Down on the Farm

Like a lot of people around the world, I’ve been rather busy. Busy not directly because of the difficult circumstances of the world economy, but certainly because these difficulties have made me think a bit and partly it’s about how to survive.

This was are coincidentally related to some ideas I got from a report I read on the BBC internet site about development in Eastern Europe.

The reporter spoke to an old man who told him that he was so happy they had a supermarket and he didn’t have to grow tomatoes any more.

It occurred to me that this old man had better have a source of income, because the problem with buying the tomatoes from the supermarket is that you need money.

And of course somewhere somebody has to actually grow the tomatoes as they don’t appear there just by magic.

You might say what it has got to do with life in Bulgaria?

Well the fact is that Bulgaria is very much an agricultural country, and enormous numbers of people have smallholdings where they grow considerable amounts of food.

In my own case, for example, we grow mainly apples and walnuts and this year the crop has been bad, in fact completely disastrous.

However, there are a a couple of other things I think are worth looking at  because they are about how to deal with the local circumstances.

Last week, and one of the reasons why I’ve been so busy, my mother-in-law phoned up to remind me that it was time to collect the wheat.

Now, does this mean that I’m a farmer?

No, no I’m not.  I live right in the middle of Sofia.

But the fact is, that like many other people in Bulgaria, my family, is having land returned that was collectivized under the communist regime.

What happened was something like this:

My father-in-law and his family were large landowners and their land was turned into a collective farm.

That land still exists and that farm is still working but the arrangement that we have made is that in return for having the land to work the the farmers give us a certain amount of wheat, every year.

Now it’s time to collect it.

Is this a good idea?

It all depends on the wheat - the quantity and the quality.

I’ll tell you how it goes.

Today is the 100th Independence Day from the “Turkish Yoke” - that is, the domination of the Ottoman Empire.

As I promised I’m going to describe some of the places I’ve been to in Bulgaria.

I’m starting with Albena

If you’d like to find out more about the Black Sea Coast seaside resort of Albena, then click on my Albena Page

Shopska Salad

The holidays are over and summer is slowly coming to a close and autumn is coming to Sofia, so it’s really time to get back to the ordinary, everyday life and also to tell you more about that everyday life on my blog.

Of course, holidays are a time for reflection and so I’ve had a chance to think about some of the things I might be talking about things from the past, like food and customs and also ideas that I got from my holiday when I went to different parts of Bulgaria.

And on the personal front I can tell you that everything in my house is eerily quiet - quiet as can be.

There’s a very simple reason for this. My eleven year old son, is not here.

He’s gone to his summer camp. Maybe he thought he was going to have a last minute pre-school holiday but it turns out that he’s really having to work quite hard.

Every evening he phones to tell us of the latest programme he’s written in C++. The reason for this is that his summer camp is the Informatics Summer Camp of the Sofia Maths School.

As I think I told you, Alex has been lucky enough and hard working enough to qualify by examination to go to the Sofia Maths School.

I’m not a great mathematician although I very much enjoyed maths at school but I think I can tell you that Bulgaria is one of the stronger countries of the world in mathematics, so to go to the main maths school in the country is quite an achievement.

How he’ll get on I don’t know but as far as the Informatics summer camp is concerned, although there’s only one other fifth grader, some of the older students are just beginners too.

Alexander actually starts his new school proper in a couple of weeks and is naturally a little apprehensive. Still, like any parent I hope he’ll do well.

One other point is that, as you can imagine, he speaks very good English and has been a bit frustrated at his previous school where he had to attend an English class as this was the only language taught.

At his new school he’s going to take up Russian so I hope that in the coming years he’ll be able to develop his Russian and Spanish as well as his Bulgarian which should give him a good background in languages which he seems to like.

Anyway, that’s the family info for the moment but among other things that I decided, as I said to look at every day things like the way of eating here in Bulgaria.

As most people who have visited different countries know, it’s not just a matter of having different kinds of food, but also the order, for example, in which people eat things or how it’s different from place to place.

As an example, when I lived in China as well as having to get pretty adept with chopsticks I lived mainly in areas where rice wasn’t eaten as much as noodles and steam bread so the idea that everybody eats rice all the time was a mistake.

