Off to Kazanlak

Up at ten to six to get to the train to Kazanlak.

Is the English-speaking world that much more musical than the rest of the world?! How come where-ever you go the radio is full of English pop-songs? Well it's not true everywhere but it certainly seems to be in Bulgaria. Not that there was much Australian music to be heard on Australian radio 40 years ago - hence the local content laws. It must be a phase that most countries go through.

Wow, the $55 taxi fare from the day before yesterday turned out to be $4.10 in the other direction. If I'd known, I would have gone down to the station yesterday and looked for the bloke that tried to rip me off.

The railway station is huge and full of dodgy characters that look like they're out to rip someone off, or they might live there permanently. I suspect these are the gypsies that give the rest of them a bad name. If Bulgaria's supposed to be in the EEC next year, surely they need to clean the place up a bit. Honestly, I have never seen such a bunch of shady characters.

Here's my Bulgarian host seeing me off on the train to Kazanlak




The train to Kazanlak is a bit on the dilapidated side but the compartment's nice and roomy.

Kazanlak. Town in the middle of nowhere but full of cafes and lots of girls walking around with a great sense of what to wear. Great pedestrian mall.



The square looks quite quiet and I suppose it is as all the activity is in all the streets leading off it which are are pedestrian. Great atmosphere.



A photo can't begin to convey the atmosphere of the place. Especially as a lot of the ambience has to do with the people walking up and down the street.

The local Esperantists are lovely.Just met the two that met me at the train station so far but they and very nice and very intelligent.

I'm staying in the best hotel in town. Its a bit under AU$60 per night and really is pretty classy. The best hotel I've been in by far this trip. The great advantage of going to smaller cities. It feels like a palace after what I've been through.

Went for a wander around town. They even have a casino. Just slots, video poker and an automatic roulette table. Won $60 at one of the vdeo poker games. I'd be tempted to play more but I can't believe with the pay-table it has that it's a random deal.

Met up with the Esperantists again in the evening. We headed off to church where the old bloke in the black vestments (the local priest of course), gave me a bit of a shock by coming up to me and saying 'Ho, vi estas de Tasmanio - la insulo de Auxstralio'. Yes, he's a very good Esperantist. Now known to me as Pastro Pablo.

While I was in church two young blokes walked in in t-shirt and jeans. I thought they were going to rob the place or something. Well, they ended up getting up onto the lecturn in the middle of the church but instead of running out the door with the book they found there, they started chanting. Then from behind the altar a priest started singing and they sang back-up. Quite remarkable. It turned out these two are students in a seminary. I liked it when in the middle of the chanting one of the students took the sun-glasses off the other's head. He rather rakishly had been wearing them back-to-front in church.



Yes, the priest at the back is an Esperantist and the two young fellows in jeans are student priests.

It seemed that this was in the middle of a service or something but my Esperantist said we'd better say good-bye so we wandered up to the lecturn where the Esperantist priest was singing, got his attention and waved good-bye. Also a rather strange experience.

Later on the other Esperantists turned up, including a very good-looking girl. She's not an Esperantist yet but we'll have a go at her tomorrow.

Sarajevo, Nis, Skopje are big cities so you expect some night-life but the small size of Kazanlak and the huge amount of pedestrian streets and cafes is mind-boggling. This town might be the best yet.

Five kilometres from here, just after the war, they found the remains of some important Thracian city. But very soon afterwards a dam was built and the city was submerged. Well, apparently there's a plan to reconstruct the city, or part of it, on some sort of high-tech island in the middle of the man-made lake. Well, not really an island. They want to build a wall around the Thracian city and pump out the water to create something for which I'm not sure there's a name it's so unusual. I'm predicting that if that plan goes ahead, Kazanlak will become famous.

Day in Sofia

Went for a walk in the park.

Parks are the same all over the poorer parts of eastern Europe - nice and big but really tatty. Grass is crappy looking. Trees are boring and of course there's even a bit of a litter problem in the parks - especially along the lesser used areas.

Happened to spot a tennis court; turned out to be a tennis centre. They've got seven coaches and a head coach who just organises coaching. His coaches are away playing in tournaments but he's organised a coach for me from somewhere. He'll be here in 15 minutes. Trouble is the surface is clay and my clothes are probably going to get ruined.



English speaking but I suppose you have to expect that from tennis.

I still seem to be able to play tennis a bit. Quite a nice venue with a nice bar overlooking the courts.



