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Bulgaria

So due to the limited internet here, I can’t post pictures or videos - although having any internet at all is quite an achievement, considering it’s a town of 900 in rural Bulgaria!

I’ve gradually started to settle into the routine here. It’s so nice to just take things slow. Even though I didn’t mention this much on the blog, I was getting completely burned out by city after city, museum after museum. I was in denial for a week and then I realized I couldn’t take it any more. What was I thinking when I planned this trip?? Two and a half months of large European cities is manageable for a month, maybe a month and a half, but after that it’s too exhausting to keep up.

And then, that kind of mood is NOT the way to visit a place like Romania, where you need to be constantly on your guard against pickpockets and overcharging. Romania, in fact, was a low point. I felt surrounded by a sense of .. well… claustrophobia and menace. I decided to move on as soon as I got there, which led to 20 hours of trains in 2 days.

But.

Here I am in Voditsa, Bulgaria. Getting here was hilarious. I took 4 trains (one of which was going out of service, and I got on, wondering why it was empty, and watched helplessly as it started moving away… the conductor had to run down the platform yelling to the driver to stop… after which I walked back into a train station of laughing Bulgarians) and then I took a taxi to this town. I forgot to write down the directions so we asked people in town for the “Anglichinka” - the Englishwoman who runs the farm. Of course, everyone knew exactly who she was. And apparently within 15 minutes word had gotten around town that she had an American guest working for her.

Yesterday I cleared the onion patch. In the evening, along with my host at the farm and a couple from Holland camping here, we went to the “secret” town pool, unmarked and fed by mineral springs. Then we stopped at the “secret” supermarket - an unmarked doorway into an apartment building - to pick up supplies for dinner.

This is just what I need.

And it hasn’t escaped me that, ironically, I was so exhausted from sightseeing that the only cure is full-time manual labor.