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| Bulgaria Road Map (click to enlarge) |
I apologize for the delay and any disappointment it may have caused you. But the sword hanging over my head has adversely affected me more than the delay has affected you. Every time (but two) that I've had the impulse to blog about something more congenial to myself than doing a trip report, I've suppressed it.
The first exception led to a post dated May 22 ("Not to be completely mistaken") that I wouldn't have published in the first place if I hadn't been weak and delirious from having contracted whatever bug had traveled home with my wife. I took that ironically named post down a few days later, when I was capable of perceiving its delusiveness. The second was yesterday's, when I'd finally had enough and said the hell with it.
Not only had I contracted some bug or other (which may not have been a Bulgarian exclusive, given that I've talked to several people here who had also been sick, with similar symptoms—sore throat at first, sinus congestion five or six days later), but I was tired as usual from long-distance travel.
And I was tired especially from the stress of being chauffeured at high speed on Bulgarian roads, seriously fearing impairment or death every time we came up close enough to a slower vehicle ahead of us to touch if we'd reached our hand out before we swerved left and rushed past the hapless vehicle, whose driver was probably wondering "What the hell!" even before we swerved back in ahead of it.
Somehow, I couldn't relax entertaining the bloody image of being laid up in a hospital in some small town in Eastern Europe, or thinking of my mortal remains' being shipped back to the United States (my cremation insurance doesn't apply elsewhere).
I was also set back by the daunting task of selecting and editing the large number of photographs from the trip (not to mention having to deal with my office in-box, overflowing with an unusually high number of transactions that had arrived while I was gone for more than a week and a half from my 40-hour-a-week job).
Only last Saturday did I finally finish renaming the last few scores of photos and begin to re-size and select a few of the ones I might use. I was too tired and annoyed by the whole thing to publish anything Saturday or Sunday, then everyday life caught up with me again and here it is Wednesday (no, Thursday—I wrote the above yesterday). On Tuesday, I had decided, why couldn't I do a partial report, using a few of the photos I did re-size? Okay, sounded good.
I'm not going to attempt a running account to accompany the photos, but be content to provide a short caption for each (as I hope you will be content with the result).
Travelogues aren't my thing. I didn't know what road we were on most of time, being focused as I was on trying to compose my thoughts before dying. I didn't take notes about this thing or that, or write down descriptions or impressions it might have made on me. I just took a photograph from time to time.
I confess, travel itself is as little my thing as writing it up is. Leave me at home with my wife and Siegfried, and I'm content. If I want to know something about a place, I'll read someone else's account of it, especially (in the case of Bulgaria) the blog of an American musician there, which contributed to my wife's planning our trip. The blog's January 10 post, "On the March: Keep Weapons Holstered," with its photograph of a park fence fashioned out of rifles, led to our visiting Sofia's Military Academy park with our grandson, who told us that the rifles had been used in the 1885 War of Bulgarian Reunification.
I trust that the blog's role in motivating my wife to visit Bulgaria and take me with her isn't the reason our son hasn't posted anything to it after the day he learned that she had purchased our Lufthansa tickets.
All of the photos were made with my wife's Nikon Coolpix P-100. We left my heavier DSLR at home. (Times of the clock shown in some of the photos are according to Eastern Standard Time, seven hours earlier than local time; sorry I forgot to reset the camera. In fact, I hadn't noticed that the camera even put dates and times on its photographs. I might have been able to turn that feature off; I'll have to check this out.)
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| A Shop Salad, or salad in the style of the Shopska region around Sofia (I ate many salads like this in my nine days in Bulgaria, perhaps my favorite dish) |
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| A private garden in the village of German (pronounced with a hard g, as in "gerbil"), near Sofia |
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| A street in Shumen, which we visited on our way to Varna |
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| In Shumen, we listened to two or three of the competing violinists as they practiced with their piano accompanist |
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| The small, family-run hotel we stayed in near Varna, about a quarter-mile from the Black Sea |
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| A donkey cart in a small town on the way from Varna to Balchik (note the wooden wheels) |
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| My ticket to the University Botanical Garden in Balchik |
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| A poster map of the University Botanical Garden in Balchik |
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| Hats off to the university for this poster (despite its English, reminiscent of instructions for a Japanese Mickey Mouse watch) |
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| We saw many balls of mistletoe like this along the Black Sea; these we spotted in the University Botanical Garden |
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| Flower beds in the University Botanical Garden, looking toward the Black Sea |
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| The flower beds from the Black Sea |
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| Tulips in the University Botanical Garden |
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| More Tulips (I took many more photos of them than I'm posting here) |
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| A lizard our son spotted in the cactus garden |
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| Front entrance of Restaurant Corona, where we had lunch |
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| A poster describing Restaurant Corona (or Crown Restaurant) |
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| Down to Queen Marie's garden |
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| A waterfall in the University Botanical Garden |
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| A pregnant cat we came across in Queen Marie's garden |
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| My wife squealed with delight when she came upon this whimsy in Queen Marie's garden |
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| View from Queen Marie's palace |
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| A Red Bud tree in Queen Marie's garden, looking down from her palace |
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| Another Red Bud tree (or was it the same one?) |
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| The Restaurant Corona from Queen Marie's palace (brightened, near the center) |
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| Religious icons and other objects on sale near Queen Marie's Palace (opportunities to buy icons abound in Bulgaria) |
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| A commercial icon as well (read the small print in the image to the right); our waiter let us take the glass home with us |
