshtitsa so special, I must first tell a small amount of Bulgarian history, so bear with me. Perhaps someday I will write a long piece about the history but today only a short one.

Since I am sure that all of you studied ancient Greek history, you will know the land where I now write was called Thrace several centuries before Christ, but Thrace doesn’t concern us right now. I want to write about Bulgaria.

There has been a land, a kingdom, called Bulgaria since at least the 7th century A.D. Like all European kingdoms, the boundaries of Bulgaria expanded and shrank with the vagrancies of war and conquest but Bulgaria existed as a country for 700 years until being conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the late 1300s. Not only Bulgaria fell but also large areas of eastern and central Europe before the Ottomans were stopped “almost at the gates of Vienna.” Today’s Muslim populations in Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia are a result of conversions to Islam by local populations during the occupation. Some Bulgarians converted but a relatively small number.

After Bulgaria fell to the Ottomans, Turkey ruled this land for the next 500 years. In Bulgarian history these years of oppression are known as the “Turkish yoke.” Throughout these long years, Bulgarian culture was kept alive through the unique Bulgarian language and the structure of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The Muslim Ottomans normally did not force conversions to Islam in Bulgaria. It was not in their best interests. The Turks charged higher taxes to Christians so there was a disincentive to force mass conversions.

By the 1800s a cultural revival began in Bulgaria with the publication of a book on Bulgarian history and a resurgence of efforts by Bulgarian intellectuals. With the new interest in a national identity, Bulgaria’s yearning for freedom from the Ottoman yoke finally boiled over in April 1876. The April Uprising began right here in Koprivshtitsa with the first shots being fired at the Turks. It can be said that Koprivshtitsa is the cradle of modern Bulgarian liberty. It occupies a spot in Bulgarian history somewhat similar to Concord Bridge in the American Revolution.

The April Uprising failed when it was put down brutally by the Turks. But the Uprising also succeeded because it generated sympathy among the Great European Powers (Britain, France, Russia) for the Bulgarian people. So two years later when Russian defeated Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, the Great Powers carved out an autonomous Bulgaria which became fully independent about 20 years later. And it all started with events here in Koprivshtitsa.

So that is one reason why Koprivshtitsa is an important and exciting small town. There are monuments to the patriots and an ossuary in the center of town containing the relics of those who died in the Uprising.

But there are yet more reasons for you to visit Koprivshtitsa and for us to want to live there. So back to a little history.

Koprivshtitsa was founded in the 1400s by Bulgarians fleeing the invading Turks. Soon, however, Koprivshtitsa became a center of commerce selling to the Turks and others. Sheep and goat farming formed the backbone of the town’s wealth and the resulting wool and dairy products, including carpets, woolen clothing, and cheese were traded throughout the Ottoman Empire and the local merchants became rich. These merchants traveled to Egypt and Venice and beyond. Local houses are decorated with scenes from these foreign locales. Rich men build rich houses and Koprivshtitsa had more than its share of both. By the time of the uprising the town had a population of 12,000 and rivaled the capital, Sophia, in both size and importance.

After the liberation, however, commercial life began to shift to lowland towns and places like Koprivshtitsa stagnated, leaving it as a kind of fossil. Today the town has shrunk to a population of 2400 but what remains of the town is magnificent beyond words. The houses of the middle and upper classes of 1870 Koprivshtitsa are all still here, built in the elaborate Bulgarian Revival style.

Much of the town is a huge museum. More than 330 of the old houses remain and most have been restored. Much of modern Bulgaria is stone, concrete, or block houses (not counting all the communist huge apartment blocks). Here in Koprivshtitsa are wonderful half timbered houses with tall walls around the yard (to keep the Turkish officials from looking in.) Almost every house has elaborate wooden gates, carved wooden ceilings and brightly painted exteriors.

For me it is pure delight to walk the narrow streets full of old houses, some going back 250 years. You must see this town.

Of course this a tourist destination. There are 20 or more small hotels and guest houses. The largest hotel has 70 beds but most are 15 or less. Guest houses may have two or three rooms. So if you come, there are plenty of wonderful places to stay for around $50 a night. A number of outdoor restaurants and cafes are great for summer and fall evenings but winter snows will drive us all indoors.

Even the non-historic parts of town look historic. This has been declared a “museum town” since 1952 and there are strict codes for any new structures. They must blend in. Except for the main street through town, all streets are cobblestone.

But more than a museum, Koprivshtitsa is still a working agricultural community. Every day we saw numerous horse-drawn wagons hauling hay, farm workers and goods. Every Friday is market day with merchants coming in from out of town. The hardware stores still carry horseshoes, farm tools, and other necessities of daily life.

Yes, we like this town and we hope to fit in once we learn more Bulgarian and learn our place in this community.

Here are just a few of Shirley’s pictures of Koprivshtitsa. More will follow next month.

Koprivshtitsa (Копривщица) is slated to be our new home town come October 10, a week after Shirley’s birthday. Unless you have a detailed map of Bulgaria you will not easily find us because Koprivshtitsa has a population of only 2400 people. However, we know that everyone will want to jump on an airplane and come visit so here is where we will be.

From Sophia, the capital and largest city in Bulgaria, we are 110 km. (70) miles due east. From Plovdiv, the second largest city, we are 90 km. northwest. Both cities require a 2 ½ hour bus ride. If you divide Bulgaria in two, north and south, we are right on the dividing line. If you divide Bulgaria into thirds, east and west, we are right where the west third meets the middle third. So draw one line north to south and another east to west and Koprivshtitsa is close to where the two lines meet.

Koprivshtitsa is in a region known as the Sredna Gora (Middle Forest). This is a mountainous region with rounded peaks reaching 1600 meters (5200 feet). Koprivshtitsa itself is 1060 meters (3500 feet) above sea level. About 40 miles north of town is the Balkan Mountains with peaks above 2200 meters (7200’). The Balkans are a very long, continuous, east-west chain of mountains that divide Bulgaria into north and south halves. They are the most prominent natural feature in Bulgaria and these mountains lend their name to the entire Balkan Peninsula and the Balkan Region.

To some of us from Arizona these elevations may not seem high at first until we realize that in Bulgaria we are starting from a much lower elevation. Is also useful to realize that in the United States, east of the Mississippi, the highest mountains are only a little over 6,000 feet in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. Most of the mountains in the eastern United States are in the 3,000 feet range, a little less than Sredna Gora.

The lower ranges of the Sredna Gora are covered with beech forests and lots of birch trees which look much like American aspen trees. But with just a short rise in elevation the forest changes to pine then spruce and fir. There are still wolves and bear in these mountains along with the Imperial Eagle, an endangered species. Hiking is a big activity with eleven trails stretching out from the Koprivshtitsa area into the Sredna Gora and people come from Sophia and other areas to enjoy nature and escape the summer heat of the lower elevations.

