Tourism is strange

Thought it was time to post some more photos. It was nice at the beginning of the week so I spent some time walking around outside and snapping photos of parts of the city I don't think I have captured yet. It was quite warm even after the sun went down, and I was very happy, but that warmth was shortlived, for a fog rolled in and brought real November weather back to us.


Can't say much has happened in the last week. I did get to sing Irish pub songs with some English guy along to a Bulgarian singer in a place called the Melon Bar. I was sort of tempted to go back to Spain with the guy and his buddy, as they are movers and drove here to transport furniture for someone who is moving here. It would have been fun to drive across Europe. But I stayed here, of course, here in Mother Bulgaria.


Every time I think of "Mother Bulgaria" (seen here in the photo), the words "Mother Bulgaria jumped the gun" come into my head from The Beatles' Happiness is a Warm Gun. I can't help it; it just happens.


Anyway, you can see the fortress in the distance. The fortress is actually fake, though it is the city's biggest tourist attraction. In the 70s the Soviets decided to build some walls on top of the old fortress site, not bothering to consult historians or research how the old fortress actually was. There are a few things that are genuine, but they're all in ruins. The church that sits atop the hill was reconstructed in 1981 and painted in 1985. I am one of the few people who likes the paintings, I think. The same scenes you will find in any old Bulgarian church (St. George slaying the dragon, St. Dimitrius slaying the villian, St. Lazarus rising from the dead) have been painted on the walls but in a modern style. I took some photos awhile ago but they're on my other memory card


Here's a "tourist attraction," but I can't figure out why. They say it is a good example of architecture from the post-Ottoman renaissance period but really I think they're just amused by the fact it has a statue of a monkey on it. Indeed, they call it "The House with the Monkey." But the city is weird like that. All tourism is weird like that, really. I mean, the city has built this whole fake renaissance street, complete with copper makers and other nineteenth century artisans. It's like a Turnovo Disneyland or something, you know, It's a Small World, blah blah blah. Thousands of tiny trinkets and junk no one needs is there for tourist dollars, euros, pounds, and leva. There is a tourist restaurant up there I've been tempted to go into for some fish and chips, but I imagine they charge tourist prices, too. We have these kinds of things all over the U.S. - pioneer towns and colonial towns and the like, so it's not like this is a unique thing, and it does get to show you what things were like back in the day.

Anyway, here are some photos of the tourist village. The monkey's in there, too.

Du du du du

Du du du du. Du du du du. Du du du du. The sound of the train echoes through the tunnel as it appears from beneath the stacks of buildings and passes over the Yantra River. It is distant enough not to be loud, but loud enough to put a smile on my face. I love that sound. It is the music of travel, a symphony of comings and goings, a mystery. Where are the people heading to? Are they in search of new adventures, or are they going home after a long journey? Are they going to visit friends of family, or are they lonely travelers desperate for companionship? Are they on business? Going to a wedding? A funeral? The birth of a new life? Du du du du. Du du du du. Du du du du. The rumbling has a sort of mechanical beauty to it, manufactured but not false.

There's nothing like a train. I wish America would fall in love with railroads. As it is now, they are ridiculously priced, take twice as long as by car, and don't stop many places. When I came back from Turkey, I had to change trains in a town called Stara Zagora. I bought a ticket for a trip through the Shipka Pass over the Stara Planina (Central Balkan Mountains) - a three hour journey back to Veliko Turnovo.

It cost $2.50

I love trains. Du du du du. Du du du du. Du du du du.

On Neighbors

There are some things about Veliko Turnovo I'll never forget - the kind of "have to be there to appreciate" moments. Next to the hostel lives an older couple - perhaps in their late fifties or early sixties - and their friend, Donia, who lives on the second floor (first floor if you're European). They don't much like living next to a hostel with all the different people coming and going, and we have our suspicions that they sometimes bang on metal pans just to make noise.

