Stara Planina - a trip to the past with a modern touch

everything started with a train ticket for 1,30 € to "Lakatnik" a small town in the "stara planina" mountains (also called the "balkan mountains" - yes, that's where the balkans got their name). rozi and i started at a decent 10 a.m., getting off a good 90 minutes later in a little town surrounded by a picturesque landscape.

up there is where we wanted to go. it should have been something like a one and a half hour hike along the rocks up to the cross and the soviet memorial (on the right).

the "eagle's nest" (little hut on the left) is only reachable by climbers....

however, we didn't make it to the top. the weather was beautiful, it was warm, the sun was shining, the path to go up wasn't too steep, but....rozi was afraid of hights. yes, she does often spends some time in the mountains, but this path was very narrow and too close to the abyss. after only 10 to 15 minutes we turned around and went back down. the guy working at this bus station (yes, this is a bus station and it is in function!) had already given us the information where the path to go up started. now, rozi asked again, if there was another way to reach the top or if he could recommend us a hostel, mountain hut or anything else where we could spend the night....

yet, there didn't seem to be anything close by, unless rozi would overcome her fear. thus, we decided to wait for gopa, rozi's boyfriend, who was going to come a few hours later and had some knowledge of the area. the plan was to hitchhike up to the next hostel and go hiking some place else the next day.

while we were waiting for gopa, we had a walk around lakatnik and hiked just a little bit up the mounains. in the end it wasn't so bad we didn't go up to the top - rozi just informed me that a day before yesterday somebody fell and died at that place (though i believe it was a climber, not a hiker).

this pinkish restaurant is at the foot of stara planina, the service is averagely bad, but the shopska salata very tasty ;)

here you can see something quite typical for the balkans. at least i have seen this already in different countries of former youguslavia and also in romania, if i remember correctly. anyway, in bulgaria you will find these posts everywhere, on doors, empty walls of half-destroyed buildings, lamp posts..., informing you about the latest deaths as well as more or less long passed deaths, from 1, 2, 3 and more years previously.
at the beginning i didn't like these notes too much, as i wasn't very comfortable with all the dead people in black and white glaring at me whereever i go. but after a while one simply gets used to them and i mostly ignore them...

well, to go on with my little story about my trip to the mountains: when gopa arrived, it was already starting to get dark and our plan to hitchhike to the next hostel failed since there weren't any cars going into that direction. 18 km of walking was a bit too much considering the already advanced hour. so, instead, we hitchhiked to the next bigger town: svoge - the town of the chocolate (what hershey is to america, svoge is to bulgaria, only not quite as touristy :-P)

in svoge, we asked around to find a place to sleep, though everyone we talked to was really extremely friendly, the first information we received was surprisingly to us negative: there aren't any hotels in svoge. how strange for the home of the bulgarian chocolate...finally, we did find out that there was a little complex at the outskirts of the town consisting of a restaurant, a fitness center and a hotel/hostel. having expected to spend the night in some kind of mountain hut when i left sofia that morning, this night's accommodation proved to be extremely luxurious and a lot more comfortable than imagined. but since we didn't have another choice, we happily took a room being the only guests for that night. also part to the complex was an area with swimming pool and jacuzzi. of course, we couldn't have guessed that when packing our bags, so our only choice was to jump in and enjoy the wet pleasures bare-naked.
the next day, i woke up well rested and happily greeted by a sunny balcony (see above: gopa and rozi enjoying the gorgeous morning), ready to start another day in the nature. this time: bov or "garabov", though the last name just indicates the "gara", i.e. the train station of bov. but what a cute train station!!! ;) seriously, doesn't it look a bit like having gone back some 50 years in time. also the (closed) restaurant behind the train station retained a look as if from grandparents' times...(photo)

bov is the place where the bulgarian writer ivan vasov regularly went to work on his books. therefore, every street in the village is named after him, his books, his characters, etc. we took the "vasovian eco-path" leading up to the waterfall (second to last pic at the left), from where we had a beautiful view over the village and the mountains. so, after all, rozi and i did the hiking in the stara planina mountains, as we had planned, even though not in lakatnik but in bov. and after a long half-lazy, half-adventurous weekend, we returned to good ol' sofia in the early sunday evening.