Here in Bulgaria there was a little bit of a shock because as well as widespread continental customs there are some specific ones: Every main meal begins with salad which means a dish - not just bits of greenery.

There are many salads available but I must confess I’m rather lazy and look through the list of all the salads and, like many people, I simply come back to what you might call the national favourite which is the Shopska salad.

Shopska salad is named after some of the people who live around Sofia who are known as the Shoppi or Shop who have a particular dialect with their own vocabulary and expressions and have been around for a long time.

Shopska is the traditional salad which is made primarily of tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and sometimes, usually, with one or more olives and it’s all topped with a generous helping of brine cheese.

This cheese in Bulgaria is called Sirene, more likely called feta in some countries but here it’s kept in water as it’s often bought rather over salted and gradually the water dilutes the salt content and you get exactly the taste you want.

So, the Shopska salad is the way to start the meal.

As time went by on my holiday I realised that I was on holiday in Albena so it was time to think about places in Bulgaria to talk about and as Albena begins with an “A” I came up with the idea of trying an A-Z 0f Bulgarian destinations.

It’s not quite possible to do this because the Cyrillic alphabet which I’ve talked about before doesn’t quite correspond to the Latin alphabet that many of us are used to.

It’s my intention to build up a survey of places that I’ve been to in Bulgaria with plenty of photographs so that anyone who wants information of places to go in Bulgaria and my particular take on them can get some more information from this blog.

I haven’t forgotten about the wedding - in fact I’ve been reminded that I’m not up to date on this. My excuse is that I’ve been waiting to prepare some photographs. Still, that’s for another time.

One last thing, you can’t really talk about salad here without considering rakia - so that’s for another timeas well as the drink goes with the food.

After his triumph at Wimbledon which I reported earlier he has now won the US Open Junior Boys title.

Number 3 seed, Dimitrov, finally beat the home favourite, American Devin Britton 6-4, 6-3.

Now he’s turning professional let’s wish him well.

Bulgaria is celebrating the 123rd anniversary since the unification of the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia.

As the Novinite News Agency Reports:

“On September 5, 1885, the Principality of Bulgaria unified with the autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Roumelia, a few years after its liberation from Ottoman yoke.”

Bulgarian e-card

Weddings, food, holidays, dentists, land clearance, property - so much to talk about and all happening all at once here in Bulgaria as elsewhere.

But just before I can recover from my holiday and get round to talking about everyday life some more I thought I’d better respond to something I heard from one of my readers the other day, which was the question of  sending e-cards.

Now, on my blog, I’ve set up a system where anyone who’s interested in Bulgaria can send e-cards - free  with original photos and without advertisements.

Like a lot of webmasters and blogmasters I assumed that it was self evident and easy to do, but it seems that I was wrong!

Part of the problem is that the e-cards are on a photo gallery which has a slightly different way of getting around or navigation than the blog.

I can’t help this because it’s very difficult  to get a photo gallery which has exactly the same appearance and controls as a website or blog and lets you send free e-cards without advertisements and I really want to provide this service for my readers who have an interest in Bulgaria.

So I thought, for this post and this blog I would give a tutorial on exactly how to send a free Bulgarian e-card.

What is an e-card?

Well, an e-card is exactly the way it looks in the picture at the top of my post.

It’s just like a postcard. It has a picture on it. It has some text. It has a stamp but it’s sent electronically so of course an e-card is an electronic card and it has certain advantages over its mail counterpart.

For me, the most important advantage is that it’s reasonably environmentally friendly: No paper means no trees are destroyed, no ships or planes means a better carbon footprint.

And, apart from needing internet access, it’s also free.

And, if you happen to live somewhere where the postal service is not completely reliable or takes a long time, then an e-card is the thing because you can be pretty certain that whoever you send it to will get it exactly when you want - immediately, or you can control it to arrive on a particular day.

One thing to bear in mind is the difference in time zones.

I sometimes send e-cards to a friend in the USA and I try to make sure that they arrive on the right day.

