Cappadocia

I recently returned from a fantastic trip to Turkey with my parents, aunt, and cousin. After arriving at Sirkeci Station, the last stop of the Orient Express, we embarked on a whirlwind tour of Istanbul, the cave cities of Cappadocia, and the ancient cities near Izmir. 

Our time in Cappadocia was my favorite, it wasn't very crowded, the weather was nice, and the things we saw were incredible. Cappodocia is located in the center of the country, a few hours away by plane.  

Göreme

We stayed in a hotel with rooms built into the rock like a cave. It was a very nice hotel. Though the weather was pleasant during our visit, apparently the summers heat and winter cold can be very extreme. By building homes (or hotels) inside of rocks, as has been done there for centuries, people are able to keep indoor temperatures reasonable without absurd heating/cooling bills. 

Rose Valley

Cave churches and once inhabited homes, now high up on the cliffsides, are scattered along the 4 kilometer hike through the valley.  Later in the day, we visited the Göreme Open Air Museum, a walk through park with frescoed churches from the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries.

Rock Castles: Üchişar & Ortisar

When the caves were no longer used for human inhabitation, they were transformed into pigeon homes. The pigeons provided farmers with fertilizer.

Pigeon Homes

Can you guess? This was Pigeon Valley. 

Kaymakli Underground City

The Kaymakli Underground City was created by the Hittites and expanded thereafter. The Underground Cities, of which there are 36 in Cappadocia, were not intended for permanent habitation, but were used to escape marauding armies that passed through. They fell into disuse and was forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1900s.

Kaymakli is believed to have been able to sustain between 3,500-5,000 people for an extended period of time. It extends 8 floors down, about 360 feet into the earth. The nature of the rock allowed for kitchen fires to burn without windows, much of the smoke being absorbed by the soft stone.

-       Entrances to the underground were scattered throughout the surface city, often in the back of barns or cellars. Several layers of doors, sealable by large stones that could only be rolled from one side provided additional security. Water was brought up by a well and ventilation was provided by several shafts. There were rooms for food storage, religious worship, ill or infirm people, the dead, in addition to sleeping and living rooms.

Inside the Kaymakli

Here you can see where tools were used to cut into the rocks.
The depression I'm sitting in was used to store pottery-probably with food.

Avanos 

Avanos was the center of pottery making for the Hittites. The Hittites lived in what is modern day Turkey during the Bronze Age from the 18th to 11th century BC. They recorded information from their daily lives on clay tablets and some of the techniques they developed for pottery making are still used today. 

The pitcher with the large hole in the center was used for wine drinking during parties. Men would carry it around by sliding an arm through the hole and tilting it to pour. 

Pasabag, or Monks Valley, contains some of the most famous fairy chimney rocks in the region. Churches are built into the rocks and St. Simeon, it is believed, lived here in seclusion in the 5th century

Dervent Rock Formations-can you see the camel on the left? 

Carpet Industry
Despite looking forward to a break from anything to do with carpets or weaving, we visited a carpet weaving co-op in Cappadocia. It is organized by the government and private industry. It was really impressive work they're doing: they preserve traditional skills, provide training, create jobs, make a profit, and educate tourists. The facility is excellent, with all sorts of demonstrations. I would love something like this in Chiprovtsi!

Evil Eyes
The tree below is decorated with nazars, trinkets that are believed to protect against the evil eye. The evil eye curse is attracted to and absorbed by the nazar before it can cause harm. I've seen nazars everywhere during my time in Turkey-on jewelry, airplanes, walls, etc.

I also rode a camel. 

New Volunteer Training Sessions

The new group of volunteers arrived in Bulgaria at the end of March. There are about 40 of them (my group had 80) and they will be in training until mid-June. My second time meeting was on Wednesday this week. It was strange being at a pre-service training event as a speaker. My arrival doesn’t seem that long ago, but, at the same time, I feel so different than I did then. The first session I participated in was on PACA tools and Bulgarian municipalities. PACA – participatory analysis for community action – tools are what the Peace Corps uses in training us for development work and the government stuff I shared was mostly anecdotal. This time I talked about tourism development.

Afterwards, I rode the old, green bus with the mildewy seats and heavy gasoline odor to Kravoder to visit my host family. I feel bad, they are so wonderful, but I don’t get to visit nearly often enough. I had these illusions that I’d have all sorts of free time in the Peace Corps during which I’d knit gifts for friends, visit my host family, write essays, and perfect the conditional mood cases of Bulgarian grammar. This, alas, has not come to pass and I hardly feel that I have time to keep up with my normal tasks at site. Kravoder was great, of course.