My first clue about the climate of Koprivshtitsa was when I looked at the houses in town and realized that they had no vegetable gardens, just grass with a few apple or plum trees. There were no grape arbors, no tomatoes, no cucumbers, no large amounts of peppers, nothing to can for the winter. That all says something about the length of the growing season here in these mountain elevations which are also as far north as Chicago.

From the brochure I learned that the climate (Yes Shirley, take a deep breath!) is “mountainous and the winter is cold and usually lasts from December to April. The snow cover holds a long time. The winter days are sunny and fogs occur very rarely. The spring is short and humid. The summer is cool. The highest average (daytime) temperature of 30 degrees C. (86 F.) is measured in the hottest month of July and the lowest average (nighttime) temperature of minus 15 degrees C. (+5 F.) is measured in January.”

So much for the brochure. Milena tells me that sometimes the temperature goes to –20 C. (-4 F.) Also in some years the snowfall reaches a depth of one meter….and yes we walk everywhere. Shirley take another deep breath!

Did I mention that all heating in houses is done with wood with sometimes a little coal. Electricity is too expensive to use very much. Would somebody please tell how to bank a fire to last the night!! If the fire doesn’t last the night, Shirley may not last! And I’ve had enough of bachelorhood.

Those who know me well, know that I love the mountains and that the little I’ve told you about the Sredna Gora would make me excited to be living there but I still haven’t told you what makes Koprivshtitsa so special.

I don’t mean to tease but I will have to save that for another time. It’s late and I must be to bed.

We’ve been in Bulgaria for six weeks now and gone from home for almost seven. It’s been 14 months since we applied for this adventure. All this time we’ve wondered just what the Peace Corps had in mind for us and we’ve certainly wondered WHERE?? Half of the where question was answered last March when our names came up on the list for Bulgaria. But Bulgaria is as large as Tennessee and ranges from sea level to 9,000 feet, so the where question has been hanging over us until this week.

Last Monday the four of us in Sapareva Banya traveled by bus 25 kilometers to the larger town of Dupnista. There we were joined by 24 more fellow trainees traveling in from six other satellite sites. Our original group of 30 has been reduced by two young women who decided to return to the states for personal reasons.

All 28 of us marched down several blocks to a local high school and upstairs into the gym. There a large outline map of Bulgaria was marked out on the floor in masking tape. The map was so large it took up the whole basketball court. Inside the map were 27 pieces of paper, with town and village names, placed at the proper location on the map. Twenty-seven locations for 28 people. Maybe somebody remembered that there was a married couple here. Perhaps there was hope for a ranger and an accountant tired of playing bachelor and bachelorette.

The Peace Corps Country Director began pulling names of trainees out of a box and finally the where question was being answered. As each name and location was announced, the trainee was escorted to the proper spot on the gym floor map and given a long-stem carnation in congratulations. Shirley’s was the 4th name called and she was escorted to the center of the map to a piece of paper labeled Копривщица. Several more names were drawn out of the box until someone called out, “Don’t you think Richard ought to go to the same town?” Common sense prevailed and the ranger got a carnation and an escort. Soon all us were standing on the Bulgarian map on the gym floor. Now we could all see where we were going in relationship to our classmates.

But just what is Копривщица? It was just my luck to get a town with a name ten letters long including the letter “щ” which is not to be confused with the letter “ш”. The former translates in English as “sht” while the latter is “sh”. If at first you don’t see the difference in the two letters, look for the small downturn on the right-hand end of the letter. The letter “щ” is one of the two most confusing letters in the alphabet for me. The other is “ц” which translates as “ts”. This one is easy in the middle of a word but difficult for starting a word. And Копривщица contains both letters.

I guess that I should have counted my blessing that Копривщица contains only ten letters in Bulgarian. In English the town name has 13 letters, Koprivshtitsa. Try saying that ten times real fast. After three days I am still trying to say it right every time. To get the accent right say Ko-PREEV-shtit-sa.

To introduce us to our new home each of us were given a packet of information. Some people got only a single sheet of paper. It was hard to say much about their village of 200 or 600 people. Shirley and I were luckier. Our packet included a full color booklet and three brochures and all bilingual. We were headed for a tourist destination in Bulgaria that had printed brochures in an attempt to lure even more tourists.

Now with a town name and a small information packet, we all reconvened for a Peace Corps session on travel logistics and what to do when we first met our local counterparts from these towns and villages because in just two hours we were going to meet them.

When we left Sapareva Banya that Monday morning we each carried a suitcase or backpack with clothes for six days without being told where we were going. The Peace Corps loves surprises. We knew only that we were spending the first two nights in a nearby hotel for conferences and then we would be traveling to our new sites, with our counterparts, for a two-day look-see and meet-and-greet. So there was soon to be an actual place to go with the name Koprivshtitsa and the booklet and the three brochures. But first we had to meet our counterparts who were in the lobby of the hotel.

Just as we had come to Dupnitsa that morning not knowing where our permanent sites would be, so the local counterparts came to Dupnitsa not knowing which Peace Corps volunteer was coming to their town. They knew nothing about the prospective volunteer, not even their name. As I said the Peace Corps loves surprises.

So each of us walked into the hotel looking for someone from our new town identified by a name tag with location listed. We were nervous. Would our counterpart speak any English? Some don’t. Our new counterparts were equally nervous. Who was coming to their town? Could they communicate in Bulgarian? Shirley and I found Milena from Koprivshtitsa and started a three-way, bilingual conversation. We hit it off and all is well!

A full day of conferences followed for all of us. (You don’t want to hear about conferences.) Then on Wednesday it was time to go for our site visit, traveling with Milena. Of course we are going by bus. With gas at over $8.00 a gallon the bus is the cheaper option.

Leaving Dupnista, we traveled north to the capital city, Sophia, for an hour and a half. The fare was 5 leva, a little under $4 per person. In Sophia there is more than one bus station so we have to travel from the Ovcha Kupel Bus Station to the Central Bus Station. Usually one would take a trolley car (called a tram here) from one station to the other but we have three large bags and one small suitcase plus my daypack and Milena’s small bag.

All of us trainees brought two large suitcases to Bulgaria. Most of the contents are for later in our service with things such as winter clothes that we don’t need yet. So to avoid having to take all the bags later when we make our permanent move to our new site, we were advised to take one of our large bags now and drop it off at the new site for later. Shirley and I decided to take three of our four large bags now while we had an extra person to help.

So now we had too many bags to transfer to the other bus station by trolley. We needed a taxi. There are many taxis from many companies in Sophia and all are yellow. We were advised that a reputable taxi company was named the OK taxi company. They are reliable and have cheap rates, 0.59 leva per kilometer.