und zum schluss möchte ich noch ganz lieb meinen wuschelfilzball grüßen

change of seasons

can you believe it? it actually hit me with surprise yesterday (january 29th!!!) when i realized that finally all the christmas decoration has gone. no more shiny trees. no more red and green blinking lights along the bulevards. thinking about it now, maybe this is the reason why the whole xmas season started so much later here than in germany....i mean, if you keep all the deco up until more than a month AFTER xmas.... :-P well, don't worry, even now that the blinking lights are gone, the bulgarians are already preparing some new decoration, so the city will stay colourul: just a moment after i had noticed that the lights on tsarigradsko shosse (correctly it should be spelled "chaussee" but that is hardly recognizable anymore as in cyrillic it is spelled "шосе") had disappeared, i saw that the small kiosks that sell bus tickets, magazines, fashion jewellery and shampoo - everything you may need - started putting out the "martenitsas". a martenitsa is the little red-and-white band that bulgarians give to each other on the first of march as some kind of spring luck charm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martenitsa). let's just hope that spring will arrive just as quickly as the martenitsas increasingly appear in the kioks and stores around sofia.

yesterday, i went to an erasmus party. it was just the second of that kind to which i went and i really enjoyed it. there was a nice mixture of people - old erasmus students (many of which are leaving around now, that's why the party), new arrivals and quite a few bulgarians as well.

here you can see me zipping from a typical bulgarian beer bottle. no, don't worry, i didn't drink the whole 2 litres by myself, nor did i continue to drink directly out of this bottle after the pics....oh, and to evade misunderstandings, there are also smaller 0.5 l - and 0.33 l - beer bottles in bulgaria, but if you if you stock up for a party you'll usually get the bigger sizes around here ;)

btw: this weekend i'll finally get out of the big city again. i'll to lakatnik in the stara planina mountains. sooooooo much looking forward to it!

Besuch...

hey there, everyone!!! although i haven't written in a while, i am still here. still alive. still in sofia. still in cold and snowy bulgaria :)
and i don't even have an excuse for keeping so quiet lately. i haven't been travelling, no more trips since istanbul. and i haven't been extremely occupied with either work or university. i've just been....here! there has however not been happening too much during the past three weeks, nothing much to write long stories about, no adventures to boast about, no jokes to tell...
so, my life has been mostly circling around...

<-- ...my office (or rather the one of my colleague darina. i sit in the same room, but i have far less paperwork on my desk :-P )

<-- ... university (one of the few buildings in sofia that are somewhat attractive....here is nothing really like a beautful city centre...)






...and Eike. yes, i actually do have something to tell. on the outside there hasn't been happening too much, but inside me....everything is going crazy. i am in love and it is wonderful!!! well, i guess, most of you know how that is and i don't wanna go into detail here. just know: i am veeeeeeeeeeery happy!!!

so my beloved guest was the reason why i haven't been up to many exciting adventures. we did go out for some good dinners, though, several times....












....where we had waaaaay too much food, and some good bulgarian beer ;)

















<-- oh, and i re-dyed my hair...

that's about it. now, i am all lonely again. but only three more weeks and i'll be in germany with my sweetheart :D
btw: last week of february i/we will be in berlin, i hope to see some of you there.

ps: schwesterherz, ich hab vergessen die fotos klein zu machen, hoffe du nimmst es mir ned übel *fg*

12 uvas en Istanbul

<-- this is the first sight i had upon my arrival back in sofia two days ago. since then i've been rather lazy, sitting at home most of the time, thus evading the snow and the cold weather outside. i've more or less spent three days like this now, so it's about time i write a bit about how i spent new year's eve ;)

from the beginning. it started out with quite an exciting trip on the train during the night of december 28th to the 29th. as the train was coming from belgrade of course it was running late. i guess with my waiting time from less than two hours i can even be counted as lucky. anyway, with the train from belgrade came 6 serbs. one of them was marko with whom i had arranged to join them for the remaining time until istanbul. none of us had reserved a seat for the ride, so after having been told that there were no seating wagons until istanbul, we simply searched a free compartment and made ourselves comfortable -- so far we were going in the right direction...

