BULGARIAn tourist

Sully has been extra present with me on these travels. I have decided some years ago that he visits with me randomly thought my life, travels and experience. (Taylor as well but somehow in a very different way.) As a way of him seeing and feeling, through me. A small shout out on this day.

Sofia, Bulgaria is where I landed last week and have been spending time. I traveled into the mountains and into another Roma community. I ran the streets with the kids, of a community filled with brick homes and rickety roofs. I left my translators to roam with a brother and sister that turned into a pack of children running around me. Four of the boys had bow and arrows. Made from a bambooish wood, hairties and long nails. Not so safe but everyone seemed fine with it. Wooping like Indians they showed off skill aiming at dogs that I of course intersected as a possibility of being ok wasn’t existing to me.

Cowboys and Indians have made their way around the world and the Indians are who the majority wants to be here, well idolizes to say the least. As we drive the streets back in the city the bus is plastered with a bigger then life “Indian”, a tan Bulgarian in a head dress, etc. and his gold rings and watch like a good business man and drums on the side. The drumbeat is referred to in the slogan of a the rhythm of the banking service. This reminds me of the phone adds in Romania and other strange references that is an excepted and thought of as showing respect and honor to a culture that is thought so highly of. Something like our Braves team, the Redskins or Cherokee Jeep I suppose. Offensive iconography for possibility of financial gain.

I spent my first two real days as a tourist while in Bulgaria. I realized I have not done this in any other country. I went and saw all the sights: The extremely large orthodox church, with beautiful paintings in side and the domes on top of real gold. The energy of the icons is so incredible. All the centuries of people staring into and praying to that framed image that stands in from of me. I started really experiencing this in all the Monasteries Ade and I visited in Transylvania and I continue to be moved. CHECK. The Russian mosque. Very sall in comparison. Lovely. A woman cleaning in a classical outfit that one would see in a Paul Strand image that we think is long gone. She stood in the doorway leading back outside. Her backdrop become Terenova and Bulvigar and a bank on a busy urban street. It was a doorway she stood in. (something like the lion, the witch and the wordrobe in the world change of the passageway) CHECK. The Vertue store. With a body guard to unlock the door for each client and only three phones kept in the store for display at a time. This was something new. I though I-phone envy crazy was silly in the states, with prices and options. Some of these phones have diamonds. Others have all sorts of special materials used. Out of three phones the low end was 4,500 euros. That’s some where close to $7,000. The upper end in the store was 6.500 euros. “what can it do?” we ask. “make reservation at the most elete places all over the world”. HA. CHECK. Old men in the park playing Backgammon,,,oh I wanted to play. And the contemporary art gallery of course.

An exhibition from Vienna architecture students, in preparation for architecture week to come soon to Sofia. They were great projects on the topic of redefining living spaces. Making more use of space, allowing for more integration with green space and light, while searching for these for communities that live traditionally in low standard housing. Students, low income, migrant communities, for example, were displayed in installation, wall text and enterable spaces. Luanne I’m bringing the info back for you.

I did some shopping and found the hip hop local clothing company. Nice wok, always happy to support local artists too! I ate healthy food and fresh juices. Nam and Gerald know that if I wasn’t on a volunteer gig you would be getting some new gear on my arrival. Lucky for me my Habitat affiliate guide, Yana, was into homeopathy and clean eating. Definitely the healthiest I have been while on the road in my European time. Rice and veggies, tofu and hummus, arugula salads with eggplant and goats cheese. Yum yum feels like home. Quite often its fried cheese that I get for many a meal because I don’t eat pork and really can only eat meat once and a while or my body isn’t happy. Everyone tries but its not always so easy in the location we are.
As I do everywhere I go, I look for the synagogue and Jewish cemetery. They say this is the largest Ashkenazi synagogue. I would believe it by the size of what stood in front of me. It was built just 100 years ago though, in 1909. Three years before my grandpa was born. It doesn’t seem so long ago. Or a life time when I listen to his stories.

I have just finished my Tajik Visa application and Im heading back to Vienna now to go to the embassy, before heading back to slovakia to edit in the office and hopefully finish the ever awaited web page of mine, prepare for my visitor from Poland (IVP rockstar Bobby) and then head off to Paris to see how the Parisians are making photographs these days and make some of my own.
Oh if your in Bulgaira eat the Shopky salad and I forgot the name but it is a baked red paper with cheese inside and a garlic/yogurt sauce! Those two were all I ate years ago at Mirjanas place on the sea here…and again I found them to be ultimate choice any time I was in a traditional restaurant.

Romania...part 1

I have been asked to describe What Romania is like. As you see from my little red lines from paint accessory I have been around the country a bit. My first trip started in Bucharest, the capitol. Not the friendliest of places here but it is like many major cities, too many cars speeding around, Kenvelo, McDonalds and Sephora as landscape and of course the Palace of Parliament.
The history of this building is overwhelming. While standing some distance back from it the size of it is overwhelming. If you turn around the lined trees that go aways to another cemented area of importance. All of this was cleared to make the direct viewing available from the palace. The palace its self is the second largest building in the world in surface area. Towering high and wide and going down many meters in the earth. In the early 80's when so much struggle was for food and medicine Ceausescu started building. Something like 700 architects and a consistent work force of 20,000 people worked around the clock. People have told me the ornateness of the interior, which is still not completed to this day. The building is used for government things now but its presence makes a strong statement about life for many years.
Corruption and power struggles in stories of hotel rooms and politicians mixed with bread lines and lines for receiving a car and many more queue pepper my mind.

Away from the capitol to my first Roma village while here. (I started in Romania in July when I first came over, I just returned a few weeks ago for a second trip and part of the country). I was happy to be out of the city. Many people of not so many family names, lots of children and challenging living situations. I watched as they melted metal over an intense flame and then poured into a mold, which was packed sand in the form of a very large cauldron, in a box. It hardens, it is banged out of the box, sand everywhere, and sprayed with water from a punctured soda bottle to cool it.

Off to the Black Sea on the eastern coast for a build that was taking place in Constanta. Great people volunteering and working as usual! Jez, Chris and me went for a night swim, after cultural night with the group, and again in the morning with packed beach before hitting the road for a day of driving to our next destination. Many speedos and thongs. I'm not in Kansas anymore :)

On the move and sunflowers as far as i can see many times over. I want to come back in the season that they are all fresh, newly opened and vibrant.

At the next build I learned to speak, no to understand Barnsley and other such ways of speaking:) a great team with smiles and energy and delivery of the 70's afro wigs I finally saw in their intended use a week ago. It was the first steel frame building I had seen being done.

That was in july/august. On my recent return I was in the Carpathian mountains. Close to the boarder with Ukraine, and the town my grandmother and her family came from. I was mostly in Transylvania. It was very peaceful on the drive with Adi for 12 hours on one day as we moved locations. The leaves were changing colors and the winding road continued on and on. It made me think of home in the Fall, minus being at almost cloud levels.