That’s all well and good but in this land of new and often unregulated capitalism there are three or four taxi companies that use some variation of the word OK in their logo and they try in every way to mimic the reputable company, except in price. Some will charge 2.49 leva per km. Or 4.90 leva or even 5.90 leva, ten times the price of the original OK company. All prices are legal so they are not violating any law. The only saving grace is that the law requires that the price be posted in the right hand corner of the windshield. So one must look carefully. The unwary will see 5.90 leva and forget that the good price is 0.59 leva. We had to search through 20 different taxis at the bus station to find the right one. Then it was a matter of putting a large suitcase, two large duffels, a small suitcase, a daypack, a small duffel, two trainees, and one counterpart in one small taxi. Oh yes, the driver has to get in there too.

We made it to Central Bus Station and the total bill was only 6.80 leva, a little over $5. I don’t know why it was so cheap. We were told by the Peace Corps to expect 10-12 leva. In any case it was much cheaper than the 60 leva ($48) that the unwary might be charged.

At the new bus station there was the chance for a sandwich (ham and cheese) before catching another bus for Koprivshtitsa. That town is only 110 km. (70 miles) from Sophia but the bus takes 2 ½ hours while stopping at small towns along the way.

Hooray, we made it! I’ll tell you about Koprivshtitsa in another posting. This one is too long, just like our bus rides. I’ll just say that we had a wonderful visit for two days and three nights.

Then came kicker. We had to travel back to Sapareva Banya but this time by ourselves with no Milena to help us. We now got to use our Bulgarian language and knowledge. So it was back on a bus to Sophia, back across town to the second bus station, back on a bus to Dupnista, and then on another bus to Sapareva Banya. All told it was 5 ½ hours travel to come back. But here we are “back home” ready to start our classes again. We have another 4 ½ weeks of training to go.

Next time the beautiful town of Копривщица.

Before I came to Bulgaria, I knew about the horah only as a Jewish dance where the dancers hold hands and dance in a circle. Little did I know that it has a much wider distribution. Here in Bulgaria it is know as the horo (plural hora). It is also the national dance of Romania and variations are found in Macedonia as well. It is well-known throughout the Balkans.

The traditional Bulgarian horo comes in many shapes. It is not necessary to be in a circle, a curving line of people is also acceptable. The steps used in a horo dance are extremely diverse and not just two or three steps forward and one step back. The horo may vary between three to seven or eight steps forward and one to five or six steps back depending on the specific type.

There are more than five types of horo that are usually danced at every wedding. They differ by the rhythm of the music and the steps taken. There are no two horo dances with similar steps. There are probably over one hundred types of horo dances in the Bulgarian folklore. There seems to be a different horo for each tune. As soon as the music starts, the people know which horo to dance.

The literature that I have read stated that, “In the past, the horo dance had a social role in Bulgarian society,” but here in my small town the horo is still important. At public functions and private parties if music starts, people will get up to dance. Women, couples, children, babas (grandmothers) all get up to dance, maybe even a Peace Corps trainee. It’s all mainly for fun or to celebrate weddings and other events. I’ve seen home movies of families dancing the horo in an apartment small enough to barely move around while they celebrated a family members graduation.

There are hora for people with little skill that can be learned in five to ten minutes, but there are also very sophisticated dances that cannot be learned unless one is fluent in many of the simpler dances.

Of course, there are also professional dance companies that dance complicated horos in full forklore costumes. Many of these complicated hora involve line dancing even more than circle or snake dancing.

Compliments of YouTube here are some home videos of ordinary people dancing the horo:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7Js7XfOO7_M&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlKX66rA6LQ&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6IQ5K7bzo5I&feature=related

Professional and well- horo dance groups are a big thing here. Two weeks practiced ago Shirley and I attended a outdoor festival with a number of horo groups. Interestingly while some groups were performing on stage, members of the audience would dance the horo out in the grass. Anyone could join in and many did. On cable television here, there is one channel entirely dedicated to people either dancing, performing or singing horo music.

Again from You Tube here is a professional horo group:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9hGJ1TZT_mg&feature=related

Also here is a horo group performing on Australian television.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pq8SBOE-81c&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTWsvyH5EaM&feature=related

And horo is more than just dancing. It is also music. Some of the best known personalities in horo are the musicians and singers.

Довидоне эь Българиа (Goodbye from Bulgaria) or as the locals are more likely to say “Chao.” [so what if it’s Italian, it works]

Here are some Bulgarian cultural tidbits gleaned from Peace Corps literature.

Nodding the head in Bulgaria means no. Shaking the head from side to side means yes. The “no” nod is up first then down but it is a very brief nod and if you blink you may miss it. If you are lucky their will also be a finger wagging to let you know that the answer is no. The “yes” head shake is not like an American “no” head shake. The Bulgarian head shake is more like a bobble-head.

When drinking alcohol the word for “cheers” is nazdray. There is one difference from cheers in the American way. In the U.S. we just clink glasses and that’s it. In Bulgaria one must look the person in the eye with whom he is clinking glasses. It is expected that nazdray will occur at the beginning of the meal but throughout. Nazdray comes from the phrase, to your health, and is taken seriously, hence the looking into the eyes.

Alcoholic drinks are served with food such as salad or French fries to make it less harsh on the stomach. Usually rakia (brandy from grapes, plums, etc.) and vodka are served with salads. Beer is usually served with potatoes or cheese. Wine is served with sausages. Sweeter alcohol , like cognac, is usually served with nuts or chocolate, never salads. The American concept of consuming salty things with beer or alcohol is foreign here.

Paper napkins are usually left on the table, not placed in the lap. If there are cloth napkins they will go in the lap.

It is common here to put a large platter or bowl of salad, for instance, in front of all guests and just put out separate forks. You share the salad and leave the fork (usually turned with the tines down) on the side of the platter.

Whenever one receives a plateful of treats(baked goods, fruit, etc.) at his house, it is proper to return the plate full a few days later.

Never give someone an even number of flowers. An even number is reserved only for funerals. Unlike in the U.S. where a dozen or half-dozen is common, here one will truly offend the recipient. In fact flower sellers won’t even sell an even number without asking if it is for a funeral.

Although birthday gifts are common just as in America, here it is expected that the person having the birthday will treat their friends with sweets, baked goods, etc. You do this for your own good health.

Similar to flowers, one never gives an even number of gifts to a newborn baby. This brings bad luck. Also one does not visit the newborn baby during the first 40 days unless invited. This allows time for the mother and child to bond.

When visiting someone, if even for a brief five minutes, one shouldn’t say “no” when offered chocolates, a glass of wine, tea or coffee, juice, etc.

Many, but not all, Bulgarians remove their shoes when they enter their house. This keeps dirt to a minimum. If you are a visitor in such a house, most likely the host will offer you slippers.

You can pay 60 cents for an espresso at a café and you can own the table where you are sitting for the whole day. No worries and no evil looks from the waitress.

Miscellaneous musing on a Thursday afternoon.