first problems occurred at the last stop before the turkish border. there the seating wagons were dislodged from the train and instead there were new wagons which had come from romania, BUT only sleeping wagons. since we didn't have any reservation for a "couchette", we were forced to stay in the tine area between two wagons. including us there were about 10 people squeezed together (at least we didn't get cold this way) until the first train station in turkey. fortunately, it took less than an hour until we got there. in turkey, first thing, everybody had to get off the train and and buy a visa and/or get a stamp into their passport. apparently, germans belong to the few who don't have to pay 10€ for a visa (spanish citizens have to pay so it's got nothing to do with being EU member). anyway, having collected yet another stamp in my passport (it's a shame i'm getting so few of them!), i went together with the serbs to talk to the conducter in order to find out how we could reach istanbul more comfortably. 10€ per person to stay in a sleeping compartment, they told us. it was 4 am and i was ready to pay that, but...well, marko wanted to beat down the price. we ended up 7 persons together in one compartment for6 and two of the serbian guys were asked to buy some rum and that's it then....ha, is this corruption? if it was it didn't work in the end. they DID buy the rum but we still had to pay more later on. when the conductor came to take our tickets he refused to give them back (the serbs needed them for their return) until we had paid about 5€ per person. at least that's only half of what they had first asked for....and i was able to sleep about 6 hours more or less comfortably in one of the "couchettes" until we reached istanbul the next morning. i had been given a very good description of how to get to my couchsurfing host's place from the train station and though she lives almost an hour away from the centre i easily found her.

COUCHSURFING??? what is this? being an active member of both couchsurfing and HOSPITALITYCLUB, i know that some of you have already heard me talking about it. others even are members themselves. but many of you probably have no clue. so i will give you a short explanation. they are online communities (www.hospitalityclub.org, www.couchsurfing.com) creating a worldwide network of people who like to travel. the purpose is to contact and get to know other open-minded people whereever you go. you can look at their profiles ask anyone who seems nice to you, if he or she would be willing to host you in their home or to meet you for a coffee, to show you around town, go out to the bars and clubs where the local crowd hangs out. hence, you are never caught between thousands of tourists but get a real insight of whereever you travel. it is wonderful. i have with much delight both hosted and "surfed" other peoples' couches. and sometimes, actually quite frequently, some of these people get together and organize a meeting. it may be a smaller one just for the locals and their current guest- in sofia the people from CS meet regularly once a month - or a bigger one like the balkan meeting in ohrid or the winter camp in istanbul. in any case, you are sure to have a good time and to meet loads of great people!

well, enough of this. try it out, it's wonderful. since i joined the network i'm not only not afraid to travel almost anywhere alone and without a previously arranged hostel booking, i even often prefer to travel by myself, because this is the best way to connect with the people at your destination and getting to know your host really well :D

in istanbul i stayed three nights at gülsah's place. for the winter camp she also hosted two more girls: daniela from costa rica (currently studying in rome) and katia from dobrich, bulgaria. part of the little bit of sightseeing i did in istanbul i did together with them. and thanks to them i never had to return "home" all alone in the middle of the night as we were all part of the same huge party crowd ;)
did i write "huge crowd"? oh yeah, it really was a HUGE crowd. just look at the pictures: it seems like a demonstration, but it is just us, a bunch of CS'ers and HC'ers on our way to a boat trip on the bosporus. and us on the boat...

rumour has it that at the last party on new year's eve there were around 600 attending. i assume about a third of them were turks and the rest from all over the world. mostly europe, of course, but there were members from latin america, north america, australia, the mideast and asia as well...

the party on the night of the 29th i didn't enjoy too much, though. so gülsah, a turkish friend of hers and i left before midnight and we went to have some food instead. i had delicious clams filled with rice in the street called "fish bazar" - just count the empty shells and you know what you have to pay ;) later i discovered that at the same place they sell extremely tasty sandwiches filled with fried breaded mussels and a yummy garlic sauce - even better!
the next two party nights i enjoyed a lot more and i stayed longer. the 31st i started out with daniela and jorge (from madrid) making sangria - which we then shared with yet another two spaniards, daniel and antonio. 5 litres for 5 persons. perfect!

