Aug 25th, Another Beach Day

8/25     Sunday

            Very pleasant afternoon at our favorite beach. The water was warm and calm, lots of fish were about; at one point I saw a giant jellyfish of a kind I’ve never encountered before. There weren’t too many people at the beach until later in the afternoon. People seem to come out after their Sunday dinners. We even saw a sailboat.

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Another Beach Day

 

Aug 24th, Pomorie Beach Day

8/24     Saturday

We need another day at the beach, pretty much a repeat of the others, yet every time, the sea is new. Today we have soft, rolling crests with very little surf. Not so dramatic, but highly enjoyable. I can see schools of small fish all round us in the water. We wonder why we don’t see anyone seriously fishing, just a few tourists on the jetties throwing a line into the sea. There are hundreds of small fishing boats that go out, so maybe none of the local people care to fish for fun. It’s also odd that there are just a handful of leisure boats or sailboats in the harbor, and none out on the water on a gorgeous weekend afternoon.

We stop on the way home to buy a watermelon from the old man on our street. On every journey from Croatia to Bulgaria, we’ve been passing fruit stands full of watermelon. In some towns we’d see a wagon full of melons at every block. And yet we have had none! This must end; we are having some melon before we leave this land!

We go once more to our local restaurant for grilled fish for dinner. Tonight, the local kids are having a feud, one has done something Very Wrong, and another boy is furious. He grabs the kid and gives him four or five good smacks in the head. Problem solved, they all continue their street games.

In the town, the music festival is still on. We stop to enjoy the blind young lady again, and several others, mostly young people, all talented. The stage has an incredible sound system, and all the music comes across beautifully. The evening is pleasantly cool, with the waning moon coming up over the sea.

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Pomorie Beach Day

Aug 23rd, Pomorie Salt Museum

8/23     Friday

We take a walk through the town, heading out to the Salt Museum. On the way, we need to find a post office for our postcards. The Tourist Information lady interrupts her lunch to give us some completely erroneous directions. We ask two different shopkeepers and manage to find it. You’d think the Tourist Office people would be used to people asking questions, but it was a big bother for some reason.

The Salt Museum is a small building with some photos and tools, and a brief video in English for us. We learn a bit about the ancient art of harvesting salt, and the effort to preserve the few artisan style salt farms, which are being lost to huge commercial operations. There are salt farms in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Brittany, each with a distinctive flavor in the salts. The flat salt beds of Pomorie are a small part of the commerce, but are historically important. There are some bowls of salt crystals that we can taste. It’s crunchy and sweet. We would love to buy some, but all that is available are big liter sized sacks. If they were selling small bags or salt grinders, we’d pick up a souvenir.

Outside, on the edge of the salt beds, an area is roped off with a sign reading “KEEP OUT OF ROPED AREA.” Inside the roped area, a dozen or so locals are happily engaged in slathering the therapeutic salt mud all over their bodies. I don’t understand why the museum doesn’t take advantage of the obvious money-making potential of this. I’d pay admission to get in the mud. I’d go in with the illegal mudders, but there are no showers here. I have no idea how the mud-blackened bathers get the stuff off them.

Next to the Salt Museum is a nature center for bird-watching. The salt lagoon creates a perfect habitat for water birds, and is a major resting area for the migration routes from Africa to Siberia, the Via Pontica Flyway. We go in as a gang of bird-watchers with huge telescopes is coming out. There are a couple of young Bulgarian girls going through the exhibit with a guide. He stops a moment to let us know he’ll talk with us soon. He sets the girls up with a video, and comes over to us.

He’s a serious biologist, a member of the Green Balkans environmental group. He gives us an orientation to the center, just a small room with informative panels illustrating the species in the area. He sets up the same short video for us in English. Then, we go out to the lookout deck where he has a birdwatching scope. He aims the scope out to the lagoon and describes the birds he’s pointing at. There are many species active here, and we can see mute swans, crested grebes, sandwich terns, common terns, greater cormorants, a smallest type of gull, with a starling next to it for size, plovers, and snowy egrets. There may have been one or two more, that’s the list I can remember.

He tells us that a White Stork migration is due to come through, with flocks of more than 60,000 birds, on August 26^th. That’s the Monday that we’ll be leaving for Istanbul. The bus does pass on the street near the lagoon, so if we’re lucky, we may get to see some of the flocks.

