Tales of Bulgaria: Armblade Chronicles

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

So, for those of you who haven't noticed the Silence of the Armblades lately, I spent the last week away from my computer in a far-off and awesome place. And I figured it's about time I recounted my adventures. This is what this thread is for.

Hold on a moment, let me get that title screen loaded...

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There we go.

Several things to say in advance about Bulgaria: For one, It is very frickin' pretty. It is super green, full of tall old growth forests, mountains and rivers, waterfalls and snowy mountains. The weather is chilly and lovely (at least around this time of year), with rather frequent rains. Most of the country is very agricultural in nature, and so there aren't too many people in most places outside the cities, you are as likely to see horse-drawn carriages as you are to see cars, and there are quite a few animals roaming around - farm animals, stray dogs (and the occasional cat), birds (mostly swallows but not exclusively), a few lizards, various interesting insects and a lot of spiders of various denominations - which made me, in particular, quite squee-ful, as I absolutely love the things. There were some very impressive webs in various places we visited, which made me briefly wonder if the common European superstition that spiders bring good luck was also a thing in Bulgaria. Doesn't seem to be the case, but whatever the reason, it made me smile.

Frankly, the whole place ENTIRELY made me think of a really good prospect for a Pokémon region, and once I started thinking of it like that, there was no turning back - concepts just kept on coming to me, and I will share the ones that popped to mind too.

(What do you mean - an African Taillow or a European Taillow?)​

I brought my sketchbook along and intended to doodle some stuff for a future recounting thread, but unfortunately I have had no time/energy to really sit down and draw during the thing - so I'll have to accompany it with a variety of photos taken by assorted members of our party - mostly the 'rents (These photos are posted with their permission of course). Differences in quality derive from the cameras used (smartphone cameras of varying quality and our Actual Camera which is pretty damn amazing really).

One last thing. Due to the sheer magnitude of this thread and the amount of images and text I have to share, I'm going to split this thread into multiple posts, each one focused on a day. This may mean I might have to post multiple times in a row - a practice that is not generally allowed by our rules. I will have to ask the rest of you not to replicate this feat - I am only doing this because I have little choice. If it turns out that it is possible for one post to have that many attachments, I will merge all the individual posts into one and delete this disclaimer. Otherwise... Bear with me.

Without further ado, DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY. (Boom Boom, Tweet Tweet).

Day 1 - Monday, May 9th, 2016
The Party Assembles​

Dead of the night, May 9th, 2016. The Biomechanical Abomination and the Parentals load up their suitcases onto a taxi and drive off to the Ben Gurion airport, with a small stop along the way to pick up our fourth party member out of a party of eight - ze maternal grandmother, whose 80th birthday this year prompted this family trip to her ancestral homeland of Bulgaria. In the airport, we rendezvoused with the rest of our party members - my uncle, aunt and their two kids - before boarding a Goliath Winged Machine of Airship-Equivalence that carried us, over two hours, to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

At the Sofia airport we picked up some form of transportation where we would spend a great deal of this trip, and after a (far too long, for my tastes) stop at some bloody sports-gear megastore - because some of our party members absolutely had to waste precious trip time on shopping (thank gog for said store's free Wi-Fi) - and quick lunch at this Serbian grill which had some pretty good food, we've set course for our first real destination - the village of Tazha, where our home base for the first three days of the trip was located.

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When we arrived at Tazha we weren't sure what to expect, to be honest. The village itself doesn't look like it changed much in decades and the outside walls of the guest house we were to stay in were long, stone walls with red roof-tiles, concealing the interior - with only a single, unassuming looking door.

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Once the gate opened, though - in a "The Secret Garden" sort of manner, we were treated to one of the most beautiful places I've ever had the pleasure of staying in, the Sveti Georgi Guest House.

The exterior garden - rather large, and very lovely.


A swallow nested under one of the eaves, and this really lovely orb weaver made its home in the garden.


The interior was also charming - the rooms had variations based on their locations in the house but were all fully equipped, had lovely decorations and were very comfy. I think this is the ground floor room where my grandmother stayed, but I'm not sure.​

So we settled in, briefly hopped into a nearby supermarket, acquired some supplies for dinner and the next day's breakfast, had dinner, and then crashed. For some of us who barely got any sleep at all before that (myself included), this may have been the best part of the day. The next day, our trip proper will begin.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Day 2 - Tuesday, May 10th, 2016
Byala Reka Ecotrail and The Village of Chehlare​

While this unit was recharging, the 'rents woke up early to walk around the village for a bit. As it turns out, the village not only looks like it has not changed much for decades - it really hasn't.

Local NPCs still head to their workplaces in horse-drawn carts, and dogs are a common sight.

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Tazha, as it seems, is a village of many goats - Sho would have probably felt right at home - And every morning, the locals lead their goats along the main road, where they all meld together into a fuzzy parade of hooves. The 'rents described this as the locals taking the goats to school. As you can probably tell, not all of them look particularly ecstatic about it. In fact, most of them seem quite meh about the whole thing. Me-e-e-e-e-e-e-h.

Bulgaria also has some really fuzzy and contemplative looking cats (and let's face it, the internet loves cats, so I might as well share these!)​

After I finally woke up and everyone had breakfast and caffeine and what have you, the party split up - with ze grandmother and ze mother remaining behind in the guest house while ze father, ze uncle/aunt, ze kids and ze Biomechanical Abomination got in the car and drove off to do some actual, y'know, tripping in our trip!

Along the way, we stopped at the nearby town of Kalofer to perform some crucial arrangements.

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Kalofer, located on the river Tundzha, has quite a bit of history behind it for Bulgaria - it is known as the birthplace of the poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev, general and war hero Nikola Ivanov and the spiritual leader Exarch Joseph.

Some wall-art, and a memorial monument asserting the town's illustrious history as can(n)on.
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While ze father headed into a local bank to exchange Euros into the local currency (an immensely tedious and time-consuming process in Bulgaria, apparently - but traveling around a country without its currency is rather silly, especially when credit cards can only carry you so far), our other party members stocked up on supplies for the trip ahead - a few sandwiches, fruit and Banitsi - a sort of Bulgarian pastry filled with cheese which is, honestly, frelling amazing. Finally, we were all stocked up and all set to conquer the heights - or rather, our next destination, the Byala Reka ("White River") eco-trail.

There was, of course, a matter of actually finding the trail - a fairly confusing ordeal, even for "state of the art" SatNav technology. (The art in question is probably pottery)

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The roads in the area are gorgeous though.

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With views like this along their sides.

Finally, with the help of a helpful local who lived close to where the trail begins and needed a ride, we found ourselves at the sign of the "Natsionalen Park Tsentralen Balkan", where the eco-trail we sought was.

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And Zark almighty, that place was absolutely beautiful. The title card should give you an idea of what to expect. Truth be told, though, even here our path was not as clear as we expected...

Don't let the bridges fool you - there is nothing abridged about the path we ended up taking.​

Sometimes a Biomechanical Abomination has to commune with the local tree networks. Log In, if you will.


The mountains are striped with lighter and darker patches of trees and it is gorgeous.


And LO, the legendary Druidic circle of... er... Bench-henge?

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It was about at that point we realized that we took the wrong turn in Albuquerque and ended up next to someone's farm. After taking a few photos of the horses and attempting to figure out if the path continues onwards, the local dogs went into hyperbark mode, which startled some of the other local animals into a full blown cacophonous concerto - and we figured that it was probably time we doubled back and actually found the actual path, because it certainly didn't look like the one we were on was going anywhere.