My friend Payka.

Bulgarians, like people everywhere, are curious. And there is nothing more interesting to people than other people. The one difference in Bulgaria is that people here are more likely to try to satisfy their curiosity by asking personal questions. It’s not considered rude to ask someone their age or more personal things. Peace Corps volunteers are the frequent recipient of these personal questions because they “are the new kids in town” and are from someplace foreign.

Because most of the volunteers are young and unmarried they are frequently grilled: Are you married? Why don’t you have a wife? Do you have a boyfriend? Never mind you should be married and have children but we will start at the beginning. Do you have a serious boyfriend? I can introduce you to… I have a son who… My neighborhood has a son. You will like him!

To stop the matchmaking or just to slow down the questions, Peace Corps volunteers sometimes come up with imaginary fiancés or even spouses. And you thought that imaginary friends stopped at age three or four. Some volunteers, including gay volunteers have purchased wedding rings as “proof.”

One of our fellow trainees now has a “girlfriend” name Payka. This is a common Bulgarian name. Payka now has a complete bio that can be shared with anyone who is interested. What isn’t immediately obvious is that Payka is the pig in his backyard who is slated to be the guest of honor at Christmas dinner. But for now, it’s his friend Payka.

Beauty Shop Polly

A haircut is an easy thing, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Well I’ve been putting it off since I left Arizona six weeks ago yesterday because:

a. I’ve been too busy. The Peace Corps keeps me going all week with classes and self-study.

b. I’ve been too busy on the weekends, seeing and doing and picnicking and hiking.

c. In this town of 5,000 people I’ve yet to see a barber shop.

d. My language ability is slightly above a three-year old.

e. Even in Arizona I hate to take the time to get a haircut.

f. All of the above

And the answer is, of course, (f.) all of the above. But now I was turning into my own shaggy dog story so it was time. Down the street from Lyuba’s house is Beauty Shop Polly. It’s a modern one-chair beauty salon built on the front of a house and facing the street.

You remember Lyuba, Shirley’s host mother (who is younger than Shirley) who knows everyone in town and knows everything worth knowing in town. Before there were newspapers, there were Lyubas.

So I told Lyuba that I needed a haircut. Maybe she noticed that already? Of course for me to tell someone involves a certain amount of pantomime but I got the point across. Lyuba got on the phone with Polly and talked for five minutes. “Hey, wait a minute. We’re only talking a haircut here not a complete makeover!” The phone call over, only one word was spoken, “Sega!” (Now). She motioned come on and I followed along like a dutiful puppy down three houses down the street.

It seems Polly already had a customer. Polly had just washed her hair and was getting to do whatever comes next. But then she got the customer out of the chair and took her outside and put her in a lawn chair next to the curb and told Lyuba and me to come in. Does Lyuba have pull or what?

Now came this verbal dance with Polly, me and Lyuba. How shall we cut his hair? What do you think he wants? Let’s ask him. What did he say? Did he understand the question? Short on top, longer on the side. What do you mean longer? Don’t you want it cut? Do you want it cut with scissors or a machine? Hopefully the word machine means electric clippers.

Clippers it is. I showed how short I wanted the top where there isn’t much hair left anyway. I assumed she’d start there like my barber at home did. Nope she fired up the clippers and immediately started on one side and hair fell. Now I know how a sheep feels. At this point I can only go with the flow and let the other side match the first one. More hair fell off the other side, more yet off the back. I had forgotten that I had six-weeks worth up there. Finally she got to the top and we made several tries at hand motions, fingers held just so far apart and a few words from me which may have been Bulgarian and the top was just right. Now how do I say “off the ears and even up the sideburns?” And of course, all the time Lyuba has a running commentary which frequently has the word “dobre” (good.)

And then it’s done. Shirley says it looks good so that’s good enough for me. The price for this adventure? Three leva which comes out to about $2.40. Tipping is not big in Bulgaria but I threw in an extra lev ($.80).

Oh yes, now that Lyuba’s friend from America was done the previous customer can come back in and get the rest of her hair done.

One really strange thing happened during this haircut. Much of the dark hair she cut from my head magically turned gray by the time it hit the black protective cloth around my shoulders. I’ve never seen anything change color so quickly. I mean it dropped only a few inches and already changed color. Strange, I never had any gray in Arizona. Did I?

A Hint of Autumn

There is a bit of a disconnect between what I see and what I feel. What I feel are temperatures still around 90 down from 97 last week. It feels balmy and most pleasant to be outside although shade is still preferred. It certainly feels like wonderful summertime.

What I see however is frequent hints of Fall. The deciduous trees on the mountainsides are now a lighter shade of green with a few yellow leaves mixed in. Last month when I arrived the deciduous and evergreens were the same shade but now the leafy trees stand out. It’s too early to say Fall color and too late to say mid-summer.

Almost every house in town has big stacks of timber rounds, sawmill scraps, or four-foot long logs piled along the curb waiting to be cut up into firewood for winter heating stoves. Electricity is too expensive to be a sole heating source.

This seems to be the week when everyone is canning tomato juice and tomato sauce to bottle up the bounty of the garden. In the garden itself all the onion plants are laying over. Their stems are spent. People are now digging potatoes for the winter.

Haying for winter feed is in full swing. Yesterday I watched one man and two women gathering hay and loading it on a large hay wagon being pulled by a horse. The two women were raking up the hay using wooden homemade rakes. These looked something like a garden rake except that it was entirely made of wood. The business end was a good three feet wide and the tines were 6” wooden pegs spaced 6” or 8” apart. The man loaded the wagon with a hay fork (which has three tines while a pitch fork has four).

The storks are no longer coming back to the huge nests on the power poles. The young left the nest sometime ago but the adults still used the nests as roosts but now no longer. Soon, maybe in two weeks, they will be leaving for Africa.

It feels like summer but I can see hints of Fall. Some mountain villages may see their first snowfall in six weeks. I wonder if Shirley and I will be in one of them? If so, I hope that there is lots of firewood.

Miscellaneous Pictures* Storks on the Nest

We see these on the streets several times a day. Cars are certainly more common but not as picturesque.

Yes women sometimes dance the horo in 4” heels.

Even novices are allowed in the horo.

The seven Rila lakes are a sacred place for spiritual communion with nature for the White Brotherhood. Each year on August 19 they come from all parts of the world to the Seven Rila Lakes to mark their holiday for a week or more. Barefooted and dressed in white, they sing, dance, greet the sun and see it set under the majestic peaks of the Rila Mountains.