We go back to our favorite neighborhood restaurant for our dinner of grilled fish, which is obviously somewhat addictive. After dinner, we take a stroll down to the pedestrian zone. The streets are busy with people all about; the city really comes to life in the evening. We’re surprised that the streets are noticeably less crowded than we saw through the week, even though it’s the weekend. We don’t know why, but it does make it more pleasant to walk through the promenade.

There’s a performing arts center right at the center, a small but attractive building with an outdoor stage on the street side. They’re having a music festival! On stage is a young woman in a fancy gown, she seems to be blind, singing a Bulgarian song in a loud, melodious voice. The MC is a chatty, blonde lady in a shiny evening gown and high heels, working the crowd and bringing the singers onstage. Next up is Rocco, or something like that, wearing jeri curls, aviator glasses and a bleached denim shirt with no sleeves. He gives us a rousing rock ‘n roll song. Then, a casual but suave older man on crutches singing “Delilah”, with a good voice full of conviction. Occasionally he jumbles the lyrics with a “merba mer merba” fake, but he gets the “Why, Why, Why” part spot on.

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Pomorie Salt Museum

Aug 22nd, Pomorie Lamb

8/22     Thursday

            Beach day once again. The waves are pretty wild today, so we stay on the harbor side with the rest of the babies.

As we head home after a few hours, we catch the distinct smell of roasted lamb. There’s a restaurant overlooking the beach with a great charcoal fueled firepit, with a spit full of chicken, and another with a whole lamb. This is the place for dinner tonight!

We come back around 7:30, to find that all the inside tables are reserved, but we have a place at a picnic table outside next to the firepit, with a view of the sea, that suits us much better. Soon, the whole place is full. We order a dinner of lamb and wait.

Suddenly, there’s a commotion of ringing bells and a sort of Bulgarian bagpipe. The lamb is ready! The chef leads a gang of lamb-bearers who carry the whole beast on the spit through every corner of the restaurant, stopping ceremoniously to rotate the spit every few paces. They know how to make a scene, that’s for sure. We all pay homage to the lamb, and they take it off to the kitchen. Our order arrives soon after, a big chunk. We have successfully completed our roasted lamb experience.

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Pomorie Lamb

Aug 21st, Pomorie Dinner

8/21     Wednesday

Finally, we have a Beach Day! It’s just a five minute walk from our apartment to the beach we like best. The lounge chairs and umbrella costs $12 lev, about $8 USD for the day.

The surf is pretty high, and in some places the shore is covered with ankle-bruising rocks, but a dozen or more people are out swimming. The water is dark green and surprisingly warm. We have a thrill being in a new sea, rolling on the waves, getting thrown around a little (this would be me). Next to the jetty, there’s a harbor where more people are swimming. We try that side out as well, and it’s easier to enjoy the quiet water.

Back at our umbrella, a beach vendor comes through selling corn on the cob. When Bob buys one, he asks where we’re from. He’s all excited when we tell him, America, New York. Everyone thinks we mean New York City, of course, and usually it gets too complicated to try to explain the difference. All in all, we have a fine day at the beach.

That evening, we decide to try a little restaurant that’s right across the street from our apartment. It seems nice and local, with tables outside along the sidewalk. As we sit at our table, the neighborhood kids play in the street, tourists stroll down for a night out to the more noisy, crowded restaurants in the city center. An old man across the street sells tomato, plums and watermelons from a table in front of his house. A hummingbird flies around a flowering plant near us, unexpected at nighttime. We enjoy a huge tomato salad, a plate of fresh marinated anchovies, and two big whole grilled mackerel, with beer, wine and mineral water. Our bill is about $22 USD. Lunch was $4, so the cost for the day - $34, a little cheaper than the Jersey Shore!

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Pomorie Dinner

Aug 20th, Pomorie Beach

8/20     Tuesday

It seems there’s no way around it. We need to take a bus back to Burgas in order to buy tickets for our travel to Istanbul. Luckily, there’s a bus every half hour, and the ride takes a manageable forty minutes. We find our bus agency near the station and get our tickets. It’s a little fussy because we’re taking an international trip, but we get it done, and hop on a bus back to Pomorie.

We decide to take a walk to tour the beaches, lining up our options for swimming. The beaches are crowded, and most are managed beaches, with wind-proof umbrellas filling the sandy area. There are free zones on every beach though, so plenty of people just throw a towel done and settle there. The water looks dark green with a lively surf. As we walk around the point, there’s a beach at the end of the swimming area, separated from the boat harbor by a small jetty. There aren’t nearly as many people here, and it looks like the nicest spot to us.

