After spending a few days in the capital, Sophia, meeting Teodora's
friends, exploring crumbling charm of yet another Eastern European
country (which brought back many memories of Russia), we have arrived
to a small Turkish village where Teodora's parents seem to be the only
non-Turks. I think both parents were relived that I did not wear any
bizarre religious attire, which I think they imagined I would wear
considering my Buddhist pursuits.
We had great time at the village-after overextending our senses in
Europe, like children who had too much chocolate, we deflated amidst
the fields, clean air, the quiet, interrupted only by cicadas, rooster
calls and depths of cow mooing. it was unusually hot (no rain for over
a month) so we slept in the hammocks, under the huge Bulgarian starry
skies-what a bliss!
Teodora's parents are very spacious, so it was
easy and pleasant to just hang around and eat great naturally
organic veggies from their garden well, food is important, is it not?)
I have bonded with Teodora's Dad over his famous home-made clear and
strong Rakia (it must be over 40%), which must have been very smooth as
I normally drink liquor like that.
Even though we have worried
about the kind of celebration they would have for our recent wedding
(we feared big crowds of unknown relatives, invited out of a sense of
obligation), it turned out to be small and pleasant day at a park
restaurant, where we even did some Bulgarian dancing (at which I
miserably failed. Ok, Teodora, who types her letters next to me and
looks over my shoulder, says that it is not true, that the first round
of Bulgarian dances I did well, but the second one I did fail-she
confirms that!)
I liked a few days of village life with its fields, passing sheppards,
villagers bringing cows home for the night, the slow speed of life.
On
the picture above we are in front of the small bus agency where we
bought our tickets to Istanbul. The man (in the middle) is an agent,
who one day knocked on the door of the house, bringing us tickets,
which he filled with our information, while taking his time to talk to
the family, to us, drink coffee and some Rakia, tell his stories and,
an hour later, he was on his way back to his office-this is how
business is done here-who is in a hurry?
Here I am playing Yaser Arafat with Teodora's Dad, Ok -just obtaining honey from the bee house.
One night, a small Turkish family of neighbours ( mother, father and
their adult daughter) came to visit: they have heard about my interest
in Buddhism and the woman ( who is evidently the head of the family)
was very keen on knowing about Buddhist view. it was a brief but cute
conversation via Teodora's translation, basically a quick comparing
notes on Islam and Buddhism-after may be 30 min of talking, somehow we
came to mutual conclusion, that there are more similarities then
differences, thus the peace in the village was not disturbed :-)
Bulgaria
is probably the poorest Eastern European country at present, still
struggling with transition to market economy, yet, the number of
Mercedes Benz cars I saw around far exceeds the number of expensive
cars in any other country we visited. In fact, your humble servant,
drove a nice Mercedes which the family "borrowed" for the duration of
our visit.
There is always more to say, but for the sake of sparing your valuable time and a principle of economy, I stop here.
One
more thing to mention however, the graffiti we saw in Sophia are
completely out of hand! So, Laci, compared to Budapest, Sophia is
the indisputable winner (in graffiti domain)- illustrating pictures are
coming soon.
you can view more photos from Bulgaria at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69781927@N00/sets/72157601875120202/detail/
pics from Sophia are coming sooooooon....