These videos have been posted on YouTube of the same event in previous years but it looks just the same as what I saw last Sunday and, of course, takes place in the same meadow where I was. In the background you can see the high meadows of the Rila, here above timberline. And yes, those white patches in the videos are snow in mid-August.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Zo9W696C8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clqi-5WHGJU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXT1PnDbx70

The Bulgarian Peter Danov, the Master of the White Brotherhood, started this teaching which has found followers in Bulgaria, USA, France, and other countries. Danov the son of an Orthodox priest, and himself studying for the priesthood, went to America 1878 to study theology in the Theological School of Boston University. Upon his return to Bulgaria, Peter Danov gave lectures, published booklets, and disseminated his teaching about the Universe and the future perfection of mankind, who according to his teaching, has to live in perfect harmony with nature and the laws of its Creator. In 1922, after long preparation, Danov opened his school, which acquired great popularity in Bulgaria and abroad. In 1929 the White Brotherhood made their first trip to the seven Rila lakes with the Master and fifty followers. They were captivated by the beauty and purity of nature here and became admirers of this magical place, where for years they would come every year on August 19 to perform their mysterious rituals at sunrise, by dancing unity dances to the music of violins and guitars. The vicissitudes in the historical and political fate of Bulgaria reflected on the life of the White Brotherhood during the communism era but in later years the brotherhood rose in popularity and in 1998, seventy years after the first visit to the seven Rila Lakes, 3200 Danovists climbed here again to meet the sunrise and dance their Paneurythmia dressed in white.

Every rock, every glade, lake and peak plays a role in the life and rituals of the White Brotherhood and are given names that are invested with deep symbolism. The first of the Rila lakes they call Maharaji, the Great Respite. Here the Danovists take their first long rest before climbing the next ledge where they usually camp. To get to this lake one hikes a long way through glacial ridges and into a typical glacial valley. The first lake captivates people with its limpidity and calmness and leaves an unforgettable impression. From here one can see Mt. Kabul, which has the form of the Heops Pyramid.

The second lake is called Elbur, God is the Strong One. A camp, which lasts one or two weeks, is pitched here at the second lake. In the early years there were about 500 campers who had organized their life in compliance with the laws of the White Brotherhood. Now, some years there are many more. An anchor is cut on a rock above the spring from which they get water, symbolizing the descent of the human spirit to earth and its embodiment in matter. The water of this spring , according to legend, comes from the next upper lake, The Lake of Purity which is the next destination of the White Brotherhood.

For years the brotherhood had their own boat, which they constructed in Sofia, transported in pieces to Sapareva Banya, and carried up to the crystal lake, where they assembled it. This boat was used only for cruises on the lake and talking and having photos made with the Master, which was a great honor and experience. Every time they broke camp, the brothers sunk the boat in the water so that no one else would use it for fishing and disturb the peace of the lake. In the glade by the second lake in 1938 the members of the White Brotherhood built the famous stone spiral with moraines, where everyone sat at lunch or after meditation. The spiral, in the words of the Master, symbolizes the evolution of man, the people and the state where one was born. Around this spiral the Danovists performed their Paneurythmia for many years.

When in 1955 the authorities decided to build a chalet here, the base stone of the spiral happened to be exactly where the entrance of the new building was to be. The workers however, refused to obey the orders to blast it. With great efforts they managed to move it aside because everyone in Rila knew the great respect of the White Brotherhood for the stone spiral and nature in general.

In 1939 thirty guests from France, adherents of Peter Danov’s teaching, came to the camp of the White Brotherhood. The French brought to the Master a new and very well equipped tent but he refused to enter it. Asked by his astonished compatriots why he would not accept the gift, he retorted, “I haven’t come for the Frenchmen, I have come for the Bulgarians.”

From the spot where the white tent of the Master Peter Danov stood there is a wonderful vista of the valley and the surrounding peaks, reflected in the silver surface of the lake. From the tent of the Master a path led down to the glade where the Danovists camped and every night lit a camp fire, called The Path of Jacob, which had 72 steps, the number of the first followers of Jesus.

Every morning before dawn, while they were camping at the seven Rila Lakes, the members of the White Brotherhood, numbering several hundred, climbed the peak called The Prayer Peak which is on the left side of the lake to meet the first rays of the rising sun. “We walked carefully in a file along the narrow path and climbed the Prayer Peak. Everyone sat at his or her habitual place in silence, reflection and contemplation till the moment the sun rose. Once the sun showed up we said a common prayer. We sang songs and then the Master read a short lecture…” For the worshippers the first ray of the sun is not just a sign of the sunrise but a sacred idea, which they try to abide by in their every act.

Opposite this peak is another one given the name of Peak of Contemplation. On its steep slopes near the bank of the inaccessible Lake of Contemplation, stands a huge rock in the shape of a pentagram pointing upwards.

The third lake the brothers called Balder Daru, meaning The One Who Gives Good. This was the place for those members of the brotherhood who had achieved a stronger inner experience. This area is conducive to mystic experiences. The panorama is captivating with the majesty of the peaks surrounding the lake, standing like protectors.

A narrow path up the ridge leads to The Lake of Purity which is on the eastern side of Mt. Haramiyata and is sunlit from morning to nightfall. To make the way to the lake easier, the members of the brotherhood dug out 122 steps, which also had symbolism. From The Lake of Purity another path leads to The Peak of Contemplation.

The fifth of the seven Rila Lakes is kidney-shaped and is called Mahabur by the Danovists. It is large and is one of the deepest Rila lakes. “We formed a chain on the bank of the lake,” recounted one of the participants in the ritual. “W sat on the bank, put off our shoes, and then walked knee-deep in the water. We had to splash water with both hands, wash our face, say a few formulas and thus come in contact with the lake inhabitants.”

West of the fifth lake rises high Mt. Kabul. The locals have a legend about a maiden who threw herself from this peak rather than betray her Christian faith.

The sixth of the seven Rila Lakes became the favorite lake of the Master and he called it The Heart. And indeed, viewed from a certain angle it has the shape of a heart. This lake is free from snow usually at the end of the summer and beginning of the autumn. During some years the large snowdrift on the left side of the lake never melts. Peter Danov said this snowdrift was the barometer of Bulgaria. Its melting meant a favorable year for the Bulgarians with more radiated and received warmth and love and vice versa. Here the acoustics are like in a church and the White Brotherhood often makes violin concerts there. The Master said that one of the entrances to Agata is in this area. This is the name the White Brotherhood gives to the fabulous city of perfection, which modern humanity has not yet reached.

The seventh, highest and smallest of the seven Rila lakes the brothers called Shemhaa, the Head, because it is the head of all lakes. This lake is not different in beauty and purity from the other lakes but it is inaccessible, according to the brotherhood for those who do not bear inner purity. The Danovists believe it has the extraordinary property of mirroring not only appearance but also the human soul.

High above Sapareva Banya are the Rila Mountains, the same area where we stayed during our first four days in Bulgaria. But this Sunday my host family and I went much higher. We 4-wheeled up a rutted, rocky, sometimes muddy track that could hardly be called a road. Bouncing along on one of the steeper parts, we suddenly had to stop to adjust the ancient vehicle. First they jacked up the rear to tighten something around the rear axle, then they jacked up the front for another tightening and then it was back to the rear axle again. Repairing this vehicle must be a frequent occurrence since they always carry tools and a blanket to lie on while crawling under the vehicle.