We head back to the waterfront promenade to find dinner and enjoy the sunset over the water. It’s so easy and affordable here, we decide to take advantage of the fresh fish instead eating salads at home. We find a good restaurant and get an outside table. The small patch of yard near us acts as a baby soccer field, but they’re not all screaming and crying, just kicking a ball at us.

After dinner, we sit on our terrace and have an amaretto. The moon is full, and we have a view of terracotta roofs with just a peek of the sea. Through the stillness of the evening, we hear the sounds of crying babies, drifting through the clear night air. As Prague was full of ringing church bells, and Sarajevo echoed with the Mullah’s call, so Pomorie nights carry the sounds of overtired, hysterical children.

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Pomorie Beach

Aug 19th, Sofia to Pomorie

8/19     Monday

Our bus to Pomorie leaves at nine, so we get up not too early and catch the metro to the station. The ride is on a big highway the whole route. The landscape is flat, open fields of corn and sunflowers. The bright yellow sunflowers we saw as we rode into Macedonia have gone all brown and dry by now. The driver stops at a rest stop, a huge parking lot in the middle of nothing, with some port-a-potties and some farmers selling fruits. We buy a couple of big, juicy peaches.

Lena, our host, is vacationing in the US, so her mom comes to the bus station for us. This time, we’re on the alert for someone looking for us, so we make no mistake as she approaches me and asks my name. Natalye doesn’t speak much English, but we communicate well enough. Our apartment is on the 5^th floor, no elevator. The first time up is tough, with our packs, but otherwise it’s not as bad as it sounds. The apartment is small but complete. We have a balcony and a spiral staircase to a roomy bedroom. Natalye shows us all the kitchenware, pots and dishcloths and espresso maker, since Bob has requested a fully functioning kitchen for all our salad making needs.

We are actually just a few short blocks from the waterfront and the pedestrian zone. Pomorie is like a thumb peninsula sticking out in the sea, so it’s ringed with waterfront. On one side, it’s a harbor full of small fishing boats, with a promenade all along the water. On the northern side, it’s all sandy beaches, divided by long jetties. This stretches on for a good 8 kilometers.

We take a stroll along the center pedestrian area. The city is so much like a Jersey Shore beach town, it feels familiar to us. There are souvenir shops and ice cream stands everywhere. A regional treat is corn on the cob, or corn nibblets in a bowl, and there are several corn booths on the way.

As we walk along, we hear an ungodly screaming noise, like some kind of giant jungle parrot. It’s a little boy, walking along holding his mother’s dress, shrieking at the top of his wee lungs. Not far from him, another boy has thrown himself onto the cobblestones, rolling and crying. A third boy is making a mighty effort to resist his stroller, kicking his shoes into the street and performing the dreaded Arching Back maneuver. This town is hugely popular with families. Apparently every visitor comes with a three-year-old, and we are at the time of day for multiple major meltdowns.

We scout around for a spot for dinner. Along the waterfront, there are little take-away shacks, with people lined up waiting to order standing in front of all of them. Once you pick up your order, there are picnic tables along the walkway. They serve up little plates of fried fish or meats. The fried gobies, a kind of anchovy, is the thing to get, as everyone has a plateful. We can’t really figure out how the menus and ordering works, everyone seems to be just standing and waiting, so we go to a more organized restaurant where they have table service. We get a table in the shade, and order a grilled fish and some octopus salad, with Bulgarian beer. It’s all very fresh and tasty and really affordable.

1 Video Included

Bus Sofia to Pomorie

Aug 18th, Movie Day

8/18     Sunday

Sunday is our slow day. We putter around all morning, gathering the things we’ve spread all around the apartment. Then later on, we walk down to the big shopping mall to take in a movie at the Imax Theater. Elysium, with Matt Damon, is playing. We have only been in an Imax once or twice, so we enjoy the giant screen, especially since it’s not 3D. We try to avoid 3D. It adds nothing to the movie and just darkens and dulls the picture.

We go to a cafe, then back to the apartment. A very relaxing Sunday.

Aug 17th, Sofia Military Museum

8/17     Saturday

There’s nothing Bob likes so much as a yard full of decommissioned aircraft, so we go to spend our day at the Museum of Military History. This place is not so hard to find, and we have a pleasant walk through the city to get there. We come up to it from a back street. It’s so odd to be walking along a block of apartments and find yourself staring into the barrels of a dozen anti-aircraft guns.