I did encounter these buggers, though! I'm not sure what the one on the left is, but those black patches in its exoskeleton really looked more like holes than like spots - which made me dub it a "Lairon Beetle" until proper identification pops up. The shiny as eff scarabid, alas, was dead - but still shiny enough to take a photo of.
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Doubling back, we paused for a lunch break by a lovely spot of river (which is where the title-card image came from), featuring a few benches and what looked like a wooden archway. As we were eating, a small film crew popped up from no where. Turns out they were shooting this couple's wedding clip, and it was a perfect spot for such. We weren't in their way, so it was all cool - and once they were done filming (and we were done eating), we had a quick conversation with the camerawoman, who spoke very good English, actually. It was only after the couple left, the last few Banitsi were consumed and I've finished scanning the area for more interesting arthropods (firebugs, firebugs everywhere - they're fairly common in Israel too but I've never actually seen THAT many), I took time to look at the archway itself.

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Oops. THAT'S where the trail starts. Ah well, it was a lovely detour anyway.
Funny story - when we were planning the routes we will take in this trip we took the name of the route itself to be "Ekopateka", and the locals understood where we were aiming at when we asked, which reinforced the illusion. Only later, after I saw the sign near the archway and the references on it to the trail's name being 'Byala Reka', it clicked to me that "Ekopateka" just literally means "Eco-trail" - something that was confirmed by the one or two members of our party who have an understanding of the local language. Also funny story - It was about at this point in the trip that I found myself realizing that the more I look at Cyrillic writing, the more of it I actually recognize - and made a point of learning how it works (albeit at a leisurely pace) as the trip went along. It's still a work in progress, but I'm getting there!

As for the trail itself - it had pretty much the sort of landscapes I absolutely live for:

Elf-trails through the forest and along cliffs...


Winding over the rapidly flowing rivers that gave the trail its name...


And absolutely GORGEOUS waterfalls...


And varieties of plants and fungi.
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The same bridge these mushrooms were growing on also held a lovely but shy wolf spider who dashed into a crack in the wood and vanished before I managed to take a photo of it.

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It was at this point that we reached a junction, where the path split - either doubling back onto itself or continuing along the cliff with a myriad of further bridges and stairs. Much to my chagrin - and that of the older of the kids - time was sort starting to get pressing, as we had further plans for the rest of the daytime hours. And so, instead of continuing along the rest of the trail and climbing up the mountains with it, we had to turn back - Rest assured, however, that I have every intention of coming back someday to finish the job.

We returned to the car and drove back to the guest house to pick up ze grandmother and ze mother - and from there we drove off to one of the places this trip was engineered around - the village of Chehlare, where my maternal grandmother lived as a child, for about half a year, during World War 2.

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Some historical background which most of you probably won't care about. During WW2, Bulgaria was allied with the Nazis - an alliance made in exchange for return of territories lost by Bulgaria in the Second Balkan war. This was largely a move of political convenience by the then-king Boris III, who had very little interest in actually getting himself and his people really involved in this war, and every bit of interest to be seen as someone who Restored Bulgaria to its Former Glory - and thus, whatever pressures applied by the Nazis on the local government to strap themselves into the war effort were very actively rebutted by the king (something that may have led to his assassination later in the war, actually). The Nazis, in turn, seemed to not be particularly interested in the goings-on in Bulgaria either, largely using it as a transfer base for their attacks on Greece and what was then Yugoslavia.

It was probably this relatively low level of interest that allowed the rather amazing story of the Bulgarian Jewish Community - and how a great deal of it was spared from the flames that consumed most of the Jewish communities of Europe - thanks in great part to the efforts of a few politicians and - amazingly - the heads of the Bulgarian Church, in particular Cyril and Stefan I of Bulgaria (Which the English Wikipedia only mentions little about. Gee, I wonder why </sarcasm>).

But while the Jews of Bulgaria itself were not sent to the extermination camps (those in the newly-reclaimed territories were, perhaps without the King's knowledge - but no one knows for sure), they were persecuted as most other Jewish communities in Europe were at the time - with able-bodied men being sent off to forced labor and everyone else relocated from the main cities (primarily from Sofia, where most of the community lived at the time of the war - and where my grandmother was born and grew up) to smaller towns and from there to a few villages which were, in a way, converted into makeshift concentration camps. Chehlare was one such village - at the time of the war the village was largely abandoned, with most of its natural residents having left to join the partisans in the mountains, or driven away for opposing the regime otherwise - and a large number of families of Jews from Sofia were relocated there in their stead, my grandmother's family among them. Surprisingly, my grandmother remembers her days in Chehlare with great fondness - her family was one of the families that managed to find their place in the village fairly quickly, adapted to it and village work very well and, as a result, did not starve - and so revisiting Chehlare after all these years was a rather emotional thing for her - as well as for my mother and my uncle, who grew up with her stories about the place.

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Chehlare today is practically a ghost town. The guard towers and fences are long gone, and so are most of the people. Apparently, the village never quite recovered even after the war was over and the Jews left - A lot of the old houses have been demolished or destroyed by bandits and/or the then-communist government in pursuit of such bandits (including the house in which my grandmother lived at the time). Most of the surviving original inhabitants that returned mostly left after a while - and many of the remaining houses are abandoned and in a state of disrepair.

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Occasional monuments and signs commemorate and glorify the locals who left to fight the Nazis (Bulgarians love their statues), but there is virtually no mention at all of the Jews who were relocated there during the war. My grandmother and my mother actually searched for some life, perhaps someone old enough to still remember what happened. There was little trace of human life though - at most, we ran into a cat lurking in the tall grass amidst the ruins, almost entirely unrecognizable as a cat, and a group of some very large chickens.

"I summon Mega Ultra Chicken in Attack Mode!"​

We spent a few hours walking around the village apparently - and eventually my grandmother did meet two or three locals who actually knew - or knew of - some of the people (all long gone now) that my grandmother met at the time period. Her conversation with one woman in particular - a woman whose uncle was the village mayor at the time, who distributed the Jews to houses at my grandmother's time - seemed rather fascinating. I wouldn't know, I don't speak Bulgarian. xD

Finally, we bid farewell to Chehlare, got back in the car and drove off to the town of Kazanlak - capital of Bulgaria's rose oil industry, which I'll talk about a bit more in depth in the next post. There we went for dinner in a restaurant that was recommended to us by a family member who visited Bulgaria quite a few times and - in true Bulgarian fashion - mostly marked destinations based on food. Laguna, as the restaurant was named, had a huge damn menu and quite a bit of pretty good food - mostly seafood, unsurprisingly with a name like that. I personally absorbed some kind of Pasta Marinara which had milder flavors than equivalent dishes that I had around here - which was not a bad thing to be honest. We will be returning to Kazanlak the next day - but that's for the next post.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Day 3 - Wednesday, May 11th, 2016
Etara and Rose Valley​

After waking up and having breakfast, we hopped to Kalofer again to restock on more Banitsi and other forms of food for the day, and we looked around a bit more this time.

So, remember how I mentioned Bulgarians absolutely love their statues?

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This has not stopped being a thing. Complete with "inspirational" superhero poses and everything. I'm pretty sure the Huge Damn Statue is supposed to be Hristo Botev, the poet/revolutionary I mentioned last post. Not sure about the ancient-warrior-civilization dudes holding up blocks with years carved on them though.

Once supplies were restocked, we re-boarded the vehicle and launched off towards the Shipka Pass, a mountain pass sitting between the towns of Kazanlak and Gabrovo. From the car, we could see the eponymous town of Shipka...