I've never actually seen any of them, or if I have, I don't recognize them, but I have certainly heard them. The noise always begins around 6am when the man leaves the house for the day. Sometimes I hear them talking outside the window, but if I don't, I always have the car to wake up to.

The car is an ancient white piece of junk that somehow still runs, though not very well, and is a typical Eastern European car left over from the commie days when there were waiting lists for the crappiest cars ever manufactured in the whole history of the universe. You literally had to put your name on a list and hope you got your car within a couple of years. Of course, Communist Party members always got their cars first, and the common folk often got nothing, you know, because in a communist society everyone is "equal." Some are just more equal than others.

The fact that many people in Bulgaria - especially in somewhat prosperous Veliko Turnovo - still drive these ancient pieces of junk puzzles me. How do they still run? I often see them broken down, and I've even seen people use sledgehammers to start them! In a town where pretty much everything is in walking distance if you're not lazy or elderly, why go through the trouble of these cars? Was it the triumph of getting these cars that makes one keep it? Or is it because car ownership is so valued? And how did they get these cars in the first place? Were they members of the Communist Party? (Oh, I remember the days of broken down cars and would rather not have a car than constantly repair it!)

I'm not sure of the answers, and maybe I wouldn't notice so much if I didn't have to put up with one on a regular basis. I can tell you the emissions pouring out of these cars can make your lungs feel black. The urban air of Bulgaria is filthy - I'm sure half the cars would fail U.S. emissions tests. Imagine, though, waking up to the stench of burning gasoline at 6am from an engine that revs for a solid five minutes - more if it is cold. That's what happens when the neighbor is able to park his car in front of his house instead of down the hill. It isn't just that - the car is so loud (heard of mufflers?) that half the street doesn't need an alarm clock!

The neighborly experience doesn't stop there. Apparently the stairs in the house are too much for the woman, because rather than going up to knock on Donia's door, the woman comes outside and cries, "Donia! Donia!" several times a day, regardless of the hour and often right when we're falling back to sleep after the car.

Someone said he thought the woman had been calling a troublesome dog or a bratty child for awhile. I thought she was just crazy. Now we laugh every time we hear it - even at 6am! (Well, sometimes, anyway.)

Stuff that is kind of funny - I won't forget it!

Happy Thanksgiving

I didn't get to go to the monastery I wanted to go to yesterday, so I'm still in Veliko Turnovo trying to figure out a new plan. Seems some of the monasteries don't have accomodation in winter and some were damaged in the massive flooding the country has experienced in the last week, so what to do now...

Sweaters and stuff

Ahh, the rain. The cold dampness descends with a vengeance on a warm body. November in Bulgaria. November in Europe.

When I studied in Luxembourg, I used to write short stories parodying university life there, barely changing the names of the students so everyone would know who they were in the stories. Each one usually began with "It was a cold, rainy day in Fluxembourg." I added an adjective with each new story until it read something like "It was a cold, dreary, depressing, soaking, rainy day in Fluxembourg." Today is such a day in Veliko Turnovo. So was yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that one, too. Makes it difficult to feel anything but lethargy.

This is the kind of day when you can walk five minutes outside but it takes twenty minutes inside to lose the chill. Of course, this makes you want to stay inside, which leads to the lethargy, which leads to a sort of restlessness, which sends you out to do something, which makes you cold again, which makes you want to stay inside...it's all a vicious, wintry cycle, and it's not all that pleasant, especially when you're looking at a calendar and you realize you only have about five weeks left and you are thinking about all of the stuff you need to cram into those five weeks even if it means walking outside in the cold, damp air across the puddles sitting atop the cobblestone streets. It's not as if you have a choice. You either stay inside and do nothing except waste your precious time away or you fight the lethargic comfort and go out anyway. After all, didn't you just walk 12 km to see a monastery in subfreezing temperatures? And didn't you just suffer the Marmara winds to visit Istanbul?

