Lost in life and in Eastern Europe: In this Nature Park you can find brown beer

Tryavna/Yovovski Yetts/Veloko Turnovo 1-8.7.2012

Sun, kittens, woods, snakes, flowers and greenness everywhere. That’s the atmosphere here. And flies, damn them. They are everywhere.

Anyways things have started quite fine, we have planned this nature trail for children, making signs (with our perfect English skills as you can see in the title) and planning games for them. We have also done some outdoor work, cleaned the other house, made food etc. Few nights ago we were invited to a barbecue party by Bulgarian couple next door. We went there with this Croatian couple who are also staying here as volunteers. It was fun, food was great even though we were the only vegetarians there and grilling meat was the main thing that night. Despite that we were so full afterwards :D It was too bad that the hosts didn’t speak much English, so I and Piri had to just listen the mix of Bulgarian and Croatian, as they managed somehow communicate with each other with their languages. We enjoyed the music from the 80’s (which was played SO laud) from the laptop. The music videos were so funny! I love the 80’s. And later we saw some huge rabbits that the Bulgarian couple was breeding and also these one hundred year old looms that they had. It was interesting. Then we had to walk home. It wasn’t a long way, but it was totally dark. We had some flashlights and the full moon, but we were still a little bit scared about the jackals we were told about. We got home safe and saw so many fireflies on the way.

Here in Yovoski Yetts we’ve had some other helpers too, many of them are our host’s friends. So we had our own barbecue night too in the yard. Was fun! And the full moon was amazing! It looked like the sun would have risen above the mountains, it was so bright! And here are so many fireflies too, the whole forest and yard is sparkling after dark. Beautiful. There are however also bats : / I don’t really appreciate them that much.

In mountains everything looks beautiful and sounds so good but we have had some problems too. There is no running water because the neighbors stole it. It seems that we are in the middle of this water war. People steal it from each other by connecting pipes to other people’s pipes and so on. So for now we have to bring drinking water from next village and shower water we get from the well. It’s really frustrating to lift it up with broken bucket. Really handy. Also our host’s jeep broke down, but it should be fixed by Monday. Let’s hope that. Otherwise we are trapped in the mountains. With flies. And jackals. And two cute kittens :) which we hope do not have rabies. Fingers grossed.

It seems that we are going to spend here only two weeks after all. Now we have an extra week to wonder around Bulgaria before going back home! We have made some plans already. Maybe we’ll go and see the coast, depending how we get accommodation. We’ve heard that it can be hard as it’s the tourist season, even though we aren’t going to the tourist centers. Maybe we’ll figure it out in few days’ time. It’s quite hard to find information as we don’t have internet here in the mountains. We are going to Veliko Turnovo this weekend with our host, so maybe we’ll have our plans figured out by next week. At least I’m hoping that we’ll have an internet access in Veliko Turnovo :/ Not that I’m addicted or anything :D It would be nice though, and we’ll need it for planning anyway..

Weekend in Veliko Turnovo: sleeping until noon, internet, salads in Ego, cocktails (we also found here Somersby ! ), hot, sweat, kittens, shopping, movies, manicure. Relaxing. After a month’s travelling it feels really weird to stop and stay in one place. It’s almost boring. Maybe things will change next week, or at least the week after that once we get to move around again :) It’s kind of addicting you know.