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A rather unassuming looking town except for this absolute monstrosity rising from between the trees:

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If there's one thing Bulgaria loves more than statues, it's incredibly gaudy giant fecking sparklechurches. Wikipedia recognizes this thing as "The Memorial Temple of the Birth of Christ" - but let's be honest with ourselves. At least from afar, it looks like the palace of the Sultan of Agrabah... but with an out of place spire. At least according to google image searches, the building looks a lot more coherent from up close - but this is the closest we got to this monstrosity. Don't worry, we've not NEARLY filled our quota of gaudy churches for this trip. Stay tuned...

Eventually we made a pit stop somewhere in one of the higher bits of the pass, which was largely notable for having a decent view of what my brain registered as the Watch Tower of Amon Sul.

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What it actually is, as it turns out, is the Shipka Memorial. Apparently, Shipka Pass was the site of a few very significant battles for the liberation of Bulgaria back in the 19th century - and this monument was built to commemorate the fallen in these battles.

While certain members of the party were emptying their bladder meters, the rest of us explored the general area we stopped in - which was in rather impressive bloom at the time...

(This plant is probably immensely conflicted about its allegiance to the GREEN or PURPLE side...)
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And the pollinators were out full force, including bumblebees... and these guys - bee-mimic Hoverflies! I'll be honest here - until I looked at these rather zoomed in photos, I was actually fooled into thinking they were some kind of bees myself - but to be fair, their disguise is very convincing on a cursory glance - Bees, when standing still, are pretty hard to identify as having four wings (like most insects) rather than only two (which is a distinctive fly trait). No, what rumbles this imposteur is the shape of its head and eyes, which are definitely not bee and very fly... But I digress. Sorry, biology nerd instincts taking over.

Where were we? Oh yes. Bulgaria.

So, after reconvening (and in the cases of some of us, recaffeinating), we finally left the mountain pass and visited another target marked on our itinerary - The Etar Architectural-Ethnographic Complex, also known as Etara - on the outskirts of Gabrovo.

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Etara is defined as an 'open-air museum', designed to demonstrate the life in that region of Bulgaria during the "Revival" period - the second half of the 18th/19th centuries. Built through a combination of on-site restoration, preservation and transportation/restoration of buildings and original equipment to the new site, the entire "restored" village is connected to a network of canals which power assorted craftsmen workshops (mills, looms and the like) through rotation of water wheels.

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This is more or less how the system works - a very long canal filtering downwards though a system of artificial ditches, falls and what I can only describe as 'blenders', powering water wheels that, via various systems of transmission, power assorted workshop machines - including various mills and grindstones...

And this braid maker's workshop, complete with LOOMS OF DOOM (unfortunately most of the interior pictures turned out blurry, this is the closest to presentable I could find).​

Of course, it's not just mills as far as the eyes can see. There are also other structures, like this blatant witch hut:

And a bunch of old gravestones on at least one level of grass.

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There was also what appeared to be a garage for various carts and other vehicles including THIS...

Guys, someone impounded Santa Claus.​

And the "Main Street" which features assorted shops which dot the place and sell handcrafted miscellania. Something about the architecture of the more 'town' like areas of Etara really reminded me of Oblivion's building aesthetic...

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Apparently, at certain days in certain seasons (and sometimes by advance reservation) actors in traditional outfits demonstrate, hands on, the actual operation of the workshops and what have you. When we arrived, however, there were no such demonstrations - aside from the shops that were open, some of which included a sweet shop that had some really good stuff.

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Oh, and there was also a rather impressive spider with a web over one of the canals.

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And this atrociously photogenic lizard! It's hard to see unless you click the thumbnail but the thing had tiny iridescent spots on its scales. Rather liked the camera too. ♥

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After a few hours of hanging around in Etara, we loaded ourselves back up onto the car and headed towards the area of Bulgaria known as the Rose Valley - where 85% of the world's rose oil industry is located and many rose-fields abound alongside the roads.

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It's basically like this all the way down, some fields in better states than others. My Pokémon-geared mind certainly pictured a lot of Roselia/Roserade around this area - and possibly a Grass-type gym leader in the town that stands at the center of the rose oil industry - Kazanlak. Yes, the same town where the restaurant from the day before was located - which is why I saved all the rose pictures for this update. There are more, but they're honestly not that exciting - just the same fluffy pink roses with the far-too-many-petal-whorls (Should have taken a few photos of the occasional wild rose I stumbled upon, bah). But since we were already in the area, we figured it was time for some EDUTAINMENT, and visited the Rose Museum.

With my grandmother as an interpreter (as the only staff member active at that time of day did not speak English), we were given a tour of the museum and learned about the methods used in the rose oil industry. Apparently, these haven't changed much in the many decades the rose oil industry has been operating - the roses are still hand-picked, the etheric oils are distilled using more or less the same techniques, and the volume of rose petals required for production is still fucking phenomenal (about 4-5 tons of roses are required to produce a kilogram of rose oil - and the stuff can sell for thousands of dollars). Rose oil, also, is phenomenally powerful stuff - the old distillery equipment in the museum has not been used for over 70 years and STILL has an unshakable, powerful rose scent.

Unfortunately, the Rose Museum is one of those places that charges for the right to take pictures, so apologies for the visual blandness - but from outside, the building is nothing to write home about, the interior walls - at least in the lobby - were atrociously pink, and in keeping with the theme of assault on the senses, I had a hard time breathing in this museum until my neurons adapted as the rose smell was overpowering as hell. It was still worth it for the explanation (which was doubly fascinating for my uncle and aunt - as chemistry is their field of education/work) and the few small jars of rose petal jam we've purchased as we left (of which, I do believe, nothing is left by now. They were just that good). Google Image Search has plenty of images of the exhibits in the interior, in case any of you are curious.

After a brief pause in a nearby (abandoned-seeming) rose field, where the kidlets in our party picked a number of blooms and squished the hell out of them with a hand-carved mortar-and-pestle set they bought at Etara (which certainly cleared the air in the car I suppose <<), we headed back to the guest house, with a brief stop in a supermarket to acquire dinner components. It so happens that this particular day was not just any day but also the eve of the Israeli Independence Day - and Epic Barbecues of Doom are sort of a tradition on that day. So even though we were in Bulgaria - traditions are traditions. Besides, it was our last night at the Sveti Georgi Guest House, and we figured that what better way to celebrate than using its Skara (that is to say, grill, which we have been instructed re: the use of by the guest house's owner on the day we arrived) to make a great family dinner?

(Okay, I admit, this photo is from the daytime hours in the first day but I couldn't find a photo of the outdoor dining area of the guest house that DIDN'T have the family all over it)​

The grill in question was located outside the guesthouse, in a roofed/paved section of the garden very much set for that purpose, complete with heavy wooden benches, tables and carved chairs for sitting by the fire. After some setup work by ze uncle and ze father, we've had a lovely fire going in that fireplace, and charcoals for the grill, on which the assorted meats we've acquired for the purpose were roasted to perfection.

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And so we've spent our evening with delicious food, good Bulgarian Cabarnet Sauvignon and good company, which made for a lovely last night, for sure. And after dinner, we just sat around and hung out for a bit, as the fire burned softly in the fireplace. Tomorrow, we leave this lovely place and depart for the next leg of our journey. What shenanigans will it bring? Find out next post.

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[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Day 4 - Thursday, May 12th, 2016
The Old City of Plovdiv​

The time has come to move on from the area, alas - there's still quite a bit of Bulgaria to see and we would need to move to a base camp better situated for the purpose. As we were packing up, I saw the first and only jumping spider I saw on this trip!

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And photos had to be taken because jumpies are hella precious.

Soon enough, we were all packed - and after returning the keys to the lovely guest house to its owner - we got in the car and headed towards our next destination, the second-largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv.