The museum is large, with the grounds full of tanks, planes, amphibious trucks and missile launchers covering several blocks. The building of exhibits is five stories full. The exhibits start in Roman times, and works through the centuries of warfare in Bulgaria. There are military uniforms, swords, guns, maps, dioramas, sounds of guns firing, soldiers charging, lots of huge paintings of battle scenes. We climb the stairs to the next floor, and the next, it goes on and on. On the top floor, there is a special collection of swords and guns from a private donor. Then we have an unusual exhibit in a room full of military awards, medals and ribbons. Some of them are very pretty.

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Sofia Military Museum

Aug 16th, Sofia Socialist Art Museum

8/16     Friday

We plan an urban hike to the Socialist Art Museum, which is somewhere in a business district that’s beyond our tourist map. We take a city street that follows a trolley line most of the way, a lot like walking through a NYC neighborhood. There are all kinds of shops and fast food joints along the way. At one spot, we find a little take-out window displaying all kinds of nuts and dried fruits. We order through the window, and pick out a few small bags of kiwi and strawberries, but we have an awful time trying to buy some walnuts. We point to the box with walnuts, the cashier woman points to the box next to it, No, that one, we point again. She points to the box above it, No, THAT one. She points to the box to the left, then to the right, then below, then two over, constantly skipping past the box full of walnuts. It’s getting so ridiculous, we think she must be doing it on purpose, but finally, she hits the right spot, and we get our little bag of walnuts.

We follow our street to the edge of the city, where the sidewalk ends and we find ourselves on a dirt path along a woods next to a highway. We walk for another mile maybe, then get back to a sidewalk in a new neighborhood with lots of high rise office buildings that look like mostly banks. We head off the main street into a side street, looking for some kind of sign for the museum, which we estimate is somewhere near us. No one speaks much English, and even when Bob uses his Smartphone translator, we can’t find anyone who’s even heard of the Museum of Socialist Art. It’s looking a bit grim for this outing, but then someone overhears us talking with a café owner, and gives us some general directions, sending us back to the main street for about another twenty minutes of walking, towards “three big buildings.” We continue as directed, and actually find the said buildings. Still no museum signage. We ask some people at another café, and one man leads us around the side of the building, and points across the street. We can see a gated entrance to a building with a plaque describing an “Office of the Commission on Competition,” or some such. Then we see in the back, a sculpture garden full of Lenin statues! We’ve found it! And indeed, the guard at the “Commission” gate waves us in towards the rear of the building, where a woman comes out of her station and waves us further along to the museum entry. Still no sign of signage.

The sculpture garden is interesting, with massive monuments and smaller works. Most are of Lenin or other Communist leader, others are honoring the common worker: a bricklayer in work clothes, joyful peasant women, stylized “workmen.”

Inside, there is a collection of propaganda posters, all bright Kodachrome colors. Stalin with schoolchildren, happy farmers, productive peasants, everyone happy, smiling, shiny. We stop to see a video of some propaganda films, showing grand pageants of schoolchildren with flowers, marching youths, everyone healthy and happy! One segment shows a squad of college youths gathered together for a great project, building a dam. For some reason, the communist college youths eschew machinery, building the dam with shovels, rakes and their bare hands. The women make a “fire brigade” line, passing rocks from one to the next, tossing them into a truck, doing this while wearing skirts and saddle shoes. The men are standing all along the hillside, picking out rocks that fall down the hill onto the guys picking just behind them. We’re thinking, “Oh, please god, someone get a backhoe!”

Well, that was very interesting. We go home on the metro, very clean and modern. It’s all new because as it was being built, diggers were continually finding Roman ruins, stopping everything. It took years to get the metro completed. We make one transfer and end up just a block from our apartment.

 1 Video Included

Sofia Socialist Art Museum

Aug 15th, Sofia National Gallery of Art

8/15     Thursday

Our agenda for today is a visit to the National Gallery of Art, which is the former palace building at the center of the city. The palace also houses the Ethnographic Museum. Oddly enough, they are two completely separate entities. Even though they share a common grand staircase, there’s no combined admission, you need a ticket for each side of the palace.