My tennis coach finished by extolling the virtues of Bulgarian archeological sites and monasteries etc. I wanted to tell him to be a proper coach - from my experience in Australia - you have to tell jokes and talk about the week-end's footie.



Nice spot for a beer. Lots of activity planting new vegetation. Obviously making a fair bit of an effort to get things looking good. This will be a great city again eventually.

Huge square near my bus stop back to my current home (until tomorrow morning). Here's a typical soviet style monument which isn't faring too well under capitalism. I suppose it won't be here much longer. They've already blown up the monument to some major communist figure.



The square is however a huge meeting-place for the young.



I even got to kick a foot-bag around for half an hour with an appropriately hippie looking bunch of people. They definitely need some more practice though.

The main street which runs passed the square towards Mount Vitosha. Appropriately named Vitosha Street. A few weeks ago the mayor declared it to be a pedestrian mall - though the with trams running down the middle, it's not quite as pedestrian as it should be.

Bus to Bulgaria

Bus to Bulgaria. The young Pom I chatted to at the bus station had been to Albania before Macedonia and he reckoned he'd never been so happy to leave a country. I'll have to move it even higher on my list of countries to go to.

On the way to Sofia there were more rolling hills, valleys, babbling brooks... Lovely.

And at least here there's a proper border - that's what traveling's all about. Passport control - all that sort of stuff out of the old spy movies. Thet's when you know you've had the proper travel experience.

Interesting taxi trip from the bus-station. I couldn't find a meter in the taxi but finally I saw one but it was just about impossible to read. We hadn't got very far and the meter was already showing over 35 dollars! Thinking something must be wrong I rang the Esperantist and he reckoned the cost to his place wouldn't even be ten Lev! The fare ended up being over 55 dollars! Anyway, first he dropped me off in the middle of some block and said he couldn't find the address. I told him I thought something was wrong and refused to pay till my Esperantist said everything was ok, So now he puts my stuff into the taxi after I'd rung the Esperantist and arranged to meet him at such and such a place. Again he drops me off and when I again refused to pay he suddenly knew where the bloke was waiting. Anyway, my 70 year old Esperantist told him that he was trying to rip me off - but he'd take his details and if he came with him he'd pay him. When we got to his place his mate was there waiting and although he's 74 he looks like he wouldn't put up with crap from anyone. We ended up settling on a ten dollar fare. These two Bulgarians declared the taxi-driver to be a gypsy. So my gypsy cab-driver was a real gypsy.

Here's the Esperantist's friend who saved me from the robber taxi-driver.



The Esperantist is a former Mig and helicopter pilot, and his mate graduated from the same flying school in the same year and used to fly Tanzanian politicians around. Quite interesting. And no joke - he has an African accent when he speaks English.


What I remember from 7 years ago is still there. A boulevard of absolutely magnificent buildings. Paris but without the crowds.


The Russian cathedral which so impressed me years ago when I was here. Absolutely eerie when you approach it on a deserted Sunday morning with the choir singing inside.

Apparently this is where the king used to hang out when Bulgaria still had one. The current bloke in line to the throne apparently wants his house back - I can't really see it happening.


And yet another impressive building nearby. This time I think it's the parliament.

Bus Back to Skopje

Bus to Skopje.

Here are a couple of rather interesting and unusual pics from the airport in Ohrid...







The first seems to imply that guns are ok - just declare than them and you're ok.

The second poster seems to show a party and someone firing into the air. I'm going to have to find out from an Esperantist in Macedonia to be sure, but it seems to be a community service announcement against random firing of guns at weddings etc. (Due to the alarmingly high number of people that get hit when the bullet comes down).

Here's a pic I took of one of the streets back down to the water from the church. Very pleasant.



Ended up with a really good taxi driver in Ohrid. Well, he had a bit of a bluff. He said he could use the meter but that I shouldn't complain if the price was higher than he offered. I knocked him down by 50 denars and took the offer but out of curiosity I should have gone for the meter.

He did a great job getting me on the three o'clock bus just as it was leaving but I'm not sure whether I got ripped off there either. I suppose I should give him the benefit of the doubt.

Bus trip was terribly cramped as usual.

I ended up at the same hotel that I complained about before. It might be crap but it's reasonably cheap and it's close to the bus station and the centre of town.

Eight in the evening and 33 degrees.

I think I'm ready for a new country.

My Russian Esperantist traveling companion has already moved on - she caught a plane from Ohrid to Moscow this morning. Some problem back home apparently. Or perhaps she just got sick of me - no that couldn't be it surely...