On Thursday, some of the volunteers from my group who work on tourism related activities held a tourism workshop in Vratsa. Our goal was to try to define what our role would be with the new group and as a volunteer ‘taskforce’ in the year to come. I think it was productive. We came away with a few really good ideas and plans on how to combine and streamline our efforts to make tourism development at our various sites more effective and collaborative: sharing brochure templates, creating a database for online tour vendors, combining eco-trail maps for a hiking book, etc. Hopefully some of these will work out. 

Easter weekend: 22-25 April

Egg painting at Tsetka's

It was a great weekend! Friday and Monday were official holidays so Chiprovtsi was full of visiting family and friends visiting. I exchanged a lot of eggs, ate a lot of Kozunak (special Easter sweetbread), and danced horo, a lot.

I dyed eggs with Tsetska and her kids on Saturday. To prepare, she woke up early and hard boiled 75 eggs! According to tradition, she dyed the first egg red then touched the wet egg on the foreheads and cheeks of Mitko, Eli, and I, leaving dye marks on our skin. Cracking of eggs against each other is another tradition. Whoever has the egg that lasts the longest will be the healthiest in the coming year. 

Kozunak picture from: The Mini Food Blog

On Monday, I went on a hike and picnic with friends to a place in the mountains near Zhelezna. There is a fire pit, water spring, and a few tables-everything we needed. We grilled sausages, ate leftover lamb offal casserole, and made s'mores. 

View from Bunara: Zhelezna is the village in the foreground, then Chiprovtsi, then the mountains that border Serbia.

Building a fire and s'mores

Holy Thursday

Egg Painting at Katerina House

What a crazy busy day! After running-love love love that spring is here and I can run again- I went to work, then to Elsa’s for piano lessons and lunch, then to the school for an Easter Recital, then egg painting at Katerina Kushta (the Ethnographic Museum), then tree planting near the Cultural Center, then home for a skype meeting about law school, then church with Yulka. And, the holidays haven’t even really begun. 

Easter Recital at Petar Parchevich...they look so happy :)

Attending church Thursday evening was interesting. The services aren’t like the Catholic or ecumenical Christian services I’ve attended before. It is much more mystical and enchanting. I entered church with Yulka and her friend; people were already standing inside and appeared to have been there for a while. There are no pews, but some chairs had been placed near the sides for the elderly.  The smell of flowers and incense is strong. In the front, is a gold trimmed screen that acts as a sort of room divider between the church and the altar. It is decorated with elaborate icons: Jesus, angels, saints, demons, dragons, etc. Dozens of beeswax candles (you purchase these when you enter) are placed on stands near the screen. The effect is very beautiful.

Following Yulka’s example, I bought two candles, lit them, placed one in a stand, and held the other until it burned down. We stood to one side and faced forward. The priest chanted prayers nearly the whole time, occasionally with replies, sometimes not. It seemed to be a very private sort of affair, not like a sermon. People came and went throughout. Some made large displays of placing candles in the front, bowing and crossing themselves repeatedly, others just stood holding their candles and listening. After about an hour, we left and sat on a bench outside church to people watch and gossip. 

Month of Cleaning

April is the month of cleanup events: the Mayor published an announcement requesting residents clean the streets in front of their homes prior to town holidays, my coworkers in the municipality cleaned the center of town last Friday, Bulgaria declared the 9th as a national clean up day, Earth Day is this Friday, and other various clean up campaigns are going on throughout the country. Today, I helped a the 6th graders from Petar Parchevich School collect litter from a mountainside east of town. 

Church bells

The church bells of Vaznesenie Hristov Orthodox Church can be heard all over town and act as a sort of announcement system when someone dies. People hear them and then ask around to find out who has died. This week, they’ve been ringing a lot. Demographically, there are going to be quite a few funerals in Chiprovtsi, but we’ve had one every day this week, with two on Wednesday.

When I was at Yulka’s on Saturday for Lazarovden, I sat wither her mother for quite some time and listened to her describe her Lazarovden memories from childhood. She didn’t make complete sense all of the time, but also didn’t seem of particularly bad health. She told me how excited she had been for the holiday and was so happy the weather was nice enough for her to sit outside and watch. On Tuesday, I attended her funeral. It was such a surprise. My condolences to her family and friends. 

Lazarovden: 16 April

On the Saturday before Easter, Bulgarians celebrate Lazarovden (St. Lazarus Day). On this day, young girls (Lazarki), wearing traditional costume, go from house to house carrying baskets decorated with flowers and sing the traditional ‘Lazarki’ song. In return, they are given eggs, coins, and candy. I spent the morning of Lazarovden with Yulka, handing out eggs to the Lazarki. 

Belasitsa

I spent this past weekend helping at a camp organized by PCVs from Bansko and Kolarova. The camp was at Hizha (hut) Belasitsa in the far southwest corner of Bulgaria—about 8 hours by bus from Chiprovtsi (if a direct one existed).