Anyway, I want to explain exaclty how to send a free e-card on my blog.

First of all, just have a look down the side of the blog where it says, “Photos & free e-cards”.

send an e-card

If you click on this, you’ll find yourself in the photo gallery. And there, at the top, it says, “Bulgarian Vistas e-cards”.

bulgarian vistas e-cards

If you click on this, it will give you access to all the photos - at the moment 41 photos in one album, and every time I blog, there’ll be more photos available.

And you can see, at the bottom of the page that you can go through pages 1,2,3, and 4 and you can see thumbnails of all the pictures there and you can see which one you’d like to send.

pages1234

For my example I’ve chosen a picture of the famous saintly brothers, Cyril and Methodius, of Cyrillic Alphabet fame. Their fine statue stands outside the National Library.

Click on the thumbnail, a larger picture will open and this is the e-card to send.

choose picture

If you look at the top right hand corner you’ll and you’ll see a little envelope icon - yes it’s the email icon,

choose email icon

and I’ve made a separate shot so that you can make sure you click on it.

email icon

If you click on the email icon it will open up the page and you’ll be able to fill in the details with your email address, your text and so on.

fill in details

So make sure, any time you think a friend would like to get an e-card from you, with a picture of Bulgaria, that you think of using my free Bulgarian e-card service.

Check the email addresses carefully, typos here can cause trouble later!

Happy posting to all of you, and greetings to all Bulgarian Vistas Blog Readers.

Must have pressed the wrong button or no button at all.

Still, will get back to normal soon - this is the post I wrote

This is a short post in haste as I’m packing for my holiday.

Like most families here, we’re off to the seaside.

We’re going to Albena and I’ll give a report later.

Back in a week or two

A number 11 Trolley Bus on Tsarigradsko Chaussée

I’m a bit behind now because I’ve been getting ready for a wedding.

No, it’s not my wedding I’m married already - just celebrated our 15th anniversary a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been asked to be the Best Man and my wife is going to be Matron of Honour.

This is quite a complicated business here in Bulgaria and I’ll tell you more about it later.

Still one thing I had to do was to go and buy some presents and because this would mean carrying something I decided to go on public transport.

Luckily a trolleybus passes quite near my place and goes almost to the shop where I decided to buy the presents - at Selima Jo - a gift and nic nac shop on Sofia’s poshest street, Vitosha Boulevard.

In  one or two future posts I’ll fill you in  on the wedding system here but this is really finishing looking at public transport, buses, trams and now trolleybuses.

Now as far as trolleybuses are concerned, it’s strange to me that in many of the cities that I’ve lived in, they have disappeared.

I remember when I was younger I used to live in different places with trolleybuses and they’ve gone.

But it’s really quite interesting to see that there are certain very advantageous points about trolleybuses.

One of the most important things to think about in these days when we worry about air-quality, pollution and the ever rising cost of oil products is that they don’t use or at least they don’t directly use oil because they work from a central electricity supply, which can of course be powered in many different ways.

In some countries, they have even managed to power the trolleybuses from wind turbines.

Still, it means that in Sofia the trolleybuses, do not contribute much to the pollution in the air and they don’t use diesel. This means that they are very, very quiet and very, very clean.

Rather like the trams, trollybuses have a fixed route.

They have to follow their overhead cables - which some people find unsightly  - which are attached to the trolley poles which convey the power to the engine - here people call the poles “braces”.

Still. it’s quite interesting that trolleys are a little bit different in that they can actually move quite wide distances sideways and this means that they can come into the kerb and they can stop at the same places at the buses.

So quite often, you’ll have a bus stop, and a trolley stop together.

Bus and trolley stop on on Tsarigradsko Chaussée

Anyway I really like travelling on trolleys as I say, they tend to be very quiet, they run on rubber tyres, and they are ecologically very friendly.

So, I believe that for many cities an integrated transport system should include a trolleybuses.  And indeed that is the case in Sofia and many other cities.

Now my trip was successful, and I was able to buy some presents.

So I suppose in the next couple of posts I’ll be looking perhaps to see about some of the points about weddings in Bulgaria and how they vary here from other places I’ve been to.