skopje

Skopje is a strange little city. It kind of reminds me of Disney world because everything has just been built within the past three years. They have these huge statues of Alexander the great and his father and women pregnant with future soldiers. Their "old town" looks like the set for a movie and all of the huge, new buildings are built to look like ancient Rome. Its all quite bizarre, but in twenty years I think it will be quite spectacular. Macedonia is just trying to rebuild their history, but every eastern European country claims that the history comes from their own country. Supposedly Alexander the great was born in Macedonia, but greece claims he belongs to them. Same with all food, spices, rakia - its this huge fight over history, and each country strongly believes everything comes from them. Poor Macedonia is barely seen as a country anymore. Greece won't accept them into the European union until they change their name to be part of Greece. Its all quite silly and a bit sad. But my host family is very cool. They picked us up in the middle of Skopje and announced they had free tickets to a concert. It was traditional Macedonian music (which sounds exactly the same as traditional Bulgarian music) and it was very good. Then they took us home and fed us delicious traditional Macedonian food. (guess what it tasted like..) They have a very loud little three year old girl and a nice little boy. They are both clay jewelry artists. I find it strange to be hosted so well and not do any work in return. Its an unsettling feeling, but vidhe says I will get used to it. He has a friend my age here in Macedonia and we met her for drinks last night. Tonight is Halloween!! ..Not that that means much here, but she said she would bring us to some sort of halloween gathering.

Front yard

Baba making bouquets for market tomorrow

hello macedonia

The farm in ovchi kladenets was not what I expected and I really wanted to go to Croatia, so yesterday I left ovchi and took a few busses back to sofia. Met up with a friend named vidhe who just happens to be hitching through croatia and couch surfing the whole way. So now I am in scopje Macedonia! We had a few good rides and made it through the boarder pretty easily. Macedonia is quite beautiful already and last night I met a lot of really cool people at a couch surfing gathering at a bar. Such a great, friendly community of people to know.

Sofia this morning 

decision making, family reunions and plovdiv

I had a plane ticket to Rome yesterday, but I decided to stay in Bulgaria! I had been second guessing myself about Rome for a while, especially after having such a fantastic time at Elly and danchos. I just really didn't want to leave Bulgaria quite yet, especially to go to such an touristy, expensive place. So as I was stressing over decision making, I got a workaway message from a woman who lives in a small village in south eastern europe called ovchi kladenets. She wanted me to help her plan a Halloween party! So I decided, after much stress, that I would cancel my Italy trip (didn't get the 92 euros back for my plane ticket) and leave Sofia. But first, I stayed in Sofia with Adelaide and Elisabeth again, which was great. Arriving from veliko turnovo (which is the coolest city in Bulgaria) I felt very giddy because I suddenly processed that I was about to hang out with my sister in Bulgaria. So bizarre and cool. It was very exciting, so exciting that we some how locked ourselves out of the apartment and into the apartment building. It ended up being a not so great night of homelessness, but our friend, who we met in varna and now lives in Sofia, let us stay with him. So that was nice, but then we spent the whole day not really knowing how we would get back in. Finally hired a lock smith to break in and all was well. Then had a mini family reunion with simmi, Alex, bambi and milen. It was so great! And so unexpected! We are all in Sofia for independant reasons. We hung out with them four nights in a row, each night later than the last. I'll admit I was the first to pass out every time. The other night I stole a blanket off the back of an outside restaurant in my sleep. Simmi tried to stop me but I guess he just couldn't. So it was all fun, especially elisabeth's birthday in the tavern that is only lit with candles.

Family!