Learning about their national parks

There were about 40 kids, aged 8-12, at the camp, half from the ski-resort town of Bankso, the other half from a village near Petrich; plus, a group of 11th grade students from the Eko Club in Razlog, adults from Bansko, National Park Pirin, and Koloravo, and 6 PCVs. Everyone except for the PCVs slept in the “Hut.” We slept in tents a couple hundred yards away. Although much warmer than Chiprovtsi and comfortable during the day, it became very cold at night. I slept in all of the clothes I’d packed, plus two sleeping bags and a liner.

With some of the kids from the village near Petrich

Matt and Grant did a great job with the camp. We helped start things off the first day with an America parks and outdoor activity presentation. Each of the PCVs had prepared a few slides on a national park and an activity we enjoy to do outdoors: Atchafalaya Swamp, Appalachian Trail and Grand Canyon, ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, and fishing.

Риболов was my unorganized outdoor activity

The first night was  “American night.” Held around a campfire near our tents, we made s’mores for all the kids and then made our best attempt at singing with Ben on the guitar. The next night was “Bulgarian night,” where the kids sang traditional songs—two even had costumes—followed by Horo dancing around the restaurant. 

Huts & Villas

Mountain Hut "Belasitsa"

The commonly accepted translations for mountain accommodations in Bulgaria are, in my opinion, seriously misleading. The mountain “huts” have little in common with what I think of when I hear “hut.” The one in Belasitsa had an outdoor play area, bus parking, rooms with in suite bathroom/showers, a restaurant/café open all day with plenty of presentation space for 40 kids, and wireless internet. Villas, on the other hand, are typically small, family owned, rustic, cabins used for storing supplies for summer picnics or garden work, especially if cultivated land is located a distance from town. They might have tables, chairs, cutlery, etc and space for a few people to sleep in case of rain, a long day of work, or an especially draining na gosti. 

Villa

This past weekend I went to Tsetska’s villa for a day of eating, chatting, and playing with Mitko and Ellie. It was great. I introduced them to the awesomeness of piggy back rides and spinning (where you take their hands and spin so they are lifted off the ground) and they kept me busy most of the afternoon

Salads and Rakia

During the day, the men grilled a ton of different types of meat-not just the kebabches and kyufteti. There were also several types of salad dishes and sides. I brought a wheatberry-chickpea salad. I was pretty pleased with myself about it.  I’d been looking for chickpeas for a while, but had been unsuccessful in any of the grocery stores. I found them by chance for 4 lev/kilo at the bazaar near the bus stop in Montana. FYI: 1 kilo of dried chickpeas=A LOT of chickpeas.

Visitors during lunch

After soaking and cooking, I had plenty for a huge salad as well as about 4 cups of hummus. I discovered that if I put them through a juicer, they won’t turn to juice, but be ground up super fine. Twice makes store quality hummus. It was the first time Tsetska and her friends had eaten chickpeas (except for the one who worked in Spain for several years, he immediately recognized garbanzo beans). 

Svrachi Dol and Degeneration

Illian, Palma, 11 kids from Petar Parchevich, and I hiked to Svrachi Dol, a rest area of covered picnic tables, drinkable spring, and stone fireplaces built by a group of volunteers from Chiprovtsi—a very cool example of local initiative and volunteerism. Along the way we picked up trash and chatted about plans for Earth Day.

Rest time at Svrachi Dol

While taking a break in one of the shelters we played Degeneration, an awesome game Raf, a volunteer in Bregovo, introduced me to after the 20 Day of Service Project. I’ve played it in Bulgarian with a group of 6th grade girls, in English with my very mixed (in ages and abilities) adult advanced class, and in a funny English/Bulgarian mix during a na gosti with volunteers and Bulgarians.

The rules of play are super easy. To play, you need to have medium sized group of people (even numbers are best), scrap paper, a pen, and something to watch time on. The best number is 6 or 8 participants partnered into three or four teams of two. If there is an odd number, pair people up to make 3 teams. Each person should write different words or phrases on three scraps of paper. Without showing anyone, these should be folded and placed in a hat or bag in the middle.  

There are three rounds. In the first round, a player draws a slip of paper and tries to describe the word to his teammate/s to guess without using the word itself (kind of like Taboo). Each team has 90 seconds to guess as many words as they can. Each word successfully guessed is worth 1 point and the paper on which it is written is left out of the hat until the end of the round.

Then, the paper slips are placed back and the second round begins. The second round proceeds in the same fashion except each turn lasts only 60 seconds and now NO words are allowed, only actions, like charades. The third round is also 60 seconds, and allows only one word explanations.  During each turn, a player can ‘pass’ if they don’t know a word or don’t have faith in their partner’s ability to guess. This is placed back into the hat for the next player’s turn.

