Bottle of Wine, Fruit of the Vine! Bulgaria won't let me be Sober!

Well, February was just wonderful! Ian came to visit for my favorite holiday! Wine Day! I filled our schedule way too full for his time here, but that has kind of been my experience, too. We went to see monasteries and churches, we hiked in the mountains and over Roman ruins, and we ate and drank till we were crazy! It was awesome!

My Varna friends postponed their annual wine tasting until Ian could be here. Every year, they bring wines that they've made or their friends have made. On this one night, they gather and do a wine tasting and rating. The idea is to try them all (a glass of each) and then continue into the night with the one you like the best, but I think I remember there being 10 or so different types of wine. After I had tried them all, I needed to pass out!

The very next day was Wine Day. Ian and I headed out to a small town for a festival and then opted to head out to meet Kuncho at his villa! He walked us through the Bulgarian tradition. We took a sip of wine, cut the vine, poured out a sip of wine on the plant, and then made an awkward necklace from the vine we'd just cut. And then we feasted for hours!

The food and wine were great. Everyone got a kick out of seeing Ian afraid of partying with communists. They made unending jokes about who was the dirtiest communist, and who was a fascist. They also got a kick out of Ian's reaction to old people dancing. But the biggest kick was Ian's story about needing a rabies vaccine in Bulgaria. It's a typical Bulgarian story, but funny for them because it was happening to a foreigner.

Running through the forest in Portland, Ian got hit in the face by a bat. The mammal kind. His thought he must have rabies and was to receive the fourth shot while in Bulgaria. His doctors told him it would be okay in Bulgaria but I tried to get things lined up anyway.

Iliyan called his friend, a doctor, to ask about administering the final shot. His friend said that Bulgaria stopped carrying the proper vaccine two years ago and that Ian needed to bring it with him. Of course that wasn't going to happen so we called the same doctor again who then said he could order the vaccine.

Now that we had a plan, everything was okay. Ian came, we traveled a bit, and two days before he was to receive said shot, the doctor called and said he needed 10 days for the shot to be shipped to him. Hhhh... We were in Sofia at the time and changed our plans to find another option in Sofia.

The hostel folks called the local infectious diseases place which said they had the vaccine. What they meant was, they had a vaccine. Another typical experience of someone not listening to the whole question - this stems from a genuine disinterest in anything.

When we arrived and presented the problem, the got really angry, really quickly and told us to go away. They had a different vaccine and didn't want to mix vaccines. I thought this would be our only option so I used my tricks and convinced them that Ian's doctor had approved the Bulgarian version. Once we got passed that, they saw that he was one day early according to his schedule.

They again got angry and told us to leave. We said we had to be in Varna and that Varna didn't have an option for vaccines. They said he could get the vaccine in Varna. I asked where. They said somewhere. And then they kicked us out. Fail.

In Varna we played the same game at one hospital reception. The gal sent us to another reception in a different part of the hospital. That gal sent us to the third floor, room 304! Woo hoo! Got to the door at 13:30 and saw a sign that said the working hours are 7:00 - 13:00... I knocked anyway and a nurse came to the door. I went through my spiel and she told me to come back tomorrow morning. They were closed. I really emphasized that he had to receive his shot today and they were the only place. She said go find somewhere else.

Back to the first reception for more arguing. Found a doctor that was sympathetic to our situation and told us another place in the hospital where we could ask. Went there to find another angry nurse. She listened to our spiel and asked us why we didn't get to the right place before 13:00... Hhhhh... She said there was one doctor that gives these shots and if she's not here, then tough luck. She left and came back 5 minutes later with a doctor!!!

The doctor wanted to know all of my information (?) because I had been translating the whole time, but eventually she just nodded her head and left. Then the angry nurse gave Ian a shot! Woo hoo! Didn't matter that she had said there was only one doctor that gave these shots. We were happy to have accomplished a rather difficult mission.

I asked her for a receipt to know how much he owed. She asked why. I told her has to pay, right? Then she berated us for being late to room 304, and said that we were supposed to pay there, but since we didn't, we couldn't pay. She said that if we wanted, we could leave a tip if it was from our hearts. Ha ha. Okay. Ian left her 20 levs and she said she'd have coffee with the doctor.

Pretty odd situation for us to experience, but it's so absolutely normal in Bulgaria. This is why our party friends thought it was so funny.