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Plovdiv has been around for quite a while, and it is promoted as a center of art and history. Our particular point of interest was the Old City - but, as it turns out, there is pretty much no way to access that part of the city by car - and especially not the sort of minor-grade tank that our party called its primary vehicle. To top it off, as you may recall, we were traveling with ze grandmother - who is definitely not designed for walking prolonged periods of time, especially on the terrible, uneven cobblestone roads. Fortunately, for just such an occasion we have come equipped with a strange hybrid of a walking stick and a folding stool, so she'd always have a way to sit down somewhere and rest her legs if they decide to have some kind of spontaneous operational failure.

So we parked the car at the closest possible place to the entrance to the old city and started walking - which is when aforementioned grandmother caught a coughing fit from Hell. Ye Olde Legendary Chairstick was deployed, and as ze grandmother sat down to re-regulate her respiration, we attempted to figure out what next.

Here is an important word to know in Bulgarian - and about Bulgarians. That word is инат (pronounced 'Inat', with the emphasis on the I), and it means stubborn - for Bulgarians are a stubborn folk, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. My maternal grandfather was legendary for it. Before ze mother's wedding, for example, the man began experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack one evening, which he shrugged off until the next day - and went to work in spite of really not looking so good, no matter how much he was told so. The symptoms got even more serious, but he, for his part, would have continued shrugging them off - were it not for his boss and workmates essentially forcing him to go to a hospital and get himself checked out (and even then, not in an ambulance!). The doctors looked at him and determined that he indeed had a heart attack - By that point his heart attack has run its course and roughly 25% of his heart was eff!ed. They had no idea how it didn't kill him outright and wanted to get him hospitalized immediately. He, however - adamantly refused, because his daughter was getting married tonight and he is NOT going to miss that wedding. They eventually managed to convince him to stay for a few hours so they can attempt to stabilize his condition somewhat - and after that he went off to that wedding as if nothing had happened. It's cool. He got this. The man walked off a full blown heart attack on sheer stubbornness alone - and wore it like a badge of pride. That was the kind of Bulgarian инат he was.

My grandmother, too, has her moments of being incredibly инат - usually at the most inconvenient of times, and if it's detrimental to her personally, so much the better. So it should come as no surprise that my uncle, too, has acquired that charming little tendency - and when the 'rents and I suggested we'd split up, wait for ze grandmother to catch her breath, then find a nice cafe somewhere nearby and sit there while the aunt/uncle/kids explore the old city - because there is no reason that they should have their day disrupted and the rest of us are not all that incredibly into cities - he would have none of it. Oh no. He would not stand the thought of leaving the rest of us behind, "in the middle of the street" - and he decided that if walking to the old city or driving up there is not an option, why not take a cab up?

This, of course, had several issues with it. For one, as it turns out, Cabs do not stop at random in Plovdiv. Anywhere. At all. Either you call for one from a company or bust. Second, bear in mind that ze grandmother is still recovering from the initial cough-wave and is still in the state of stress where the last thing she feels like is going anywhere at all, which, in turn, is triggering a rapidly rising resonance cascade of stress in the rest of the party members. Of course, he could not see why we were making such a fuss about things instead of trying to find a solution - entirely oblivious to the solution we already came up with, as it was not his solution.

Eventually, though - blind insistence turned into action. Ze uncle walked into a nearby restaurant and asked if they could call him a cab - and they did ("Okay, you're a cab!"). Thus, a cab was summoned, ze grandmother and ze 'rents were loaded onto said cab and launched off to some church in the old city while I ended up following the rest of the party towards the old city on foot. Alert cancelled, condition green.

The old city of Plovdiv is actually rather nifty looking - a mix of old Byzantine architecture...

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And more modern (but still quite old) buildings...

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... That sometimes use the Byzantine architecture bases as foundation (sometimes with more fixing up, digging through holes and polish than others).

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And as with many old cities there are large dramatic structures like the Ethnographic Museum (and its embellished sniper-sight outside window), and this other church...

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Alongside unassuming, nice quiet spots.

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A word of caution, though - if you visit Old Plovdiv, do make sure that your bladder meter is empty, because the only non-restaurant places who have bathrooms that are somewhat open for the public to use (two museums) are "visitors only" and are kept under lock and key otherwise. Some members of our party learned that the hard way.

While we were wandering around (and the kids got some kind of clay water-whistle that sounds a bit like a hybrid between a bird and a car alarm), we finally reunited with our vanguard by a certain church, and caught up. Aside from being accosted by a beggar who attempted to pull an incredibly reality show-sounding sob story at them, with all of the usual cliches, they also took a few photos - which kind of illustrates the point I made in the last day.

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Fun fact about Eastern-Orthodox churches - they are just as gaudy as all fuck on the inside as they are on the outside, and pull out all the stops in terms of the Grace and Glory of ooh, Shiny! Need some saints? How about all the saints? What's that? Their halos not gold enough for you? GOLD FOIL ALL THE THINGS, AND THE MORE ORNAMENTAL THE BETTER! And this Divine Shrine to Bad Taste? That's a small church. It gets even more ridiculous in the larger ones. More on that later.

Either way. Once we went back to full party composition, we hit a local restaurant for lunch. The food was pretty decent, only marred by the impressively slow service - by the time a few of the dishes came out, the people who ordered them were already full as a result of assorted salad and sharing of the (impressively large!) dishes with others around the table. Ah well, things were packed up and eaten later during the trip.

Heading back to the car was a bit of a different ordeal - as it turns out, no cabs were really available for the way back - as it turns out, cabs don't particularly like going up to the old city (can't blame them, the roads are awful), and a relatively quick pickup job like this is honestly not worth it for them. And so, we basically had to support ze grandmother all the way down to where we left the car.

.. When suddenly, in a nearby street to where we parked, we chanced upon what appeared to be a wedding of some sort. Turkish, as it turns out. There were dances in the street, outfits that screamed all the way to the other side of the city and music so loud that its bass notes hit me like an impenetrable wall of sound even from a safe distance. I went to keep ze grandmother company in the car, while the rest of the family derped in for a closer look.

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What can I tell you - I think these images speak for themselves about that particular, er, event. Between the ludicrous hair extensions and these gloriously terrible dresses (and whatever the hell is going on with the lady with the ginormous stilettos and the bright red sheet), ze mother described these people as looking like 'A Convention of Drag Queens Doing a Disney Show', and I am inclined to agree. I would like to add 'A Convention of DEPRESSED Drag Queens' - as the entire population, in spite of their dancing, look like they would very much like to hang themselves from their own hair extensions right now... Except the pink bubble-gum-ice-cream-cake Dolores-Umbridge-But-Younger bride and the one old guy with missing teeth at the corner of one picture, who is just being all 'AYYYYYYYY, PARTY!'

Desmond Morris once wrote a book called The Human Zoo. I'd say the title of that book is a pretty good descriptor of what happened here.

With that behind us, we launched out of Plovdiv and headed to where our homebase for the next two days would be, "Villa Rila" in the town of Samakov. Once we've dropped off the main road into the side roads that lead to Samakov we found ourselves driving into gradually thickening mist - I was already making mental Silent Hill notes. Bulgarian roads, even with the lovely views that go with them, are already not that brilliant in terms of road quality to begin with - but these ones took it to the next level, with potholes that could probably eat a car and digest it for over a thousand years. Along the way we passed at least two major accidents - probable results of the road's status and the fog. But ultimately, we've arrived.

