5 Cities 5 Days

Last week I went to five cities in five days. Veliko Turnovo, Tsenevo, Rousse, Razgrad, and Shumen. I visited volunteers and talked about the projects they're working on and met with their English clubs or classes in some cases. That's the days. The nights were a little more interesting. Read on.

My visit to Veliko Turnovo was the tail end of a birthday party, but I stayed an extra night and had dinner with a volunteer there at Mustang food. A place with not so good American food. The volunteer told me to come back in a year and it would taste much better. I guess it depends on how long you've been away from the states. We talked about being a PCV and I got some good advice.

In Tsenevo I visited two PCV's, Sarah and Johney. Johney is trying to get funding to make a park around a local pond. He's got all the info and blue prints on how to make it. When communism fell a lot of projects that had been started were never finished because there was no money for them any more. You can see a lot of half built stadiums and buildings in a lot of cities.

Next it was off to Rousse where I helped Don, a youth developement volunteer with his English classes. It was a pretty informal class and I just walked around and talked with groups of students. It was fun. I almost wish I had the oppurtunity to teach a class a week. The night before Don took me out to see what the night life in Rousse had to offer. It was a pretty crazy night. We met this Brit and he kept buying us drinks. We ended up going to a strip joint, but it sucked so we went to another one called Moulin Rouge. We managed to make it back home before five am just after we got back from a brothel. That's right I went to my first brothel in Bulgaria. Am I a man now dad? Actually we didn't do anything. The only thing I remember there was the toilet. A little too much mastika(licorice alcohol) for me. Man, Don's a pretty crazy guy when he gets drunk. You'd never know it by looking at him.

The next night in Razgrad another guy kept buying me and Jason(a PCV) drinks. This guy was probably from the mafia. My drink of choice that night was Bailey's. A double shot of that costs 8 lev. Which is pretty expensive here considering a beer costs 1 lev and the average income is around 200 lev. I held my own, but Jason got pretty drunk. Maybe a little too drunk. The mafia guy continued to buy us drinks and tried to say that Russia would beat us if there was a war. After a while when we started talking to someone else he kept saying, "Fuck America." Some people like to say that here just to get a reaction out of us. On one of my first nights in Bulgaria I met a guy who said Osama Bin Laden is his best friend. They just want to see how we react. I don't fall into the trap. The night before in Rousse the Britt was trying to argue that Peace Corps is equaitable to the Nazi youth. They're just messing with us. None the less the mafia guy and the Britt before him kept buying us drinks. There was a lot of Nahsdrahvay's(toats) or nice drive ways as some like to say.

If you think the week so far was pretty exciting let me tell you about Shumen. I hung out with some pretty loud and crazy guys there. I met with three volunteers who live in Shumen and three others who came to celebrate one of the volunteers birthdays. They brought a Euro volunteer from Denmark with them. She couldn't understand why one of the volunteers had an American flag hanging in his living room. Mark, the PCV, said sarcastically and appropriately, "Well before I lived in Bulgaria, I lived in America." He he! That was the end of that conversation.

We got take out chinese(really good this time). You know I have had more chinese food here then I do in the states. Everybody wants chinese when we go out. Oh well! So yeah...we drank a lot of course. There was a little nudity and a lot of odd dancing. I have lots of pictures, but I'm not sure you want to see them. Mark has a hooka pipe so we smoked mint hooka. That stuffs pretty good. I'd only done it one time before at a hooka bar in Sacramento. We finally got to the disco in town and were able to break a few bottles on the floor before we left. I went to bed at three and woke up at five to take the only train at six am. Eight hours later I made it to Plovdiv and took a bus to Bratsigovo. I am now safe at home. Whew!

I took so many buses, trains, not planes, but automobiles last week I am surprised I made it to all my destinations without incident. I did have some close calls though. I didn't get on my first bus because I was going to Veliko Turnovo and the sign on the bus said Rousse. I didn't know it stopped in Turnovo until the bus driver told me to get on the bus. And then when I was leaving Shumen I couldn't get out of the building where I stayed with a volunteer. The door was locked. Finally somone came with a key. I thought I might have to break a window.

You can find info about all the cities I visited in the right hand column under "Cities I've visited in Bulgaria."