la sangría - antes y después








and an hour before the end of the year 2007 we went to the club (the organizers of the meeting had rented two floors)... at midnight with the 12 gongs jorge, daniela and i ate the 12 grapes as it is the tradition in spain. they probably were the worst 12 grapes i have eaten in all my life, but at least i can be sure now that i won't have 10 years of bad sex in front of me :P
daniel was too late to eat the grapes with us so he repeated it an hour later with the spanish midnight - don't know though, whether that'll count.... ;)

okay, i feel i have written enough for this time. i uploaded some of my favourite pictures taken in istanbul. here you go:

the blue mosque inside and out








at the spice market











my favourite















somewhere upstairs in a mall where they sell lots of electrical equipment











at the great market














istanbul, city at the bosporus....

Българската коледа

so, there was a little change of plans: i am not going to istanbul tonight but tomorrow night, meaning i will arrive there on saturday early morning. same difference :-P
actually, the reason for this postponement is twofold: firstly, i don't wanna go alone on the train all by myself as there are some stories making the round which make me prefer having company. since marko (--> friend from belgrade) doesn't get his passport back from the greeks (visa troubles) until today, he will only start his trip tomorrow morning. thus, when he then arrives in sofia in the course of the evening, i will join him in the train and we'll travel the rest of the way together. this will not only make the trip a bit safer but - more importantly - also a lot more enjoyable (cause i will be able to talk marko's ears off while he's trying to sleep in the most comfortable train seats *lol*)
secondly, i decided it would be better to recover completely before starting the party time in istanbul during which i don't expect much time to rest ;) yesterday was the first day since last thursday that i felt more or less well again. i had first thought that i only caught a slight cold and tried to rest as much as possible before going to stara zagora with rozi. however, once there, i realized that the cold wasn't that "slight" after all. shortly after our arrival at rozi's parents' place, i started to feel dizzy and preferred to stay in bed the rest of the day. and the following, too. and the one after that....well, also for the most part, at least. as far as i know i didn't have a fever, but was shivering for hours and felt that my head was going to burst into a million pieces any second. so i was more than glad that i had a wonderful bulgarian mom taking care of me. poor rozi's mom: she thinks her daughter brings home a guest for christmas and instead there arrives a patient. well, finally some homemade medicine and a few pills brought me back to normal and i was fit enough to take a long walk in the "famous" park of stara zagora on our last day there. yesterday, rozi and i hitchhiked back to sofia and here i am, taking a last short rest before leaving for turkey :)
besides the negligible fact that i was not blessed with perfect health during the past few days i had a really nice christmas. the pre-holiday time in bulgaria seems to be not even half as imposing/annoying as in germany. supermarkets started comparably late to put christmas chocolate into their shelves; the glittering, shiny and kitschy decoration in the streets was easily bearable, while the decoration in private peoples' homes was even kept to an extreme minimum. what a difference! you could really go around town for the longest time without being shown from all sides that you must be happy now 'cause it's chrismas... i liked that :) in bulgaria, christmas eve, is traditionally the last day of a period of fasting. thus, on the 24th a variety of vegetarian food is served - either 7, 9 or 11 dishes, one of them being a delicious home-made bread with a baked-in coin. whoever gets the coin will receive luck during the next year.
by the way a bulgarian wishing merry christmas will say весела коледа (vesela koleda), happy holidays here are весели празници (veseli praznitsi) and the new year shall be a честита нова година (chestita nova godina). during the communist times christmas was rarely celebrated here and дяадо коледа (dyado koleda), the bulgarian santa clause, had quite a hard time in these regions. i was told that new years was a lot bigger instead. however, those times are over, capitalism is getting bigger and even in bulgaria you can more and more often see one of those life-sized plastic santa clauses dangling as if strangled from the walls of some of the bigger autohauses :-P
so, now it's time to get ready, go out and buy a return ticket for the bus from istanbul to sofia on january 1st so that i can welcome eike at the airport on the 2nd!
i wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! see you/talk to you/write to you in 2008! :D