For example, if my word is airplane, in the first round I might say, “I flew in this to Bulgaria;” in the second round I might put my arms out and make flying motions; in the third round, I might say “Lufthansa.” 

Instead of kissing babies...

Local elections will be held in municipalities and villages around Bulgaria this autumn. The ‘all politics is local’ phrase seems to apply quite well here. Chiprovtsi is politically active and I’ve found many people ready to talk politics, already analyzing who the potential candidates will be and giving me summaries of past mud-slinging election seasons.

The super-affordable (3 Leva—about $1.70) Veselin Marinov concert held in the auditorium of the cultural center last Friday was one of what I’m told will become many sponsored events in the lead up to the elections.

Whatever the reason or sponsor, it was great to see the auditorium in use (the last time was during the 5-6 September celebrations); and, of course, to go to a concert in Chiprovtsi! Between songs, one of his dancers brought him a basket of flowers. He read the attached card to the audience: well wishes from a political party in town…

Roman forts & Sheep yogurt

A few from the villa. The white church in the background is in Zhelzna.
Chiprovtsi is unseen, but several kilometers to the right. 

This weekend was fantastic. So happy Spring is here! I didn’t think the winter in Bulgaria was as awful as I had expected, but it was still pretty tough: the days were short, it was cold everywhere, and I caught pretty much every cold that came around. This weekend was a reminder of how great things can be. On Saturday I walked to Zhelezna (its name means ‘iron’ in Bulgarian), a village down the road from Chiprovtsi. There, I met with Palma, a teacher from Petar Parchevich, and the school director. We spent the day walking, picnicking at the director’s villa, and hiking up a mountain to an old Roman lookout post.

Roman wall

According to Director Trencheva, there are six such Roman ruins on mountain tops in the municipality and it took 7 minutes for a message from Belogradchik to reach Rome via smoke signals-a distance of about 1000 miles by foot on today’s roads or 550 miles by air. The ruins we hiked to are not reachable by path, announced by sign, or maintained by any park service, they just exist in the woods.  It’s incredible: after 2000 years, these rocks still stand in the places where they were set so long ago. Roman coins were found near one of the old walls a few years back, but it looked like the only recent visitors were some wild boars digging for food.


We grilled sausages, fetched water from a shallow well with a gourd, drank yellow rakia aged in hollowed wood, and her dog ate a bar of soap. It was lovely.

On Sunday, after the market (which was finally busy again!) I went over to Didi’s to make yogurt from sheep’s milk. First, we heated the fresh milk, then mixed it with some old yogurt (3.6% Бор Чвор is also acceptable to use as a starter), and poured the warm mix into clean jars. We wrapped them in towels to slow the cooling and after 3 or so hours—sheep yogurt. In the meantime, we ate mekitzi with cream from the boiled milk and I helped make devilled eggs. In the afternoon, I went with Jordanka on a long hike to discuss the million different ideas floating around for projects with kids and the environment and to see some different trails I might use for running. The eating cream on fried dough must end soon so the marathon training can begin! 

World Water Day/Compost Kick-off/Carnival!

1st Day of 20 Days of Service Event: Petar Parchevich School, Chiprovtsi

A prep session with the 7th grade over coffee. They helped during the event and were awesome.

For me, not speaking or having too much of a role during the event is part of what made it successful; and, I'm sure, easier on everyone else as well not having to listen closely to decipher my Bulgarian.

Palma, the English teacher emceed during the Q&A on water facts, the 7th graders asked questions and kept score, the Deputy Mayor helped with crowd control when the enthusiasm of the competing teams got to be a bit wild, Tsetska oversaw the race to sort trash, and Neda, Tsetska, and Raf judged the Carnivale costumes. 

Ben, PCV from Svishtov demonstrating how to use a plastic jug to make a mask

During a prep day at the school. Foreground:Palma and Dani in masks; Background: Tsetska and I reviewing World Water Day quiz questions. 

Check out the awesome wooden composter. Thanks Stevie and Bombata! 

The students of Petar Parchevich School were divided into 5 teams made up of 1st-8th grade.  There were about 110 students. 

Participation and enthusiasm was amazing. They had fantastic answers-especially to the open ended questions like: how many ways can you save water in your daily routines? 

Timed race to sort trash: plastic, glass, paper, or compost? The winning team received Mardi Gras beads. At school today, some of the kids were still wearing them. 

Awards for best costumes

Clean up.

Ryan, PCV from Trigrad, Ben PCV from Svishtov, me, School Director Trencheva, PCV Tom from Nikopol, PCV Raf from Bregovo, English teacher Palma, Petar Parchevich Admin Tsveti, Neda from the Municipality