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Unlike the gorgeous guest house in Tazha, "Villa Rila" was quite disappointing - cute, rhyming name or not. Located in a rather unattractive bit of Samakov (with dogs tied in rather shoddy looking neighboring yards - a truly lovely view - going into glorious symphonies at night/early morning, among other things), the building itself and its apartments were okay-ish, but honestly, nothing to write home about (except the showers. The showers were good) - but the main problem with it was the fact that in terms of accessibility, it absolutely sucked. It was a three-floor building, with two apartments on each floor except the ground floor, which held one or two rooms that were definitely not of the same quality as the apartments - and the communal areas, including the dining room, were located at a basement floor down semi-winding stairs. And, just to remind you, we're traveling with ze grandmother here. She cannot do too many stairs, especially when they're winding, unless you want a SBaHJ situation on your hands. As when we made the reservation for three apartments in advance we were most certainly not warned about stairs, bro - this was a situation.

Thus, one of the three apartments we rented in the building had to be traded for one of these ground floor rooms so my grandmother could be on the ground floor. We contacted the owner (via phone - they weren't present and generally have matters handled by a local representative) and asked her if it would be possible to have another room opened on the ground floor so someone could be at the same form with the grandmother - a reasonable request considering the single room she got would be much cheaper than the apartment that we couldn't use if booked in advance as a room.

The owner, however, refused to do so without added payment of a like... 30 euros a night - and when we asked if the reservation could be changed from the three apartments to 'two apartments and two rooms' instead, for the same cost we already paid for three apartments (which would have already been over the cost of two apartments and two rooms), they also refused, ostensibly because the payment for the booking was done via Airbnb rather than directly to them.

Considering the fact we were a large group meant the entire building was technically booked for us - thus, really, it would have been no inconvenience to the owner, I fail to see their logic - either greed, bureaucracy, or just plain lack of foresight. (In a business like theirs, reviews can make or break a place - and disappointed/upset customers lead to bad reviews - you'd think they'd make an effort to help customers with a problem, especially when they have all to gain and little, if at all, to lose). Tl;dr, who knew they were Vogons.

The owner's representative, I should point out, felt really terrible about the situation - and was very apologetic about it - but there wasn't much she could do about it if the owner didn't agree. However, since we've only had two nights booked in the place, we figured whatever and swallowed that frog. We definitely wouldn't be coming back to the place though, under any party composition.

But we have learned for the future that if you ever head to Bulgaria and someone who has any degree of disability of a sort that requires accessibility is with you, ask about everything in advance. We would later learn that if you have a party member who is wheelchair bound (we didn't, but still)... do yourselves a favour and go somewhere else. Bulgarians have very little awareness to this problem in spite of being a European country in the year 2016 - and even in places that do, the few adaptations we've seen were a bit slapdash. Even in the capital of Sofia, ramps are not a thing - the most you could probably ask for are sloped rails awkwardly bolted onto pre-existing stairs, which would only accommodate wheelchairs of a specific width. Not sure if wheelchairs have standard sizes or not, but still.

To make matters even more bluh, we were informed that the walk we were planning to take along the seven lakes of Rila the next day was not going to happen either, as the paths and cable cars leading up there were closed due to weather - but we were informed of a nearby town that was supposed to have an operational cable car, and maybe we could start from there instead. Fate would have different plans for us, but that's a story for another post.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Apologies for the long break between posts - work and assorted distractions kept me from working on this particular log for a while. But I do believe it is high time for me to continue this and probably take it to its conclusion. Where were we? Oh yes. Day 5. Excuse me as I load the save file...

Day 5 - Friday, May 13th, 2016
Rila Monastery​

I did not sleep too well that night - and the combination of not sleeping too well and waking up with a headache left my filters and energy levels on an all time low - not a particularly good thing when one is out on an epic adventure. After a quick breakfast and some coffee we got in the car and headed off towards the location we were directed to - Y'know, the one that was supposed to have an operational cable car after all. The weather, alas, decided not to cooperate - the fog got worse and it got progressively rainier - the sort of rain that isn't pouring but is just enough of an irritant to prevent anything from being done. Along the way we ran into a woman who was selling home-made jams on the roadside, including one made of mixed tree saps that had an amazing caramel-ish flavour - so naturally we bought some. The lady actually spoke pretty good Hebrew, as apparently she has a good friend in Israel. Bulgaria as a whole has more people who understand/speak Hebrew to a degree than I ever expected (which is always kind of unusual for me, considering how Israelies aren't exactly the most well-liked people in the world) and I suspect it made me feel, to an extent, a bit less what about walking around in a large party of Hebrew-speaking individuals - something that I personally find somewhat stressful when abroad. <<

When we finally arrived we were directed to, we found out that the cable cars were non-operational as apparently, it wasn't the right season for them to be. The rain and fog made it impractical to go anywhere on foot either - and as I was really looking forward for another walking trip of SOME definition after only getting to do half of Byala Reka, having that denied of me made that bit of the day somewhat of a disappointment for me - as if the headache I was carrying wasn't bad enough. Fortunately, the 'rents wisely packed some migraine Advils at immediate reach, which prevented the day from becoming more miserable for me once they kicked in - and I've once again made a note that I need to come back here someday without the party members who limited the walking factor of the trip.

With the weather being an absolute plick, we decided that to focus on the part of the trip we planned for the other half of the day instead - the Rila Monastery.

​

We made a brief stop for lunch in the actual town of Rila - a lovely little place, honestly - and the restaurant we found, among other things, featured one of the best chicken soups I've eaten in a long, LONG time that weren't my family's recipe. Other than that, there is not much to say about the town. So, up into the mountains we went, and finally we reached the Monastery itself - a VERY impressive structure located in the middle of a fairly gorgeous corner of fuckoff nowhere.

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The outside may appear like a tall mass of bricks, but once you step through the archway - under the watchful eyes of this judgmental-looking bloke in the window and these two angels (arch-angels, mayhap?) who seem a bit too preoccupied with their blue spheres - you find yourself facing the interior... which certainly puts the 'arch' in 'architecture'.

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And of course, within all these arches, floors and stairs copy-pasted in a rather sims-like manner and clearly painted by someone who had an unholy fascination with zebras and candy cane, stands the Monastery's church.

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"But wait!" I hear you cry "This looks fairly unassuming. Where are all the murals and gold foil-

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"Oh."
Yes, in a typical Eastern-Orthodox manner, once you get close you run into a shit-ton of colorful murals of assorted saints and biblical scenes - to the point I almost considered changing my phone wallpaper to my one oil painting of Commander Susan Ivanova, just to fit in. I seem to have neglected to capture these personally, but among these murals you can find one or two depictions of what I assume is meant to be God, with a triangular aura that made Him look like he was wearing a god damn Dorito. Hi, Peridot, what are you doing on a church?

Photography was forbidden in the interior of the church as it usually is - I'm assuming due to arbitrary reasons of 'sanctity' crossed with the more practical reasons of 'Flash photography murders oil paintings/murals after a while' and the much more probable reason of the Monastery wanting to sell postcards and the like of the church in what I can only describe as a blatant act of Church Merchandising. Churchandising, if you will. The outside, however, was fair game - and many photos were indeed taken.

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My Pokémon-geared brain definitely pictured an equivalent of the Monastery as a plot-significant building, covered with glyphs of legendaries and depicting mythological whatever (I'd imagine the local legendaries would be inspired by a mix of slavic folklore and Judeochristian mythology? There'd definitely be a whole damn lot of mythological PEOPLE though. They really love their saints, that's for sure). I'd imagine that the proximity to the Monastery would make the town of Rila itself a site for a possible gym - perhaps Ice or Water type to go with the lakes and snow of the area?

In any case, the trip to the monastery had another purpose aside from seeing the landmark - and that is that the monastery is rather renowned for its making and selling of Mekitsi - Basically, deep fried kneaded dough things, a bit like flat donuts, served powdered with icing sugar. Apparently no trip to the Rila Monastery is complete without sampling the things (at least according to the relative who basically gave us recommendations for places to eat everywhere we visited) - so we got some (along with some locally made yogurt which was pretty damn good really) and settled down to nom them. Most of the family loved the things. I personally wasn't a giant fan, but I'm odd and don't particularly find randomly fried dough to be that mind-blowing.