I seem to have deluded myself into thinking it will get warm again, as if I'm in denial that winter is really approaching. Some people go to Florida for winter - I go to a country that has more snow than Ohio. I blame Washington. I mean, I've been living in a city that has just been reclassified as a southern climate. (Thank you, global warming.) (That was sarcasm, mind you.) DC is far enough South, i.e. warm enough, that drivers slow to a grinding halt when a single snow flurry makes its decent from the winter's sky. Maybe I've simply forgotten what real winter is like.

I still haven't forgotten how to dress for winter - don't worry about that. (Grandma, I brought two pairs of longjohns.) I have my bright red Washington Nationals skull cap, a scarf, and a nice warm pair of fleece gloves. I have a warm Eddie Bauer fleece designed for the cold outdoors that is reversible, giving me an "extra" thing to wear, though I'm sure by now people have caught on that it's the same shirt! What a practical article of clothing. The fabric is such that it dries quickly, a necessity in all of this wetness.

And so I've blabbered on about the weather, something people talk about when there's nothing else to talk about. But I am stuck inside with nothing else to talk about. As one Bulgarian said today, "In winter in Bulgaria, we kill the pigs and drink wine because it's the only thing to do!"

Constantinope (Not Istanbul)

After visiting the palace, I headed over to the archaeological museum to take in some of Constantinople. Aside from the myriads of broken and glued back together plain red clay pots, it was interesting. So much of Constantinople has ended up in other parts of the world that museums in Britain, France, and Italy have more artifacts than this one, but Istanbul is full of archaeological excavation sites that will yield troves of treasures. The "church" pictured here - Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) - used to be the largest building in the world and the seat of the Byzantine Patriarch. It was converted into a mosque when the Turks conquered Constantinople but is now a museum, thanks to Kemal Ataturk. Yeah, it's old - finished in 537.

Across the world, countries are demanding their artifacts be returned to their countries. The Greeks have been passing out flyers with a picture of a headless horse asking "Where's my head? It's in London!" and are building a new archaeological museum where they will have empty spaces with signs saying such and such an artifact is "temporarily on display in London." Good to see they have some humor about it.

Anyway, back to Istanbul, as there isn't much of Constantinople left these days. Here is a mosque. I know, I know, shocking, isn't it? I mean, a mosque in Istanbul? What will they think of next? I liked this one's ornate exterior. It was once a church. Very plain inside compared to a lot of them we visited. As you can see, it was an absolutely beautiful day - couldn't have been more perfect for walking miles as we did. It'd probably be better to actually write the name of the mosque here, but as we saw so many of them, I can't really remember it, and since it was the very first thing we saw that morning, aside from our bread/egg/tomato/cucumber/grape/olive breakfast, by the time I went to write everything down, the name had slipped from my memory like the melting real butter on my bread. Had it been toasted. But at least it was butter and not this nasty margarine stuff the Bulgarians have left over from the Soviet days. (My theory, anyway.)

Sometimes - or most times, in my opinion - the best things you see are things you weren't looking for, like the stunning view of the entire city from atop an old wall a few miles from the city center. We scaled the wall like we were climbing a mountain, though we did have a few ancient steps to help us up. This isn't a city, it's a billion cities expanding further than the eye can see. I've poorly put together a sort of panorama to try to show the scope of the massiveness. They actually go in order, though I've mistakenly left some gaps. Kind of difficult to take a 360 degree photo! This is definitely the best view in the city - and the only thing it cost was some energy from the climb!

(Click to make larger, but mind the gaps and the seams.)

Istanbul (Still Not Constantinople)

If you haven't seen part one of my trip to Istanbul, it is here.

The Imperial Palace - known as Topkapi - was an interesting mix of centuries. Some of it was quite old; much of it was constructed during the 19th century. I don't consider anything built after the creation of the United States as old, so at times I did not really feel I was staring at anything other than the remains of a dictatorship. In many ways the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century was backwards. Suits of chainmail and ruby encrusted swords were on display, created during a time when war was fought with guns and trenches. The Ottomans of the 19th century concerned themselves with gems and fancy dishes while the rest of the modern world had moved into the Industrial Age. It's no wonder the empire fell.