Free Sofia Tour

Arriving in Sofia 

Adelaide

Elisabeth and I also got an article written about us when we went on the free Sofia tour. I talked to the guide quite a bit and ended up telling him about our family history. He was really excited about it and asked to write an article:
http://freesofiatour.com/blog/exciting-guests-at-free-sofia-tour

So that was pretty cool, but I'm not really that big of a fan of Sofia, from my few short visits there. Too flat and city like. So instead of waiting for my arrival date to the farm in ovchi kladenets, I dragged Elisabeth to Plovdiv to stay in a hostel and visit the second largest city in Bulgaria . It was pouring rain, the worst weather I'd seen in Bulgaria yet, but it cleared up in time for us to see the sun set over the beautiful old town of Plovdiv. Our friend, christian, who I met in veliko turnovo, was staying in a hostel close by so we hung out with him the whole night, before his night train to istanbuil. The hostel we found while walking on the rainy streets of the old town is called the hiker's hostel and it is quite a unique place. As we were heading out for a walk the owners held up a 10 liter bottle of home made rakia for later. We had a fun hang out with everyone from the hostel that night. Elisabeth and I sang Bulgarian songs and ukulele songs and drank rakia with everyone. Woke up this morning to this lovely view from our room:

Excited to explore today.

Sneaking into abandoned communist building

One of the coolest things I've ever seen!!

goodbye voditsa, hello velico turnova

I have now departed from voditsa after a wonderous time with doncho and Elly and all their pets and everyone else that was there. I've brought along my new friend, Reuben, who has lived in Ireland the past few years, but recently got arrested, so moved to bulgaria to live with his mother for a bit. So this should be fun. In the last few days I was in voditsa I stacked lots of wood, drank lots of beer and wine, played lots of ukulele, pet lots of cats and dogs, laughed lots of times and was pleasantly sad to say goodbye to Doncho and Elly. It was all great fun, but now I'm in a lovely, modern, communal seeming hostel in velico turnovo called hostel mostel. Reuben is taking his first shower in months and I am, as usual, marveling at the fact that we actually got here. I'm always amazed when I actually make it to my planned destination. This looks like a really cool city.

new RED sweater

Bought a nice sweater today from the second hand stand at the market. I feel bad how cheep everything is here.. It kind of feels like I'm stealing.. But its awesome because I can afford everything. This is where all broke drop out college students should go..

more voditsa and osikovo

On Saturday Elly and I got to stacking wood and putting up a plastic siding to act as a temporary wall around the barn for the coming winter. We were being quite productive, Dancho included, when a couple of Dancho's friends came over with beer to drink. I realized it was the weekend so it only seemed a bit irregular and have a beer at 11:00am. But then we had another, and then Dancho's friends went to the store to get more, then Elly put on her Queen record and we didn't ever really end up stopping the party. It was all very funny and Elly kept insisting that this wasn't normal. We decided we should go to the one bar in town later that night and see what was happening. Elly and I, being the two of three girls that appeared out that night, got danced with many a time, to the amusement of all the village men. They were especially excited to see a new face in town, which doesn't happen too often, so all of my drinks were paid for, no questions asked. But that doesnt really mean much because each beer is about 80 cents... So we had a great time at the bar, ate lots of food (Bulgarians never drink without eating), and went home at a reasonable hour. Well we were all pretty useless the next day, but some English friends, Molly and Guy, came over and I had a nice afternoon playing music with them. The next day I had another day off and biked to their village, Osikovo, which is considerably smaller and about 8km away. Instead of four shops and a bar it only has one shop that is open a couple of hours a day, whenever the owner isn't hearding her sheep. It is also quite a bit higher than voditsa, so the ride back is much more enjoyable. I hiked around a bit in the hills of Osikovo and found an old, abandoned school with beautiful, big rooms that had great acoustics. I started singing to myself, quite loud, when I heard a Bang! and a guy hastily walked in, smiled at me, said hi and went on his way. I was a bit confused and startled, so I left. I stopped by Molly and Guy's house when I saw Guy gardening in the back. They invited me in for tea and Guy showed me his magnificent Chinese harp that his friend had basically given to him. I got to play around with it and they showed me their humble summer abode and then I was on my way. Today was quite rainy and I think everyone was a bit tired, but dancho and Elly finalized a buy on something that resembles a house but is more like a very large future project. They have lots of ideas, but are thinking of making some sort of hostel\shop\kitchen sort of place eventually. I suppose I will need to come back and help out! Now we are about to eat yummy food.

Dancho

Kitchen

Yard

More yard

Chickens