Anyway, fun stories and jokes, great food and wine! It was the perfect way to celebrate for hours. And it finished in a beautiful fashion with the dirtiest communist of them all singing a beautiful song! What a voice! This video doesn't do it justice. In the moment, it was really incredible!

So Tired Of Working, But I'm Out, I'm On The Road Again!

Aside from my long, dirty days of collecting waste paper and late nights in the office planning a community resource center, I actually got to do a quick bit of backpacking this year.

Went to Berlin for New Year's Eve and met some friends for an amazing celebration! I think Germans take a lot of canned heat for suppressed emotions, but a party of 1.5 million people tends to open up a can of excitement! German sausages and beer booths for as far as your eyes could see! Which actually wasn't too far on account of said beer. But trust me, it was an incredible display of festivity!

There were three or four stages along a 2-kilometer strip. In between each stage were all the opportunities for food and refreshments. We tried listening to the bands and really getting into the music - but the bands were awful! We weren't in their moment - because we were laughing too hard in ours. I think our favorite band sang a rap song with the following chorus: "If you don't want to party, then you should go home." Those lyrics were the bulk of their song, repeated over and over again. And people loved them. Ha!

In any case, after midnight, I seemed to have lost my friends, but was having a ton of fun with one Russian guy and a German girl. We danced and danced, and drank, and then the Russian guy stole my hat. The German girl gave me hers cause it was pretty cold. And now I have a very cute hat.

After Berlin, I trekked a bit and saw some beautiful European cities, with all their glorious art and architecture. Wearing my life on my back was a feeling I'd not had in a while, and I really, really enjoyed the thrill!

I think my favorite experience was at one of the public baths in Budapest. There were many different pools, each with different temperatures. We started in the giant outdoor pool that was loaded with lots of people. It wasn't very hot, though so we went to explore the indoor pools. Inside, I also found a sauna! I love saunas so I was hanging out in there a lot.

At one moment, it was just me and a crazy looking little old man. He asked in very broken English where I was from. I proudly told him, USA! And we had a very rough conversation about his time in Portland. He was from Romania but living in Hungary for his construction business. I told him that I'm living in Bulgaria at the moment and he switched to speaking to me in Russian. In Bulgarian I told him that the two languages are pretty close and he waved off any differences and told me they were absolutely the same. =)

I couldn't completely understand our conversation because his English was not very good and I don't speak Russian. We made do, though, between the three languages. He told me to follow him out of the sauna to a small pool and we went in. It was freezing! He told me it's important to go in the cold after the hot, but didn't explain why. Just that it's good. In the freezing pool, his fat friend joined us. He was like an old bull in Budapest bath! The original guy told his buddy that I spoke Bulgarian, and the fat one proceeded to tell me that he speaks Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Gypsy - but he stressed that he wasn't himself a Gypsy. Just that he could speak the language. And he's telling me all this in German. Ughh.

We all went back into the sauna together and talked about life. I was getting a pretty strange vibe from them, but I was loving the situation. The little crazy one asked me about my religion. He couldn't understand my answer of not having a religion. He asked if I was an Atheist, and I tried to explain that I was agnostic. He showed me his confused look, and then directly asked me if I drink alcohol! There we go - the bottom line of any conversation with old men in any country!

We took breaks from the sauna to take shots of their homemade plum brandy. It was impressively smooth and deceptively strong. I loved every second of the experience! So unplanned, so unexpected, so pure and fun! They were good guys just out doing their weekly public bath routine, and for whatever reason, they decided to include me in their fun! It was perfect!

I spent the rest of my very little time on the road by visiting friends in different places. Friends I'd not seen in many years. Friends from my travels, with whom at one time we were on the same page in life. My, how time and experiences change that page.

They're still beautiful people, and I'm very happy to call them my friends, but finding other common ground was a bit more difficult than it had been when we met. But, as I learned from the drunk old men in Budapest, you don't really need too much common ground to have a great time with someone.

Two of the friends I visited lived in very small, super cute villages. Far away from pretty much everything. It was incredible! Just like the Bulgarian villages - but clean!

I kept bragging about the benches I've been building out of waste pallets and how I've started gifting them to schools. Well, my German buddy called me out, and pulled out an old pallet he had covered behind a shed. So, we spent a couple days making it into a bench. This one had a German-inspired innovative addition: two beer bottle holders!

In the last month, I've gotten food poisoning twice, and have been twice otherwise sick with normal winter bugs. I'm hoping my remaining days are nice to me as I try to get through all the projects I started!