Ohrid

View as I was walking into town.



Met up with the one of the local Esperantists. She has rooms to let at her home but seeing all the rooms have en suite and she has 8 them, one could say that she has a small hotel.

The view from the front garden where the paying customers were was glorious. One could sit there all day having a beer just looking out over the water. Definitely the best spot of the trip. And a hundred times better than my hotel.



I eventually met another couple of Esperantists. One of these is my first hot-pants wearing Esperantist. She works in a bar so it was a nice touch to wander into a bar and have someone greet you with saluton.



I couldn't resist it, Just bought myself yet another t-shirt. Sitting having a beer in front of a pretty impressive church overlooking the lake. Bit touristy but at least they all seem to ba locals or at least Slavs. Well it all comes down the the fact that if they humour me and speak to me in Macedonian they're cool and so are the souvenirs, but if they insist on English then it loses its attraction.

Ohrid even has an ancient amphitheatre ...



... and a pretty impressive looking castle.



Sat outside this picturesque church having a beer. That's what Australia needs - more churches with accompanying bar.



No doubt about it, Ohrid is a great spot.

(What about my complaints from yesterday? The mosquitoes aren't so bad if you turn off the light and close the window, the rubbish is collected each day, I haven't heard anything from the other side of the lake after yesterday and it's so warm there's no need for a blanket.)

'bye to Prilep

Prilep is on a plain, a long way from the sea and the temperature's over 40 degrees - in fact it's one of the hottest days of the year for them so it's a scorcher. Wish I could just sit back in Prilep for another couple of days and relax and have a few drinks in one of their many cafes, but I have to move on.

Three of the youth group came to see us off at the bus station. Very pleasant Esperantists they are too. As long as we have the likes of them Esperanto deserves to survive.



The bus broke down three times on the way to Ohrid. We ended up having to walk the last couple of hundred metres and I suppose it would have been more if there hadn't been a huge long down-hill stretch which we were able to coast down engine-less for several minutes.

We arrived at night so I haven't seen anything of the town but so far I'm not impressed. The hotelroom is a bit run-down, they have weird Soviet style blankets with some strange diamond-shaped hole in the middle of the sheet, the sheet over the mattress is too short.

I asked for directions into town and the way turned out to be through a badly lit wooded area so it was an impossible task, the litter for a change seems to be in or around the litter bins but they don't seem to have been emptied for a while, the amusement park on the other side of the lake is so loud I can hear it from here, and there are mosquitoes in my room - but apart from that Ohrid is great.

I'm hoping it looks better during the day. Oh, and I phoned one of the local Esperantists and she doesn't seem to speak Esperanto at all and said I'd have to speak English. Does that mean English is ok but Bulgarian (which is mutually comprehensible with Macedonian) is not? I'm obviously not impressed so far.

I'd better reserve all further judgement till the morning - if the mosquitoes haven't sucked me dry.

Krushevo

First thing in the morning we took a bus to Krushevo.





Krushevo is a village of about 5 or 6 thousand people on the slopes of one of the mountains that surround Prilep.

Apparently it's the highest village in the Balkans. Apart from that it's famous for having been an independent state for ten days in 1903, before the Turks came in and suppressed the independance movement. In a way it was the start of the modern Macedonian state.

Apart from the beauy of the alpine landscape Krushevo has five museums including a rather impressive and unusual memorial to the Krushevo Manifesto in the shape of a mace.



Inside the memorial. All very minimalistic with special symbolism that probably needs to be pointed out by a local. Well it was but I didn't really understand it properly. It's unusual enough and plain enough that it's quite impressive.



Our friendly caretaker sliding closed the door to the museum.



Our local Esperantist from Prilep got the caretaker to open up the museum with the strange shape for us after which we went on a long treck with some local historian to the other museums.

Even Krushevo with it's 5 or 6000 people has a vibrant cafe culture to rival that of Hobart.





The only church that wasn't destroyed by the Turks - they thought it was a Vlach (Romanian) church and didn't want to have to fight them too.



It's fortunate that the Turks left it alone as it would have burnt pretty well considering the whole interior is carved wood. Apparently one of the largest such carved alters in existence.



Traditonal photo of Esperanto excursion. Note the Esperanto pennant in front. Also note the huge key I'm holding. The caretaker even has a special handbag that he carries it home in. He says it would otherwise make a mess of his pocket.

Nunnery

We started the day by walking up to the top of one of the nearby peaks on top of which are the ruins of some famous fortress - well, famous amongst Slavs anyhow.