Once the things have been consumed, we launched ourselves off towards the Rila Monastery Nature Park - owned and maintained by the monastery itself, apparently. By now the sun was out and we could enjoy the roads without watching out for bizarre survival horror beasties. And what a road it was - I've already stated Bulgaria has gorgeous damn views, with mountain roads winding through very tall old growth trees - but in addition, we hit Bulgaria at the time the snows were thawing, which meant a whole lot of water pouring through these rivers and waterfalls (a thing that brought back one of my late grandfather's recurring jokes about how there is "No Water in Bulgaria", something that became somewhat of this trip's catchphrase). Definitely one of the more beautiful places to drive around.

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Soon enough we reached Kirilova Polyana, an absolutely gorgeous meadow surrounded by mountains. We did not do much exploring of the park as it was starting to get a bit late in the day for that, but we took a few really lovely pictures of the area.

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And I took the time to do something that absolutely had to be done.

THE HILLS ARE ALIIIIIIIIVE WITH THE SOUND OF ALL THE FUCKS I GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE~​

We hung out in Kirilova Polyana for a little while - found ourselves a nice picnic table/bench and settled down for some coffee and cookies, and to take in the atmosphere. Then, sadly (for me at least), we shooped ourselves back into the car and headed back to Villa Rila, not without a navigational mishap or two that prolonged our trip back - which provided some nice views and a gorgeous sunset.

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And a random encounter with this rather photogenic looking stork.

Not animated this time, sorry. XP​

Finally, though, we've arrived - left ze grandmother to crash while the rest of the family hung out in the dining room, having dinner and, among other things, going into rounds of incredibly terrible 7-9 year old children jokes. That night I DID manage to sleep, in spite of the derp sofa that I slept on in our two nights in Villa Rila - and even met a rather large brown-colored silverfish that was hanging around on the apartment wall. Didn't take a photo of that one because it moved pretty damn quickly for a silverfish - but I kind of love the weird way these insects move, so all is well.

... Have I mentioned I'm a giant arthropod person? because I am.

Thus passed the fifth day of the journey. Tomorrow, we begin doubling back towards Sofia, where the last day and a half of our trip prior to its end will take place. But that is still a few days away - there's still quite a bit of this tale to be told...

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Day 6 - Saturday, May 14th, 2016
Vitosha Mountain (and a bit of Sofia)​

As the sixth day of our journey dawned, we woke up, packed up, consumed breakfast and finally shuffled off and left the disappointment that was Villa Rila behind. First, we headed off to yet another town known for having a cable car that goes up into the mountains - Borovets, a rather well known ski resort town - in the hopes that maybe there we could find some way of getting up to see some snow. That too, however, turned out to be a dead end - it isn't skiing season, and as such none of the cable cars were active over there, either. The children in our party were disappointed, as they really wanted to see some snow - but eh. You win some, you lose some.

With snow being a bust, we resumed our original plan - return to Sofia, this time through Vitosha, the big mountain range which is pretty much Bulgaria's most iconic. Along the way, we stopped at small cafe/restaurant by Lake Iskar - actually a reservoir, apparently - to soak up some air and caffeine.

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And here I must deviate from the course of this log to say one thing.

I distinctly remember the Bulgarian side of my family as black coffee drinkers - but black coffee has seemingly evaporated from the entire country to be replaced with espressos and cappuccinos like in most of Europe - much to the disappointment of my uncle, who pretty much looked for black coffee in every restaurant we've visited and found none. Some of the cappuccinos we've had in various places were not bad at all - even if they did come with a side flavoring of of 'how the mighty have fallen'. At the very least, it tasted like coffee.

... And then, there was this place.

There is an old, oft-referenced joke about a cowboy who walks into an Old West saloon, walks up to the bartender and asks for Milk - and following incredulous and/or contemptuous looks from other patrons, revises his order to say "In a dirty glass".

This was basically what I thought about the thing the fine folks by Lake Iskar tried to pass off as a cappuccino. Either the owners were devout practicioners of Homeopathy and believed that coffee diluted times a million in foamed-up, sweetened milk still carries the memory of coffee and thus its qualities, or someone took the concept of molecular gastronomy too far and believed that titration of coffee must proceed until the overall solution reaches a state of caffeine neutrality - but even my aunt, who NORMALLY drinks coffee that should not, by ANY standard, be described as coffee by anyone except my aunt (In fact, we refer to very pale coffee in general by the term "<Aunt's name>'s Coffee") could not REALLY describe this as coffee. And that, my friends, should say it all.

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But "coffee" or not, the atmosphere rather made up for it - the cafe was rather nice, with tables set on a walkway overlooking the lake, with a small set of stairs allowing getting nearer to the lake itself. The younger of the kids went into pebble skipping mode on the surface of the water, whereas I found myself absolutely fascinated with the light fixtures on the railings of the walkway - the glass orbs that encased the fluorescent lightbulbs within were not perfectly sealed, and spiders found their way into them, refurbishing the interiors with complex, three-dimensional webs. Little spherical glass palaces, whose owners - somehow - managed to make a decent livelihood within without getting cooked by the light-bulbs (how's that for energy saving?) for at least several moults - as the interiors were dotted with the exuviae of the resident spiders (took me a while to realize that is what they were - I thought they may have been other spiders, living or dead - at first). I should have probably taken a photo, but YOU try to take a photo through a glass orb, kthx.

After finally finding an opportunity to set the timer up on the camera and take the one complete family photo from this trip, we got back into the car and continued our ride towards Vitosha.

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There we visited the Zlatnite Mostove, or "Golden Bridges" - a rather popular tourist spot featuring the lower extremity of a "stone river" of rocks covered in a golden-coloured lichen.

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Just to get a certain sense of scale regarding the stone river in question. These are big flipping rocks - some of them reached as high as my waist - and they go on for quite a while. They may not appear to be so 'golden' now, but we've seen a few examples of rocks that still had their lichen covers.

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Overall, quite the lovely place. I could make a terrible pun about how much it rocked, but folks far boulder than I have were stoned for less - and I'd never lith that one down.

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It is, however, an excellent place for connecting to one's roots.

Lovely as the place was, though, the time has come to move on - and finally, we headed towards the last leg of our journey - the actual city of Sofia, as opposed to just the airport.

Those of you who know me are probably aware that I am not a fan of cities, so this is the leg of our journey I was looking forward to the least - and Sofia, at least the immediate area of our hotel (in spite of being in a very central location and - as I found out the next day - not too far from the REALLY pretty parts of Sofia), did not seem particularly impressive to me. It was A City, for sure - reminded me of some of the more meh parts of Tel Aviv-Yafo, with one major difference: the sky was positively webbed over with electrical cables that power the city center's intricate tramway and electric bus network.

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My Pokémon-geared brain instantly made this a Huge Feature of the Bulgaria Region's equivalent of Sofia, replacing the artificial electrical cables with the strongly-woven electrically-charged silk of Galvantulas, occasionally skittering along the webs above as the trams shuffle on below. It'd be just the sort of thing the Pokémon World would pull off nicely... and to be honest, I'm quite surprised they haven't done it yet!