I found it curious that the Sultans were glorified, not just by the Turks, but also by the tourists who visited the palace. People marveled at the precious treasures of the Sultans instead of thinking about how these things were stolen or plundered during warfare. Indeed, one woman exclaimed, "Oh. My. God. Nuh-uh. That is not real." as she looked upon an 84 karat diamond with a sort of drooling, gaping mouth. It's a freaking rock! It's a shiny piece of the Earth that people died for. The whole lot of those gems were nothing more than rocks found in the ground. Think about it - isn't it amazing that people have fought wars to obtain shiny rocks that serve no practical purpose? And Sultans are glorified for their collections of shiny rocks? Sultans are nothing more than dictators with a fancy name. They taxed their citizens heavily - especially those who weren't Muslim - and enslaved whomever they wanted. They forced women to become their concubines if they fancied them. While much of their empire was poor, they ate great feasts every night. No cost was too great for their hedonism, not even the cost of human life. Yet they are still glorified. Us common folk look at their palaces and riches in awe despite the fact that had we lived back then, we would have been their slaves, our precious items to be taken on a whim if a Sultan or a high official desired them.

Look at this massive kitchen. Another row of smokestacks sits beside the visible one. I cannot fathom the heat generated in this place, especially in the sweltering summers when humidity from the sea wreaked its havoc upon the city. Imagine the hundreds of people who had to work in these conditions, probably for 16 hours a day. I sweat at the thought of it! I'd rather sit in a cubicle staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day, five days a week, looking for the weekend. The Sultans were a bunch of lardasses whose gluttony rivaled that of a Texan rancher or Rosy O'Donnell. All they did was sit around on a lot of ornate pillows in their gaudy jewelry and their hideous robes eating, drinking, and fornicating with the concubines in their harems. At taxpayers expense, of course.

They did this while pretending to be good Muslims. It's kind of like all of those American evangelicals who are getting caught for child pornography or soliciting sex in airport bathrooms. Is it that they who scream "God!" the loudest are actually the most immoral of all? I've often wondered that. Seems to me that "God" should be a very private thing. You kind of think about these things when you are surrounded by a religion other than the one predominant where you grew up. It's easier to look at things from the outside, and well, now that I've had several experiences in the Muslim world, I can see that religions have more than just God in common. They also have hypocrisy.

There was some interesting architecture around the palace. Lots of domes and arches. There wasn't much that struck me as amazing, however, as I think European architecture created during the Ottoman times is much more interesting. Not even the tiled rooms really impressed me. They seemed kind of tacky to me - it was like having a room full of plates on your walls. Indeed, the Ottoman tiles were inspired by those blue and white Chinese porcelain plates that the Turks were so fond of. There is a whole collection of them in part of the kitchen. The funny thing is that these plates, once thought to be so precious, are now mass produced in China.

Just to clarify - I didn't hate everything about the palace. I just thought about things in a different way than the myriads of tourists around me. The thing is that we haven't really done away with empires - we just go about them in a different way. The United States is definitely a sort of empire. Our citizens are dominated by corporations with ties to government, and our taxes (aside from the real taxes we pay) are the things we keep buying to keep the corporations in power. We still send our soldiers to war for riches from the ground - now in the form of oil instead of gems. History is not a linear thing - it is a circle, and we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. When you think of it this way, you have to wonder if we'll ever get it right, and if we can't, maybe the fact that we're destroying the planet is a good thing?

No, no, of course it isn't. We have to keep trying. We have made progress. I look at the European Union as perhaps the greatest human advancement in history. I mean, here is a continent that has known nothing but war throughout its existence, but a few incredible men who were sick of war came up with a plan that would ensure that if one country went to war with another, that warring country would also be destroyed. This is done by linking economies together, no small feat. I give credit to the European people for accepting such an arrangement. If they would only accept Turkey, then perhaps it would be a start to ending religious war, too? One can dream, right? Right?