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More: Best of 'What Do You Do On A Friday?' Holiday Reading 2004
Our traveler extraordinaire '99 countries and still counting' Betsy Schwartz is at it again! Contact her on bikenbets@yahoo.com (as you can see from the article, Betsy is not averse to meeting a decent adventurous gentlemen either ... she's looking for a really great guy to cycle through Mexico with her in April 2005. Contact her on bikenbets at yahoo dot com
June 9, 2004 - Old Nesebar, Bulgaria Zdrasti! (HI!), Last night I met my first American traveler in Bulgaria - an older gentleman from Florida. He was with his wife and 4 friends, introducing them to what he considers eastern Europe's best kept secret.
Roger, an eastern European major and a Fullbright scholar in Sofia many years ago, has been a regular visitor for the last decade and asked me to encourage travelers to come to this small but wonderfully friendly country with 9 UNESCO world heritage sites.
Bulgaria has 2 main mountain ranges running almost in parallel lines that we have had to get ourselves over a couple of times. It also has beautiful valleys covered with wildflowers (the red poppy dominates); large fields of pink roses (Bulgaria used to provide 70% of the world's rose oil used in making perfume); vineyards; cherry trees with masses of the plump ripe red fruit blanketed beneath; and tobacco fields. These views and scents have provided hours of enjoyment as the 4 of us have been crossing Bulgaria by bicycle from the west to the Black Sea coast on the east.
Our adventure began in Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, a city of many gorgeous Eastern Orthodox churches and a population of more than 1 million. Unemployment is a major problem in this country of nearly 8 million. Many of the youth, searching for better job opportunities head to western Europe, Canada or the States for their university education and hope for the chance of a carreer there. However, there are enough youth with some knowledge of English, so that we can navigate our way thru this cyrillic- alphabet based country. My 3 months of listenning to Russian language tapes has paid off many times. I am able to make myself understood using my Russian vocabulary of about 100 words as any of the older Bulgarians all had to learn Russian as their second language.
Many times I have reflected on my 1991 bike ride in Russia and the central Asian country of Uzbekistan. That was my first introduction to cycling in a cyrillic alphabet country. I remember how I had absolutely no idea of what any sign said! Today, even though my decoding skills are no better than a first grader, I love the challenge of sounding out each letter and then putting all the sounds together to produce a meaningful word. Or not!! Travelling slowly by bike allows me lots of time to have success in reading the town's name, and even a few billboards!
Bulgaria has a long complicated history, but let me shorten it and mention only the 500 years of living "under the yoke" or as "slaves" to the Turks. In April, 1876, a handful of Bulgarian rebel leaders, started an uprising and revolution against the Turks. The Turks responded by massacring about 30,000 Bulgars and burning 58 villages. The western European countries and America were greatly disturbed by this and so Russia stepped in to defend Bulgaria and declared war on the Turks in 1877. Together with the Bulgarian volunteers, they defeated the Turks, causing them to surrender, and became the independent country of Bulgaria. Since this time, well into the 1990's the Bulgarians were very loyal and appreciative to the Russians. Today, however, the youth prefer to learn English, and look more to the western world as their model.
For the first week of cycling, we had very cloudy skies, much cooler than I had thought, and we found ourselves daily trying to outrun the storms. For the most part we managed. We stayed a couple of days at Koprivshtitsa, a national heritage village and home of the early revolutionaries, which has been preserved as an 19th century town. All houses must follow the same style of architecture: two story with the first level made of brick and rock and the second level made of wood. Mostly horse carts are found clopping around on these cobblestone roads.
I spent 3 hours visiting a 6th grade English class in the village school which had 400 kids from grade 1 to 12. Chatting with the kids about my bicycle travels and teaching simple English songs appeared to be a pleasure for all of us. The class, in turn, invited all of us to a "concert" where the younger kids danced typical folk dances and the middle school girls danced extremely sexy, provacative dances to American rock music where every other word was an F____ word equal! What an influence our music has on the world! I am writing this letter sitting on a rooftop hotel in Old Nesebar, a UNESCO site and a Black Sea resort. It is a much needed layover day today. The sun is hot; and the gulls are noisily flying overhead landing on many of the neighboring 5th to 14th century churches. Getting here, however, was a nightmare!
It begins three days ago when Janet sprained her ankle while we were touring the cobblestone streets of Veliko Tarnovo, marveling at the ancient churches and fortress up on the hill. Good husband, Lawrence, was able to get a rental car, get Janet off her foot, and they could continue by car. (Our hope here is that Janet's ankle will be well enough to cycle in Crimea next week.) LillyAnn and I continued by bicycle.