Our rutted track apparently has been used to build and maintain a ski lift that we drove under several times. Finally we were up above 7,000 feet and it was time to hike. Soon we were at timberline where short, stunted trees give way to grasses and wildflowers. I thought that I was used to mountain hiking at this altitude but this trail was steeper than anything on Mt. Wrightson and I was breathing heavily.

The centerpiece of the Rila Mountains is the Seven Rila Lakes, one of the most famous tourist spots in Bulgaria. The Rilas are glacier carved and rugged with numerous moraine ridges and cirques. Here above 8,000 feet and approaching 9,000 the cirques contain many lakes, some only temporary for a few months of snow melt but others are permanent lakes, not overly large but crystal clear and cold. On this August day there are still a fair number of snow patches in areas protected from the sun. We are as far north as central Wyoming so some of this snow is year round and will not melt. As I hiked higher I saw and passed each of the famous seven lakes each at a different elevation. It was an absolutely gorgeous place and from the ridges I could see forever.

In such a remote mountain spot I would have expected lots of solitude. Instead I had lots of company. These mountains in August are popular with hikers, backpackers, and people just wanting to escape the heat of the lowlands. Because of the 4-wheel drive we only had a hike of a couple miles to reach the lakes but people with ordinary sedans had a walk of five miles or more and all uphill at high altitude. I was surprised to see not a few intrepid souls but rather hundreds of people all bringing lunch, packs, blankets, etc.

Our lunch was, you guessed it, tomato and cucumber salad with feta cheese on top. There was sausage something like overly large hotdogs cut into pieces. Salami and yellow cheese were finger food. And always there was bread. There is no Bulgarian meal without bread that I know of. Beer came along and of course rakia. Water bottles had been filled at springs along the way.

We finished our picnic at the second lowest of the Rila Lakes. The three men in the group felt the need for more rakia and/or a nap. The three women and I decided to hike up farther to see more of the lakes. It was a steep hike to the third lake and there two of the women decided to rest and enjoy the view and a cigarette. That left only Ralista and me to hike further. So now I was following a 23-year old woman who jogs for fun. Needless to say it was a quickly moving hike but I managed to keep up with a young woman almost a third of my age. It was great fun and the view was spectacular even with all the people. There were at more than 300 of us hikers and sightseers.

But even with our numbers we were not the only people on the mountain and, in fact, we were outnumbered by people who were on the mountain for another purpose. This weekend, plus the whole week, is the time for the annual gathering of the White Brotherhood. Another posting on this blog will give you more information on the brotherhood itself so I won’t duplicate it here but I will tell you what I saw.

Near the shore of the second Rila lake is a very large meadow. Through the years the brotherhood has constructed three concentric stone circles, the largest over 50 yards in diameter. At this site, picture if you will, more than 500 people, almost all dressed in all white and barefoot. In the center of the circle are five violins and a guitar, a half dozen singers and a leader to direct. Stretching out from the center are double lines of white-dressed people forming numerous spokes of a wheel. The circumference of the circle is again a double line of people. While singing and chanting are going on, the rest of the people alternate in slow ritualistic movements that is something between dancing and marching while at the same time doing many different arm motions. There is stretching arms out, putting them overhead, bringing them in in supplication, clapping, and other movement usually done while also dancing or walking. Those who know the words sing along. Everything is choreographed because there is the belief that the unity of movement increases the power force. The name of this singing and dancing is ‘paneurhythmy” a word created by the brotherhood.

To an outsider it all looks like something “New Age” but this has been going on for more than 80 years. It’s not technically a religion because followers are encouraged to follow their own religion whether Christian or other. It seems to be more of a belief in cosmic forces.

When I arrived these dances had been going on, off and on, since sunrise and would continue, off and on, until sunset with people dropping out and joining in as they felt like it. In the distance I could see small circles of participants at other lakes.

If I have peaked your interest, check out the next blog posting in a few days which will have more information on the White Brotherhood and hopefully some videos of this annual August happening.

Our Peace Corps pre-service training ends the second week of October and we will be leaving Sapareva Banya and will living and working on our own. Where will we be going? At the moment we do not know and neither does the Peace Corps. It’s not decided yet.

This week Shirley and I will have placement interviews with program director who will then meet with senior staff to decide where to place all the trainees. Of course, our placement is complicated because we are a married couple and need to be placed in the same community. In two weeks we will be told our permanent assignment. We, like all the other trainees are eager to learn where it will be.

Our trainees group consists of 30 people, 16 men, 14 women. Twenty-six trainees are in their 20s, most under 25. One man is in his 30s and one in the 40s…and then there is us somewhere between 30 and 80 depending on the day. Fourteen of the trainees are in the Youth Development Program. The remaining 16 of us are in a program called Community and Organization Development (COD) which includes Shirley’s specialty of business development and my environmental programming. Considering only COD, here is the information that we received on a paper Thursday.

Of the 27 applications that Peace Corps received from Bulgarian agencies wanting a volunteer, the Peace Corps has tentatively approved 19 sites. Of course there are only 16 of us so three of those sites will not be filled this time. Here’s the information the Peace Corps has given us:

Types of organizations:

11 Municipalities (local government that serves a region of 3-5 small towns and villages)

2 Mayoralties (mayor's office in one of the towns of a municipality)

5 Non-governmental organizations

1 Nature Park Directorate

Types of Activities:

..General (applicable to all sites)

….Project design and implementation

….Grant proposal writing and search for funding programs

….Proofreading and translation

….Establishment and development of international contacts and partnerships

….English language, computer literacy, project design and management, and teamwork building

….Work with local kindergarten, school, cultural center, tourist information center, youth or pensioner’s club, orphanage, etc.

..Specific (applicable to some sites):

….Tourism development: best practices exchange; assistance with promotional materials and website design; work with local businesses on customer service and advertising; trail marking

….Business development: market research; investment and marketing profile development; consulting to small and medium size businesses; establishment of business contacts with Bulgarian and international organizations; business plan development

Sites and infrastructure

..Population:

….4 sites with population up to 1,000 people

….12 sites with population between 1,000 and 6,000 people

….3 sites with population above 9,000 people

..Ethnic composition of the population:

…Sites with predominantly Bulgarian population

….Sites with predominantly Turkish populations (traditionally conservative communities)

….Sites with mixed population: Bulgarians, Roma, Turks

..Geography:

….17 sites in mountainous or hilly areas

….1 site on the Danube River

….1 site near the Black Sea

..Weather:

….Cold and snowy winter in mountain areas

..Transportation:

….Some sites has both train and bus

….Some sites have only bus, some only 1 bus daily

….In general the public transportation is well developed and a bigger town can be accessed within an hour

Housing

..Separate apartment – municipal or rented

..Separate house

..Separate floor of a house with own kitchen and bathroom

..House with a host family with own kitchen and shared bathroom

..When accommodated in a house in a mountain area, a wood burning stove might be used

We’re off for another Sunday picnic, this time with my host family and Shirley’s host family plus a couple others. Somebody has to carry the coke and the beer. Others carry the food as we set off on a mile’s walk to a small monastery.