Also nearby were ancient graves that had been hewn out of the rock. I thought I'd try one for size.



Pretty uncomfortable though - I wouldn't want to be dead for long in one of these.

This being Macedonia, on the way back down round the other side, we came across one of those monasteries built into the mountain-side.





There was a young woman nun outside (she was rather pretty but I didn't think I should be asking for a close-up) ....



Our Macedonian asked whether we could get permission to view the nunnery side. She said she'd go and ask but the answer was no. Not surprising seeing I had shorts on. That's the last thing the nuns need - to see my legs. Or maybe mother superior had spotted me trying on a fig-leaf for size and realised we hadn't come to pray...

Around Prilep

Besides tobacco a lot of vegetables are grown in the district.



Also heaps of watermelon.



A watermelon costs about one dollar. It must be a bugger to prrduce something that big and have to sell it for so little.

We were wandering around and saw some people threading tobacco so our host stopped and started up a conversation so we could have a look.

Basically they have long needles and spear the leaf onto the needle through the thicker spine of the leaf, gradually pulling the thread through as they go. Presumably the metre long needles are so they don't have to lose time pulling the thread through all the time.



The whole family including two children were sitting around threading tobacco.



Near the main square I even came across a bust of Zamenhof - the inventor of Esperanto.

Skopje to Prilep

Had a quick beer for breakfast then caught the bus to Prilep. It was a pretty small bus and pretty uncomfortable. At one stage we were pulled over by the police and had to sit in the heat for ten minutes while he got booked or something.

Prilep is certainly a pretty remote town. About 70,000 people with a few Esperantists among them. After checking into our hotel (the best room of the trip so far), I gave one of the Esperantists a call and within ten minutes he and his father were at our hotel.

Had a bit of a chat with the son while his father went off to take the Esperanto class. There just seems to be such a gap now between western European Esperantists and places like Prilep. The big pity is that fellows such as this bloke in Prilep are such passionate Esperantists and they have students but it's hard to keep them inspired because people just don't have the money to travel, which should be one of the main points of Esperanto.

Door to the Esperanto club.



Today was Esperanto class day and we got a tour of their phenominal Esperanto library and museum of Esperanto memorabilia. This stuff deserves to be in a proper museum. There was even a picture there of another Australian that had visited, who also happens to be just about the only Australian Esperantist I've met - Marcel.

I managed to get a photo of the Esperanto class. That's looks like a pretty eager student down the back. Looks like he's keen to show he knows the answer.



Turns out Prilep's main industry is the preparation of tobacco. You can't go very far in Prilep without seeing tobacco hanging out to dry.



It really is everywhere. The leaves are threaded onto string then hung up in the sun for a week or so. So every leaf gets handled individually a couple of times in the process of making tobacco. With that sort of intensive labour involved, just imagine how much cigarettes are going to cost once they start paying these people a proper wage.

After Esperanto we went to the house of one of the students ...



... and had a drink of home-made loza with the girls father while discussing the process of making tobacco. Like just about everyone else in town, they too go out into the fields, pick tobacco, take it home to thread onto string then hang it up to dry outside at home. The next day they were off to bring home some more tobacco.

Later we got a bit of a tour through the centre of town. I know this is going to sound familiar, but the place is packed at night. Just like Nis and Skopje - the streets are packed in the evening. People just love to wander about at night or sit around with a drink and chat. Obviously part of the culture. And it helps to have streets designed for it.

Misc from Skopje

As seems to be the norm in these cities, there's a long row of back to back cafes by the river.



All the old churches must have been destroyed by the earthquake, which is quite a sobering thought - how much history must have gone in that one moment. Here's the main church in town in a modern style. It's rather strange to see an orthodox church with these modern lines.



Here I am leaning on Mother Theresa.



Well if she can support all those orphans in India then she won't even notice me leaning on her.

Why Mother Theresa in Skopje? Well, all you used to hear is that she was Albanian but she was actually born in Skopje.

In the meantime I've been accumulating a few too many books. Here's my friendly post-office bloke and there's my package behind him.



To think that somehow it will find it's way to Hobart, to my front door even. It always amazes me.

I found a wonderful restaurant in the courtyard of an old house in the old Albanian quarter.



The river's quite big but not terribly interesting. There is a bike and walking path along one side which gets used by a lot of inline skaters. Always nice to watch, especially as most of the skaters seem to be female.





After such a hard day of sight-seeing of course I have to include me with the local beer - Skopsko.