We all made it to Kazanlak and miraculously after a day and night of huge thunder, lightning and rain storms, Sunday dawned brightly and the annual parade for the Festival of Roses began on schedule, with Bulgaria's president giving the opening ceremonial speech. The costumes and dancers were more than I had imagined. We had basically planned our whole trip around arriving here for this day and it far surpassed my expectations.
People of all ages dressed in costumes of all kinds participated; from the typical Bulgaian folk dancers, to the older women street sweepers, to the gypsies, to the cycling team, to the firetrucks pulled by donkeys with the firemen squirting water on the thousands who lined the route, and all the different groups of band members and dancers throwing the wonderfully scented pink roses everywhere. You will need to see my slide show to appreciate this festival!
But that certainly was not the nightmare. The nightmare happened yesterday when LillyAnn and I got lost in Burgas, Bulgaria's largest seaport on the Black Sea. A handsome man about my age, noticing the 2 of us on the side of the road studying our maps, parked his car in the middle of the highway and came running over to see if he could help us. After some discussion in Russian and hand signals, he proceeded to lead us through the city and put us on the main super highway, indicating that the small yellow road we had wanted to follow would be much too hilly for us.
So there we were, with 40 km of the worst road ahead of us. Fast trucks, buses and speeding cars were whizzing by our bodies so close that we choose to ride on the gravelly shoulder. We kept on slowly, slowly, only inches from the shattering noises of the speeding vehicles as we all headed towards the wondeful resort area of the Black Sea coast.
Thank heavens for our wider tires on our trusty Bike Fridays. It was indeed a nightmare that I was happy to see come to an end! So, you see, sitting here on this rooftop, in the warm sun, just listening to the chatter of the seagulls flying over my head is a joy to cherish (as long as they only sing!!).
In a couple of days when we reach our Bulgarian destination of Varna, LillyAnn will return to CA and Janet and Lawrence and I will continue on. There we hope to take a 20 hour ferry across the Black Sea to Odessa, in Ukraine. It is very difficult to find out exactly when a ferry will go but we think there will be one leaving on Saturday. If all goes as planned, my next letter will be written from the Crimea, an autonomous region of Ukraine. What new adventures will await us there?
It does seem that the difficulty of travel is directly proportional to the number of countries visited. Love to all, Betsy
June 15,2004 Previet, My news is that we changed our plans at the last minute. Yesterday we found out that the ferry still was not going to leave until "maybe tomorrow". I reread my email from the woman who had told me about a speed ferry that would take us to Ukraine, but to the furthest south west corner of Ukraine. It was to leave from the port town of Silistra, Bulgaria at 3 PM every Monday, beginning this Monday.
We discussed this option, realized Silistra was about 170 kilometers away, but decided to try to make it. We found a taxi who quoted us a reasonable price and off we raced to the small city on the Danube River (the border between Romania and Bulgaria), in a slow taxi (80 leva) and made it for the 3 PM speed ferry. Since the speed hydrofoil was late arriving to Silistra, it made it possible for us to catch! It was a nice uneventful 5 hour boat trip along the not so blue Danube, arriving in Ukraine at 10 PM.
NO ONE speaks any English at all here in Izmail, Ukraine, so my Russian has really been stretched! We stayed in a very communist style, prison block hotel last night. It was a 3 room apartment which we have labeled the contact paper apartment as everything was covered in contact paper!! It is a step back in time from Bulgaria. It looks like what I imagine Soviet Russia to look like. Very few smiles.
When we entered the hotel last night, the woman behind the glassed in desk, opened a small window and spouted out lots of Russian at me. I explained I only spoke a little Russian. She got quite annoyed at me and thrust 3 forms in Russian or Ukrainian with 8 questions on them for us to fill out!! I asked what was #1? I understood that was our name. Then I asked her #2? She got all annoyed and closed the window. I found 2 handsome men sitting at a nearby table, puffing away on their cigarettes, and asked them to help me fill out the form. They very nicely helped!! I then returned to the mean lady, showed Janet and Lawrence what to write down and we handed her the papers. The lady still was not happy but accepted the papers. It broke her, when I tried to explain we wanted one room with 3 beds, and she came forth with a smile!!
I am so happy that I am not alone here. I am so happy for the Janet and Lawrence's presence. As long as Janet can ice her ankle and rest at different times during the day, she is able to enjoy the trip. Love, Betsy
Country #94-96: Betsy in the 3 Guianas
Country #92: Betsy tours Uruguay
For more information, follow this link http://www.bikefriday.com/bf/holiday-reading2004.