The forest is green in August and the small stream tumbles over many small waterfalls. It had rained earlier in the morning but now there are only cool clouds and an occasional drop from the sky.

We came for this small monastery for our picnic. Although this is called a monastery, no one lives here. It’s more like a chapel in the woods. This one was built in 1997 on the 700th anniversary of something I didn’t understand except the date 1297. Behind the chapel is a bell tower. Many (most?) of the smaller churches have bell towers that are separate from the church. Behind the wooden railing (fence?) is a sheltered picnic spot under the roof with tables just waiting for us.

Ralista, the daughter of my host family and her boyfriend Ivan (left) and cousin.

In the sheltered picnic spot is Ralista with Valentina (left) the mother of my host family and Lyuba, Shirley’s hostess.

The wood was wet and it took a while to start a fire. Yordan, my host is kneeling (center) while somebody has to supervise.

Ground pork patties, chili peppers, and strips of pork fat (Bulgarian bacon) are on the grill.

Two smiling faces enjoying the fact that they can wear a jacket on an August rainy afternoon.

There are smiles all around.

“Аэъ съм въэкресението и живота” Господ Исус Христос. ” “I am the resurrection and the life.” Lord Jesus Christ. In Bulgarian, Jesus Christ is pronounced EESUS HREESTOS

On the way down from the picnic I found a story tree. I have no idea what the story is because I haven’t written it yet but a tree like this must have a story just waiting to come out.

I promised more random scenes from our Saturday walk around our town, Sapareva Banya, so here goes.

An alternate way to make hay bales is to bring the hay home in a horse-drawn hay wagon and then make the bales by hand. Here you see the wooden box open on one end. The man is stuffing and stomping the hay into the box until it is full and is now a compressed hay bale. The hinged box opens on one side to take out the bale and the man will tie several strings around the bale to keep it tight. This method works well. It just takes a little longer than a machine.

Why should bee hives be only one color?

A few houses in town are quite modern and beautiful.These grape arbors are in front of every house to provide both grapes and shade. This is one of the smaller arbors and thus easier to photograph. It is difficult to take street scenes here because the front of most houses is blocked from view by the arbors.Many people walk to work or to the magazine (store) but the majority of families have a car or SUV. There are a few vans and small delivery trucks and highway-sized busses but what is missing are pickup trucks. This is the Sapareva Banya equivilent of the pickup truck. There are box type wagons for hauling produce or fire wood and open type wagon for hauling hay. See the picture of the hay bale project to see a hay wagon. The wagon in this picture is being pulled by a donkey but most are pulled by a horse.

Recycling has come to Sapareva Banya but more education is needed to ensure that these containers are used more frequently.

Shirley loves to take pictures of flower boxes. Look carfully and you will see lots of plums. They are in full fruit right now and people are canning whole plums and plum juice. I love these sweet plums. I love this old barn. In it's various sections it is constructed of half timbering, wattle and daub, adobe bricks, soft baked clay brinks, stone, and planks. One uses whatever one has at the moment. And of course, here is another wagon. All wagons have rubber tires like this one.

Welcome to Sapareva Banya, our home town for the next 7 ½ weeks.

Welcome to Sapareve Banya, our home town until the second week in October. We enjoy walking around this town of 5,000 people. Here are some of the pictures that Shirley took last Saturday. The first is a typical street scene with the hills in the background. You will notice that most of the houses are two stories plus a basement half in the ground. Note the church (Bulgarian Orthodox) bell tower on the left.

This is another street scene. The upper part of the town is hilly.

This is the street that Shirley lives on but her house is not visible in this picture.Modern mural outside the local church.

This is a restored church from the 12th century built of brick. Note the 12-side cupola on top. The building is quite small. Even today many Orthodox churches are not large although certainly larger than this. Churches do not have to be as large because there are no pews. Everyone stands during the service, except there are a couple benches to the side for older people who cannot stand that long. The service may last more than two hours while everyone stands. Bulgarians are a religious people but church attendence is low.

An older home, not unusual in size. Houses often have multi-generational families.

White Storks are protected and welcome in town. In this town they frequently build very large nests on top of telephone poles. In other towns they build nests on the roof of churches or other buildings. Therre are nests close to my residence and to Shirley's. We can hear the storks clacking their bills which is one way that they communicate. This species of stork is the one that is reported to bring babies. Shirley says that she is not worried.

In Bulgarian, stores are called magazines. In small towns like ours the food store are quite small sometimes not much larger than an American living room. Shirley's host family is here shopping for a Sunday picnic.

A most honored member of the family is the baba (grandmother). Here in Shirley's yard is her family's baba (on the right) being visited by other babas from the neighborhood. Visiting is a very important activity in Bulgaria.

Welcome to our home town. We'll post more pictures soon.

I have many friends who have driven across Kansas, some twice a year while moving between summer and winter homes. Others use it a easy get-away from hot Missouri Augusts to Colorado’s pine-rimmed meadows. They value Kansas for its straight, fast highways that allow them to distance many miles in a day. If asked to describe the state, they mention the wheat fields that measure in hundreds of acres. They know about the vistas that stretch 30 miles to the next grain elevator. They recognize a difference between Kansas and their home state because they see fewer lakes, flatter land, and a seeming absence of trees. Many times they’ve driven Interstate 70 or Highway 54. They’ve seen Kansas.

I grew up in Kansas and have traveled to its various corners. I know Kansas but I know a different Kansas from my friends. I know the Flint Hills of Chase County, green and wild-flowered, that belie the image of a flat state. I know the Cheyenne Bottoms, a huge wetlands important for migratory waterfowl that refutes the claim that Kansas is waterless. I know the lead, zinc, and coal mines of southeast Kansas. Who knew that the wheat state had mines?

Kansas is not just a land, it’s a people. I know the Amish of Yoder and the German Mennonites of Newton, who immigrated here from the steppes of Russia and brought the red winter wheat that makes Kansas famous. I’ve been to the Scottish Festival in McPherson that celebrates another heritage. The first homesteads of free African-Americans occurred in Kansas. In spite of Ft. Sumpter’s claim to fame, the American Civil War really started in Kansas with pro- and anti-slavery forces warring and pillaging each other two years before the cannonballs flew in Charleston Harbor.