The Hotel Central - located very near the intersection point of Hristo Botev and Todor Alexandrov Boulevards, an area of central Sofia actually called Tel Aviv-Yafo square (Probably because Yafo is one of the cities where a rather large number of the Jewish Bulgarian community that immigrated to Israel settled) was what I'd describe as 'okay'. The hotel itself is supposed to be really highly regarded, but I think I'm the only person in the group whose stay was a pleasant experience. This is mostly because my room was on the mostly-unoccupied eighth floor, while the 'rents and the grandmother occupied rooms on the sixth and my uncle/aunt/their kids occupied an apartment-suite-type room on the third floor, which wasn't all that brilliant. To top things, off, the hotel restaurant that afternoon/evening/night seemed to be occupied by a wedding party of some sort, and the loud music and bass actually carried all the way up to the third-floor apartment-suite-thing (where we all convened for a brief lunch), actively causing it to shake like a small scale earthquake was taking place - and apparently vestiges of it could have been heard all the way up to the sixth as well. Thin walls too, apparently. I was not exposed to this trainwreck in my ivory tower, and I strongly suspect that the people who reviewed the hotel all had rooms on somewhat unoccupied floors at the time, because that's really the only explanation I can think of.

Probably the highlight of the whole thing for me, though, was the fact that the receptionist that registered us/got us our rooms had the last name Ivanova - and while she wasn't THE Ivanova, of course, she was AN Ivanova and that was enough to amuse me greatly.

We sealed this day by grabbing a cab (or driver spoke a bit of Hebrew, actually - used to work as a caretaker in Israel for a few years) to a traditional Bulgarian restaurant named "Site Bulgari Zaedno" (which loosely translates to "All Bulgarians Together") - One of those places where the food is accompanied by traditional Bulgarian music and dancing.

Well, our table ended up being at the tail end of the restaurant so it was harder to see the goings on from our seats, and the music was very loud, and ranged between "actually quite awesome, I can dig this!" to "MY EAAAAAAAARS" and seemed to incorporate styles ranging from almost Celtic sounding, to Bollywood-ish, to Mediterranean to everything else really into it. But the place itself - with its atmosphere, music, wooden furniture, not particularly bright lighting and meat-and-vegetable based food - reminded me a bit of some exotic little tavern in a fantasy setting. I personally ate something that was described as a 'Hunter Style Steak' - a pork steak with some kind of red sauce based on tomatoes, bacon, onion, pickled cucumbers and mushrooms apparently - which felt quite appropriate for the setting and was delicious.

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At some point, the band stopped playing random music and the traditional dance part began (which my mother had to stand up from the table and actually move closer to the action in order to photograph.) Cellphone-quality shots of moving people in a not brightly lit venue are not high quality in nature, apologies.

After a while of sitting and watching the proceedings we've realized it was getting late, our brains were starting to melt from the music, it was kind of getting unbearably hot and cigarette smoke permeated the air - smoking was not allowed inside the restaurant itself, but the smoke from the outside and those who returned from smoke breaks was getting overpowering. So we shuffled off at least, headed back to the hotel and shifted to crash mode.

It was Eurovision night, but my brain was already over-charged from all the noise in the restaurant, so for the first time in a few years, I didn't actually bother watching. It was very much an "immerse and go recharge" sort of night.

One more day before the end.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Day 7 - Sunday, May 15th, 2016
Sofia​

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After waking up and absorbing breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, we prepared for what would be our last day in Bulgaria, in which we were to visit assorted monuments in Sofia itself - and the initial plan was to visit the street where my grandmother's old house was, before she and her family were relocated, Osogovo Street. Our initial plan was to take taxis there - as driving around a city center in Europe, even a city like Sofia, is never advisable - and parking can be a pain. Apparently Bulgaria is infamous for having cars towed like it's nobody's business, and cabs are relatively cheap - so why not?

Seeing how there were eight of us, we needed two of the things.Unfortunately, the local cab companies couldn't find two cabs that were free at the same time, just one. Of course, they neglected to tell the hotel receptionist staff that called the cabs that - and after we waited for the cabs for a while and only one arrived, we decided to take the car after all, instead. (The one driver who arrived was compensated for his arrival and waiting time, don't worry. We're not that kind of people).

So after the hotel staff pulled our tank-scale car from the Hotel's Elevator-Augmented Underground Vehicle Vaults of Veles and gave it back to us, we got into the car and set off to run afoul of what will become the recurring trend of the day, a navigational misadventure born of the digital age. Satnav applications, apparently, have an issue with Certain Areas of Bulgaria, and today, they were rebelling full force.

(Feel free to follow along with Google Maps/Street View, if you're crazy enough)

We basically took the left along Todor Alexandrov Boulevard and drove all the way to Osogovo, went through it without any of us really noticing we did (including my grandmother - who recognized the general surroundings and a few buildings that remained, but didn't realize when we were actually ON Osogovo - testament to how much the street has changed since those days, I guess), and doubled back along Pirotska, the parallel street, until we decided to stop and park in a lot at the crossover point between Pirotska and Stefan Stambolov, and figure out where to go next.

Remember the name 'Pirotska'. This isn't the last time you're going to hear it on this day.

(have a statue of wings in the meantime. It was there.)​

After some fumbling around with paper maps we realized that we were on the whole other side of Pirotska than Osogovo street - and thus we figured that we might as well keep moving and go off to see the landmarks instead - starting with the Sofia Synagogue. After a slow walk along a segment of Pirotska that is largely a pedestrian mall as opposed to a street (it was a rather lovely segment actually), we found ourselves reaching the synagogue, located on the corner of George Washington and Ekzarh Yosif-

Yes. George effing Washington. WHY George Washington is beyond me, but George Washington it was. And ON George Washington, of all places, I ran into THIS gem:

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Not sure if 'Kinky' means anything in Bulgarian or if it's just an English Word Used For Effect, but the sheer randomness - and the nearby stop sign - made it kind of perfect.

George Washington kink-shaming aside, we went in to see the Synagogue - A Fairly impressive structure, honestly. Definitely a lot less gaudy than the Rila Monastery's interior (which, let me tell you, sparkled like a whole bookstore of Twilight novels), though quite decorated regardless - stained glass, Stars of David, mosaic floors and quite a bit of colour really.

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And it also had this truly enormous chandelier, that could probably serve as a fricking platform for a final boss battle somewhere...

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And some of these murals on the top part of pillars that made me think of either uteri with tentacles or some kind of outer gods. Cthulhu Fhtagn, Amen.

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One of the caretakers of the place - or a tour guide, I'm not entirely certain, I was too busy looking around - informed us and a few of the other tourists that the place was designed by Austrian architects, right down to the grating on the floor, under which there was apparently a furnace designed to heat up the place during the winter months (I could throw in a few morbid jokes regarding furnaces under the floor in places of worship, particularly ones designed for Jews by Austrian architects, but that'd be a bit too obvious), and that quite a bit of money from foreign donors (especially Jewish communities in America, as the Bulgarian Jewish communities weren't exactly wealthy) went in for the restoration of the building - apparently a bit of it took a hit from a British bomb during WW2 (because of COURSE), but the bomb did not explode. In the guide's own words: "Some would call it a miracle, others would call it a massive manufacturing flaw". One way or another, the building still stands - even though the Jewish Community of Sofia has all but vanished or migrated away long ago.

Either way, once we were done with the Synagogue, we visited another nearby hallmark of Sofia - the Central Sofia Market Hall (or the 'Hali' as it is commonly known).

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The building's been opened in 1911 as an actual marketplace, and in modern times is a bit more of a mall. We sat down for a cup of coffee and some croissants and a bit of relaxation, as well as planning the rest of the day - where our general direction was decided as the Alexander Nevski Cathedral. Y'know, just because we haven't seen enough Golden Saints to make Sheogorath jealous.

So we left the Hali and started heading down Maria Luiza Boulevard to reach the Statue of Saint Sofia, a really impressive statue that apparently was erected in 2000, replacing a statue of Lenin.

