We left Tarnovo two days ago, but I’ve yet to catch up on reporting my travels (these posts take a bit of time, you know). But here are some holiday snaps in Tarnovo and surrounding areas.
Our first order of business once we parked the car (some distance from our pension) was to have lunch. While we were waiting, Lubo snapped a selfie of himself, me, and Vassy. This was with a camera, not a cellphone, so Lubo’s clearly experienced with selfies! You can see that Tarnovo, about 2.5 hours from Sofia by car (the country isn’t large), is built on hills:
Now for the menu, the traditional shropska salad to begin (tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers covered with grated local cheese). The quality of the vegetables is very high in this country: the cucumbers are solid, crunchy, and tasty, and the tomatoes very ripe:
And what they call “meatballs,” though they’re usually flat rather than spherical. These, made of pork and veal, were grilled and served with fries covered with cheese:
The castle “Tsarvets” in the distance, the capital of Bulgaria from the late 12th to the late 14th century, was finally successfully besieged by the Ottomans. The fortifications, ideally situated on a hill over a river, had a drawbridge and extensive walls along the cliffs:
The old town below the castle: a very colorful and peaceful place. I suppose it gets touristy in summer, but in October, when the weather was beautiful (tee shirts sufficed), it was wonderful:.
The castle is bedecked with signs like these, which vastly amused Vassy, who said, “What the hell? You’re not allowed to do tai chi on the walls?”
So of course I made them enact two of the dangerous actions:
The world’s most scenic outhouse on the slopes above the river. What a lovely place to excrete!
Below the castle and across the river is a small and colorful part of town where Lubo used to live as a child. The houses are splendid:
and are amply decorated with greenery. Many, such as the owners of this place, grow grapes on the windows, and you can see the ripe bunches hanging below:
According to the sign above the number “26,”, this is an “exemplary home,” although you couldn’t tell it from the outside:
We headed up the hills above the castle, where the dictator of Bulgaria under the Communists had his summer residence. It’s a large and sumptuous place with a fantastic view, and a helicopter pad. (It’s now a fancy hotel.)
The view from the palace: ranges of mountains separate Tarnovo from Sofia, which itself lies in a valley. You can spot the castle to the left of center and down a bit.
Lunchtime! We repaired to a restaurant, picked at random from those in Dictator Town (I can’t remember its name). The quality of the food we had shows that the average standard for a restaurant meal in Bulgaria is very high.
First, soups: yogurt-and-cucumber soup (with ground nuts) for Vassy and tripe soup for Lubo. He loves the stuff, but I couldn’t stand to take even a single bite:
Two kinds of flatbread: garlic bread and cheese-covered bread (you may have guessed by now that many dishes in Bulgaria are sprinkled with the shredded national cheese: there are but two national cheeses, white and orange);
Main dishes included a sausage and pepper casserole with a dollop of yogurt (it’s put on nearly everything in Bulgaria),
A delicious dish of yogurt mixed with fried eggs and other stuff,
And what is called “mishmosh,” a Bulgarian scrambled egg dish that is infinitely better than regular scrambled eggs:
Several local street cats besieged us during the meal, and of course I was a soft touch and fed them a lot (they are always hungry). There were so many that someone at the next table took our picture:
Two of the local felids: a lovely tabby and what must be related to a Turkish Van cat, a white-haired guy with one blue eye and one green (‘odd-eyed’). He’d obviously been scrapping:
Time for walkies. We strolled through the shopping streets, where things are sold to tourists and others. Here, for instance, are a few Bulgarian specialties: old-timey shoes, the local pottery, and handmade silver filigree jewelry:
A custom in Bulgaria is to paste someone’s memorial notice on the door of the house where they lived. The pastings go up at regular and specified intervals post mortem, so a door can have half a dozen notices about a single person. Here’s a typical example, though I can’t read it.
Coffee time, where Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece converge. This quaint place had Greek (or Turkish or Bulgarian) coffee, boiled in brikis, the small copper vessels I’m used to from Greece. The coffee is boiled over very hot sand, and you specify how sweet you want it:
It’s served, as is traditional in Greece, with a spoonful of rose-petal jam immersed in a glass of cold water. You’re supposed to eat the jam and drink the water with your coffee.. We also had a local meringue and a fudge-like substance:
Other things we saw while wandering the town included a bunch of street cats. Look at this little cutie!
And a black kitten I got to hold. Most of the street cats are skittish and won’t allow themselves to be petted, but a few, like this one, like to get fusses, and this one even purred. (I need a damn cat!):
A bunch of pastries for sale, including the ubiquitous and tasty banitsa (layers of filo dough filled with Bulgarian white cheese). One of these and a bottle of boza, a thick, sweetened grayish-brown drink made from wheat, will pretty much fill you up for hours. The banitsas are at lower left, and one of them fills the pan from left to right. They’re huge!
We passed an old Eastern-European made car (I can’t remember where it was from, but I’m sure some readers will know the model). Vassy and Lubo got excited by these, as they apparently predominated in Bulgaria in their youth, but are now rare and have been replaced by Western cars (Lubo has an Audi with automatic transmission). I posed next to it; Vassy told me that they were made of cardboard but I’m pretty sure she was joking:
And a solipsistic end to this post: a selfie through a window, avec chat:
~
Jerry, just the other day I was asking a friend about a way to enhance scrambled eggs. This “mishmosh” looks good! If you know the ingredients, do share.
It’s tomatoes, red peppers, onion, garlicfeta cheese, eggs, olive oil, basilico, parsley and black pepper. I’m horrible with proportions so don’t ask 🙂
“Mishmosh” – there’s an expression in English “mishmash” – I wonder what the connection is?