Many farming states celebrate the harvest in late summer or early fall when the corn is in the crib or the potatoes are out of the ground. In Kansas we celebrate the harvest in June. Our winter wheat ripens early and by middle or late June we want our crop stored safely in the grain elevators before the July hail storms flatten the stalks to the ground.

Kansas is so many thing and so many people. It’s different from Tennessee or Montana or even neighboring Oklahoma but that’s not always obvious while speeding along on our wonderful highways.

Culture is like Kansas. Sometimes you have to slow down to see the differences.

It’s easy to see some differences in Bulgaria from the United States. The cars are smaller. This is Europe after all. Yes, houses in small towns have gardens but then we had gardens in Kansas too. But in Kansas we grew gardens to have fresh food. Here people have gardens not only for fresh but also for winter food…and winters are long. And yes, here in Sapareva Banya there are cows and goats going down the streets early in the morning on the way to daily pasture, so some differences are easy to spot. But other differences take a little longer to sink in. Just as driver has to slow down in Kansas and take the roads less traveled to see the nuances of the state, I am trying to slow myself down to see life as a Bulgarian.

I got one little lesson today. My host bought some green beans at the little store a few blocks away and I was helping him to shell them. We were talking about the difference in price for beans between Bulgaria and the United States. It’s a frequent conversation between us that allow me to practice using numbers in the Bulgarian language. In the discussion, with my limited language, my host was surprised to learn that in America fresh green beans cost more per pound than green beans in a can. In Bulgaria people buy fresh produce because canned goods are more expensive.

Then we finished shelling the beans. Now what do we do with the empty pods? In America, we throw that in the trash because we’re done with them. In Bulgaria you feed that to a horse. And if you don’t have a horse, then you find a neighbor who does and you give the bean pods to him.

So, there were two little lessons in culture today. Culture is frequently nothing more than a different way of looking at life. I’ll let you know when I am able to see more.

There are no photos in today’s blog. Pictures are for looking at. Most often culture is for experiencing.

Sapareva Banya (Сапарева Баня) lives by the seasons. We have all been taught that there is a time to plant, a time to grow, a time to harvest, a time to store up, and a time to eat that which was planted. But in our modern cities, with trucks, ships, and planes to bring us produce from around the country and from around the world, we have forgotten that seasons have rhythms. Sapareva Banya still flows with the calendar and the sun.

Cucumbers Becoming Pickles

Unlike larger cities in Bulgaria where many, or most, people live in large apartment blocks, Sapareva Banya (population 5,000) is almost all single family houses one, or more often two stories, with a basement that sticks halfway out of the ground so that a person has to go up a half-flight of stairs (inside or outside) to get to the first floor. Houses sit on large lot, between ¼ and 1/3 acre. The whole yard is fenced. Sometimes there is a little bit of front yard but often none. Frequently there is some outdoor living space because there is no air conditioning. (Tomorrow it will be 34 C [93 F].) All the rest of the fenced yard is either garden or orchard with a small shed/barn.

Now is the prime time for harvest, some to eat today and some to store up for winter. At Shirley’s house today green beans in canning jars were boiling for two hours in a large washtub over an open fire when I stopped by for lunch. Cucumbers were becoming pickles and only boiled for six minutes. The berries I helped pick last Sunday are now compost. Plums are now ripe and ready for canning. Apples, apricots, and peaches are coming on. Later cabbages, potatoes, and onions can be stored whole.

Shirley's Host Mother Making Pickles

These are not hobby gardens or a local desire to go organic, these gardens are a necessity for getting through the winter. In towns of this size, people grow much of what they eat, even meat. Yes, it’s partially a matter of limited money but it’s also culture. It’s the way that things are done.

Seasons also determine what we eat on the table today. This is not the season from green salads with lettuce and radishes. Lettuce doesn’t do well in the hotter part of the summer. Right now salads are tomatoes and cucumbers with a little oil. I think I have probably had this salad for every meal including breakfast since I have been in Bulgaria. We even take it on picnics. These home-grown tomatoes are wonderful and full of flavor. And I love all the fresh cucumbers. A national dish in Bulgaria is shopska salad, which is tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and other optional veggies (not greens) with oil and always topped with white feta cheese.

Baba Venetka Removing Pickles

The Goat Barn has Adobe Bricks

Bulgaria is famous for its yogurt. It’s somewhat like American unflavored yogurt but with less of a bite. It’s used in many dishes as well as alone. I had yogurt tonight on top of chili peppers stuffed with rice. Yogurt is often used like sour cream. There is a cold, uncooked, soup called tarator which is chopped cucumber, yogurt, and water with a little salt. It’s a soup but it’s served in a glass not a bowl and we drink it.

Beef is expensive. I haven’t seen any yet. But pork, chicken, and fish are plentiful, particularly pork. There are cows here but they are for milk not meat. Goats are common for milk and cheese. Goats, cows, and even horses are not kept in fenced pastures in our area. Rather they are penned at night and taken up into the hills or out in the country in the daytime to be watched by their owners all day long. When I am walking to class every morning a man with three cows meets me in the middle of the street. My fellow trainees encounter herds of goats or sheep on their way to language class. Shirley’s host family has one goat which baba (grandmother) takes out to the edge of town each morning. This particular goat doesn’t need tending and baba returns home to other chores. Each evening the goat returns home alone to be milked. Baba gets about a half gallon each day which she can use to make feta cheese.

Today when I visited Shirley at her host family there were homemade donuts with sladko, a thick fruit preserve. In this case the sladko was strawberry and it was delicious. Afterwards we walked around town to see how people live.

The Bean Snapper

Almost every house has large gardens that take up almost the whole lot. A typical garden will include a large grape arbor, plum and apple trees, possibly pear and peaches and blackberries. There will be beans and cucumbers and large patches of peppers, tomatoes and onions. Frequently there are good sized strawberry patches. The grape arbors are particularly nice. They are eight feet off the ground and often cover 1/5 of the lot with wonderful shade while other garden plants can grow beneath them. Our training center in Sapareva Banya has a garden outside the center with a picnic table under a large arbor which provides a great space to enjoy cool shade on a hot day.

This week seems to be bean picking time. The other day Shirley was sitting outside at her host family working on flash cards for learning Bulgarian. The hostess was breaking bean pods into manageable lengths in preparation for canning. A five-gallon bucket of beans was setting next to Shirley so she started snapping beans. When she finished, a second bucket magically appeared which Shirley finished and then a third bucket suddenly appeared. Shirley now has strong hands, but she’s not yet ready to milk the goat.

Baba Milks the Goat Every Day

Shirley and I are enjoying this harvest season and we eagerly wait to see what happens next. There is something primal about being connected with the soil and the seasons.

p.s. Did I mention the homemade stills? That’s where the rakia magically appears from grapes, plums, or apricots.

The world is a book. Those who do not travel read only one page.

Saint Augustine