Raben(enkel)tochter

ja, ja, ich weiß, ich bin wirklich enie treulose tomate - hätte mich längst mal wieder melden sollen bei euch, ruth, peter, oma, großvati, liebe familie! aber wie die zeit so vergeht....ist ja auch so: keine nachrichten sind in der regel gute nachrichten :)
ich werde morgen früh - am samstag - mit meiner freundin rozi zu ihrer familie nach stara zagora fahren, wo wir gemeinsam weihnachten verbringen werden. am 25. oder spätestens 26.12. geht es jedoch schon wieder zurück nach sofia, von wo ich am 27.12. abends den nachtzug nach istanbul nehme (keine sorge, auch darin werde ich nicht alleine sitzen). meine rückkehr ist nach sylvester für den 1.1. abends (nachtbus) geplant, weil ich am 2.1. nachmittags mal wieder besuch erwarte ;)
also, ich wünsche euch allen ein frohes weihnachtsfest und einen guten rutsch in das neue jahr!!!!!

seid allesamt herzlich umarmt,

eure indra

how good it is to be vegetarian!

today is the last day of the seminar "bringing europe closer to young citizens" in which i - more or less - participated this past week. it was one of those international seminars funded by the EU this time with participants from bulgaria, lithuania, romania, moldova, greece, italy, france and germany. well, actually i am a bit disappointed regarding the content of the lectures/working groups during the seminar, therefore i've stopped going to most of them after half of the week was over. however, i regularly followed the rest of the programme - lunch, dinner, free time ;)
thus, i experienced once again how much better it is to be vegetarian:

firstly, because you will almost always receive better (tastier and healthier) food

secondly, because you receive your food usually before the others - at least in bulgaria *lol*





the seminar definitely proved to be a perfect way to get to know some more restaurants around sofia - some of them serving excellent bulgarian food :)

my favourite part of the programme was however our excursion yesterday, first to boyana church, where we could admire some beautiful frescos from the 11th and 14th centuries and then to winter wonder land on vitosha mountain, where i spent more than one hour on the back of a horse - the first time after more than seven years! and i couldn't have had more luck with the horse: "magiya" was so wonderful and had a beautifully smooth gallop ;)


due to the seminar i didn't do much more since last wednesday. no university - the only class i should have had besides bulgarian was cancelled for whichever mysterious reason 15 minutes before it should have started - nothing uncommon here, at least i received the message before i arrived there and not hours after the class should have finished (which happened to me a few weeks ago with another class). thus, my highlites of the week consisted of a visit to swinging hall to see the band "ostava" perform live --> some kind of bulgarian britpop made in sofia :D and, of course, of last friday. it was the xmas party at zedes (zentrum für deutschlandstudien - where i have some of my classes) and afterwards hrissi and i went to a karaoke bar until...well, quite early *lol*

as i had my camera with me most of the time lately, i would like to provide you with a few more visual impressions of sofia. on the left you can see some of the most prominent buildings of this city: the national theatre and the court of justice - the latter is situated on vitoshka, a major shopping street, and a quite popular meeting point.

on the left you can see exactly the same bulevard (vitoshka) with view towards vitosha mountain on a typical cold winter day.








the corridor is in the bulgarian parliament. i took the picture last thursday when we had a small tour through the building with the group from the seminar...









this is inside the synagogue. my grandmother and i visited it together when she was here. the chandelabrum weighs more than 1000 kg.










this beautiful man holds his head up just around the corner from my work, so i see him quite regularly :-P


the yellow bricks (right) are quite characteristic for sofia as they are laid out widely in the center. so to say the city's special exhibit, which actually proves to be quite annoying and dangerous in snowy weather, since it then turns into something even more slippery than ice!



finally, the remains of a bulgarian spring tradition: on the first of march bulgarians give each other these red-and-white luck charms which they then to keep until they see the first storck or certain trees in bloom. then they take the "martenitsa" off and hang it in a tree or bush - where some of them remain until next winter and longer...... (btw a more detailed description of this tradition you will either receive from me in march or you have to look it up yourself, but i think xmas is not the right time for going into detail ;))