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Saint Sofia or not, I can't help but pick some serious Athena vibes from this lady. Maybe it's the owl.

It was that that point that my grandmother announced that she had all the walking she can take, and that she's seen these buildings enough times. Once again, the party was split - the mother stuck with ze grandmother, ze father went off to grab the car to take them all back to the hotel, and ze uncle/aunt/kids and me decided to continue on our walk.

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But first we took a small detour to see the rather impressive fountain in front of the Sofia History Museum, located in the middle of a small park claimed by an absolute fractal swarmfoam of pigeons. Pretty big ones too - not quite London caliber, but. Well.

A HORDE OF WILD PIDOVE APPEARED!​

I've developed somewhat of a theory that there are several avian crime families have divided up Bulgaria amongst themselves. the Swallows took the villages, the Pigeons took Sofia, and the occasional Corvids - crows and Eurasian jays mostly - sort of drop by unannounced everywhere and given free right of passage. They're probably running the whole operation from behind the scenes, mafia-birds that they are.

The younger kid basically discovered her inner cat and kept jumping into the pigeon-swarms, scattering them briefly. This went on for a while until we decided it was high time to leave and continued on our way through the general area filled with monuments: the Serdika complex, an advanced program-changing air-doodling fountain, the presidency palace, the Arcaheologic museum, the National Theatre.

A smattering of the sights of Sofia​

Eventually, however, the younger child announced that she needs water - and also a bathroom. We stopped at a small cafe not too far from this Russian Church, the rest of which looked like this:

I'm not sure why those cables hanging from the onions are a thing - probably utilizing the ceiling crosses to improve wi-fi reception, or something.​

Minor drama unfolded as the younger child managed to get herself locked in the cafe's bathroom. As her parents were working on getting her out of there, I found myself hanging out with the older child (who reminds me quite a bit of a much-younger me, honestly) and we've actually talked Pokémon - Basically, He was fascinated by the copy of Pokémon Glazed that I was playing on my phone in the car a few days beforehand (which prompted quite a bit of explanations from me about what Pokémon is and how it works) and as I played a bit more when we were waiting, it led to more conversations and explanations. I think I may have led to the development of a future fan - I guess we shall see? One thing's certain, he thinks that Ivysaur and Lairon are adorable and I think he appreciated Galvantula as well. His younger sister also found Lairon cute (though that may just have been in response to her brother). Those of you who know me are probably aware that these two are the only kids I can tolerate for a prolonged period of time before flying into complete armblade mode - but have I mentioned I'm hella proud of them? Because I am. (I still need to follow up on my promise to actually introduce them to the games proper, though. Haven't had the chance to meet them again yet!)

Either way, once the crisis has resolved itself, we continued on our way (and been informed that the 'rents - sans ze grandmother, who went to sleep - will be reuniting with us at the Cathedral).

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And along the way I took a picture of a mural on a nearby building of three priests who look very pleased with their tiny model of a completely different building. The text below them reads "Sinodia Palata", which marked the building as the palace of the Holy Synod, because, y'know, Bulgarians sure love their churches.

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And this bronze lion, because look at this bigass majestic kittycat.

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The cathedral, as it is, is pretty damn fucknormous. Again, no photography is allowed inside on account of Churchandising. It was also less gaudy than the Rila Monastery, although still full of murals of saints and the like, and some atrociously squeaky floors. We met the 'rents there, and after leaving the cathedral and walking through a small fair nearby where various stall-runners sold odds and ends, souvenirs and relics, we called for cabs and headed out to some extreme-rope-climbing-for-chirlden park called Kokolandia - for the benefit of our youngest party members. Unfortunately, the taxi satnavs were about as reliable as ours were, and a bit of confused derping around later, we found ourselves in the park. Set in a bit of forest, Kokolandia itself is a set of rope bridges, nets and cables set amidst the trees, where kids with safety harnesses derp around from one tree to another as though they were a horde of squirrels. The kids had a lot of fun, and I had a moment of what when I randomly found myself marionetting a spider.

No, quite literally. Somehow, a rather impressive looking black spider managed to attach itself to ze father's elbow and began to rappel from it on a silk line, as spiders are wont to do. Not sure when or how it happened, but I figured I should probably relocate the thing to an environment more suitable for spiders and basically picked the spider-line off ze father's elbow and onto my finger - figuring I'd carry the thing to a nearby tree, spider and all. The spider had other plans apparently, and somehow managed to attach itself to my other hand, leaving me holding a spider magically suspended in midair between my hands like a marionette for a few moments, before the thing decided it was bored with the whole charade and dropped off to the ground, scurrying into the undergrowth. It was adorable, really. XD

Finally, as it was getting dark, we figured it was time to head back to the hotel. Some ridiculous taxi shenanigans later, we found ourselves back, where we picked up ze grandmother and reconvened for our last dinner in Bulgaria - at a restaurant that came heavily recommended, named 'Contessa'. But don't think it was simply a matter of heading there. Remember what I said about Satnavs rebelling and Pirotska? Brace for impact, because here we go again.

This time we decided that we're sending the grandmother off with the aunt and the kids in a taxi to the restaurant, while the rest of the party was going to walk there - since it wasn't supposed to be all that far from the hotel. This, however, is when things started going a bit awry. Two different satnav systems on two different phones decided to aim in two complete other directions, and unfortunately for us we chose the wrong one to follow - and found ourselves at the Ancient Complex Serdika. Needless to say, there was no restaurant there. As our intrepid navigators started trying to figure out what went wrong and I attempted to figure out where the hell we were with more primitive navigational instruments, it turns out that relying on a GPS to take us to a restaurant with a known name and location but no actual address known was not exactly the brightest thing to do. Contacting Group B of the party, who already settled down and started ordering some food got us on the right direction...

In Pirotska park, on the WHOLE OTHER END of Pirotska street - and hilariously enough, RIGHT NEXT to Osogovo street.

Excuse me as I roffle.

Almost 2km of walking later, we finally found the restaurant and settled down for our last dinner in Bulgaria... in the only place that actually served some of the staples of Bulgarian food that we were aware of in this ENTIRE TRIP. (Aside from Kebapche, of course, which nearly anywhere had. In fact, I would very much not recommend Bulgaria to Vegetarians/Vegans - they'd have practically nothing to eat unless they made their own food) Which means that finally, after a whole week in Bulgaria, I got to eat one of my favorite Bulgarian foods - Chushki Burek - basically grilled peppers stuffed with cheese, breaded and fried. Contessa's variation on the subject involved dill in the filling for no explicable reason (Bulgarians, apparently, are quite fond of that herb and like using it in food). My main course was some kind of pork steak with cheese and mushrooms that I found quite good. All the food was pretty damn good, actually. And oddly enough, the menus had Hebrew on them, alongside English and Bulgarian! xD

And that was mostly it, really. Dinner, a toast (as in, the whole clinking-of-glasses thing, not the form of food), back to the hotel, sleep, breakfast, back to the airport, back to Israel - which was on the tail end of a sweltering heat wave. Our last two days in Bulgaria apparently had temperatures climbing to 40 degrees (Celsius, for you weirdoes that use Fahrenheit and wonder how is 40 hot) in Tel Aviv and even higher further south. When we arrived it was 37 or so. After the generally lovely weather in Bulgaria, I can't say I was particularly pleased with coming back into THIS. But hey.

Overall, a lovely trip with awesome people - and definitely not the last time I'll be going there. There's still the whole other side of Bulgaria to see and I've STILL not seen the Dragons in Love statue in Varna. But that's for a whole other thread, for a whole other trip.

Thus concludes a tale that took far too long to describe. Thanks for sticking with me to the end, and see you on the next adventure!

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