The gallery collection is very nice, regional artists, mostly 20^th century. Sadly, the building interior has been painted over, all white, with traces of the decorative plasterwork faintly visible. There is one grand ballroom filled with mirrors and chandeliers that suggests the former beauty of the place. We can’t help thinking that restoring the palace would make a more popular tourist attraction, a la Versailles. The Ethnographic Museum is interesting, a collection mostly of regional costumes for holidays and celebrations. There is a gentleman there who explains a little, and tells us there is no national costume in Bulgaria; each region has its distinctive styles and patterns. The embroidery and silverwork on the clothing is quite exceptional.

Afterwards, we walk a few blocks to the great Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, covered in golden domes in the Russian style. It’s impressive. We see a priest of some kind, an important person, evidently, taking donations for a special blessing. There’s a line of people waiting to see him. We don’t know enough about the orthodox services to explain why there are no pews, just an open floor in the cathedral.

We stop at a fancy park café for lunch. I have a nice spinach salad. Bob has, quelle suprise, chicken soup. It’s not as good as the last place.

 1 Video Included

Sofia National Gallery of Art

Aug 14th, Sofia Tour and Natural History

8/14     Wednesday

We have an ad for a Free City Tour that meets just a few blocks from our place, so we decide to join in. Our guide is a tiny young woman, Petya, with a booming tour guide voice. She’s a native, educated as a linguist, who left her job as a data analyst to work with this fledgling tour company. She gives us an excellent tour, just informative enough, jokey enough, walking us through the main area of the city. We have about 20 people with us, from all over Europe, mostly young people from the hostels. Our tour goes over two hours, and we enjoy the entire time.

She begins with the story of the somewhat racy statue of Saint Sophia that dominates the city center, noting that the city is named for the Greek phrase Hagia Sofia, meaning Holy Wisdom, and really has nothing to do with the saint. She also tells us that the statue is a recent addition, placed on its pedestal to replace a huge statue of Lenin, which was pulled down with all the other statues honoring Communism, and sent off to the Museum of Socialist Art. We’ll just have to visit that one.

At one point, Petya tells us briefly of Bulgaria’s Tsar, during WWII when Bulgaria was allied with Germany, finding ways to put off and delay the required expulsion of the Bulgarian Jews, ultimately saving the entire population of 50,000 people. It’s an obvious point of national pride, and she becomes quite emotional about it. This is also very interesting to us, having learned something of the story of the Jews in Macedonia, who were delivered to Treblinka under the rule of Bulgaria.

We see this as an example of the complicated, intertwined history of the Balkans, not that we would consider ourselves to be educated by the brief introductions we have in tours or museums. We do experience something of the way perceptions change so dramatically from one region to another. The Tsar is a hero to one, a criminal to the other. Bulgaria hopes to regain its “homeland”, while Macedonia fights for its sovereignty. At one time or another, Bulgaria formed alliances with Montenegro, Serbia and Greece, with Germany, with Russia, and was also at war with these same allies. The story of this region is intense and compelling.

            After our tour, we stop at a little café for a snack. Bob has one of his very favorite things: Chicken Soup. This bowl is especially good, the kind of old world soup your gramma would have made.

We walk along the main street and pass the Natural History Museum, so we decide we may as well stop. It’s empty, of course. The collection is a little dated, but there’s something pleasingly academic about the place. The four floors of the old building are filled with cabinets and glass displays that look like they belong in a university. Every now and then we find a specimen left by some jokester: a piece of rubber hose with the snakes, the blind mole mice arranged in a threesome. Har har.

1 Video Included

Sofia Natural History Museum

Aug 13th, Sofia Archaeological Museum

8/13     Tuesday

            For some reason, booking our next apartment is taking forever. There are plenty of places available, but as soon as we settle on one, we find something problematic about it, no AC, noisy disco nearby, shared balcony. One is just gorgeous, all new, but the “kitchen” is a counter with a sink, no appliances or means of cooking anything. We ask the host about it, thinking he might be interested in getting a hot plate or something, but no, he’s all “eh, whatever.”

After a couple hours of this, we give up and walk to the city center where we find the Archeology Institute’s Museum. This is a very impressive collection, set in a building that might have been a church, with a high domed and vaulted ceiling. There are fragments and statues, jewelry, icons and frescos, from the Stone Age to the 17^th Century. Bob enjoys it quite a lot.

There’s a nice garden café at the museum, where we stop for a Fanta. An American family with two noisy young boys comes in and sits at the table next to us. There’s relaxing techno music playing at the café, though, so we manage to not hear them.

 1 Video Included

Sofia Archaeological Museum