Looks like my style of eggs, too!
Thanks for that!
Another great photo tour! Aside from getting hungry from the photos they give me a few ideas for recipes at home. The “mishmosh” especially.
I found one recipe here,though it’s apparently served as an omelet. But it’s easy to modify it so it winds up looking like scrambled eggs.
Great, thank you for the link!
I’ll be trying it this weekend.
It looks like my attempt at a Spanish omelette … I shall tell people I’m making mishmosh from now on!
/@
Car may be a Trabant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant
The Trabant was a steel monocoque design with roof, trunk lid,hood,fenders, and doors made of Duroplast. Duroplast was a hard plastic (similar to Bakelite) made of recycled materials: cotton waste from the Soviet Union and phenol resins from the East German dye industry. This made the Trabant the first car with a body made of recycled material [5] and was partially responsible for the misconception that it was made of cardboard.
Yes, I thought that too – the cars East Germans called Rennpappe
Yep, after Die Wende they were suddenly seen in West Germany and beyond. I remember us gazing at them in amazement; in the DDR people were on a multiyear waiting list for them. Apart from its size and fifties modeling, it was easy to recognise by its smell and the sound of the two-stroke engine. It was really as if someone had pulled the handle on a time machine in 1989.
Arguably they were rather durable though because the carrosserie doesn’t rust.
I remember friends who had relatives in DDR who put their kids on waiting lists for cars so they might get one when they were adults!
But isn’t the plastic flammable, making them notoriously dangerous in a wreck? I seem to recall that factoid figuring in some spy novel I once read, though I’m fuzzy on the specifics.
…and then I come across this. Brilliant!
My brother in law is an artist. He did a piece years ago, Eins Werden,
where he took a Trabant and Mercedes sedan from the same era, cut them in half and combined a half from each into a single car. All of the glass was backed by video monitors displaying set pieces of the history of East/West Germany and the fall of The Wall.
He opened with the piece in Berlin, of course.
I watched the video and it is very cool.
🙂
I know nothing of the car, but it looks to be an ideal candidate for an electric conversion. Small, lightweight, presumably not terribly un-aerodynamic…a smallish motor and not-large battery pack would turn one into an ideal around-town car, and should be both inexpensive and straightforward as a conversion project.
The food looks fantastic, save for the eggs (which is my problem, not the chef’s). I don’t often get a chance to drink Turkish-style coffee, but it’s heavenly when I do.
And we seriously need to hook Jerry up with a cat or three.
Now that you’re retiring, Jerry, have you thought about a second career as a cat breeder? With your background as an evolutionary biologist combined with your passion for cats, you’d be an incredibly formidable entrant into the field. Take everything you learned about breeding fruit flies and apply it to cats. And you could even do it as a no-kill shelter, taking in homeless cats to use selectively as breeding stock when they have desirable traits and finding good foreverhomes for all…lots of potential there for something truly special.
b&
“Take everything you learned about breeding fruit flies and apply it to cats.”
Uh huh.
Even if you could get cats to eat the culture media, you’d never be able to jam them into those jars…
Well, maybe not everything.
Did I mention that Jerry’s forgotten more about biology than the rest of us will ever learn? So…what’s a few more things to forget?
b&
Nice tour! The car is an eastern Germany “Traban”.
I know nothing about pottery, but wow, those plates and bowls are beautiful!
Agreed. I would love to get 8 or ten place settings of that.
Sorry, Trabant.
And actually, the body is not in metal, but in duroplast, a kind of plastic reinforced with cloth.
I believe they’re powered by a two-stroke motor, too (mix oil with gas just like outboards, Lawn Boy mowers, chain saws, and the SAAB 93* that I learned to drive on). I think two-stroke motors make a lot of sense in areas where it gets extremely cold.
Not to be confused with a SAAB 9-3.
Or the Saab Viggen …
/@
I suspect several cats are going to “by mistake” end up in Jerry’s carry on luggage. 🙂
And 1 Trabant, should easily fit, but don’t forget to put it in the 1-liter fluid bag if there’s still petrol in it.
Looks like a Trabant, the old E. German car. When I was in (the former) East Germany in 1992, I wanted to buy one (I was broke at the time), bring it home, and replace the mechanical workings with the guts of a Honda Civic.
To me, they look like ’57 Chevy wagons.
The wagon versions do, that is …
And, Jerry, you have to hear a Trabant in operation: It has a 2-cylinder, 2-stroke engine. It sounds like a moped! 🙂
that kind of says it all about the virtues and prosperity enjoyed under socialism, doesn’t it?
West Germany was producing automobiles like Mercedes and BMW.
East Germany was making Trabant (with a 2-cylinder, 2-stroke engine and a cardboard chassis!!) and Wartburg (with a 3-cylinder, 2-stroke engine, though no cardboard chassis)
I’m going to be a pedant for a moment because the recent stigmatization of the world “socialism” can be harmful, especially in the US.
There is a difference between socialism and communism. I consider Canada to have a lot of aspects of a socialist country as well as other Australia, NZ, Europe.
This table that I quickly perused seems to detail it pretty well.
It was said sometimes at the time that the US called the Soviet-sphere countries “socialist” to guilty-by-association socialism, and the Soviet-sphere called itself “socialist” to get the good association it had traditionally. IOW, both used the term for propaganda reasons, much as East Germany was technically *labeled* democratic, as is North Korea to this day.
And, great stuff, generally. Thanks for the photos!
Such lovely customs in Bulgaria: homes recognized for their exemplary character, memorials where they do some good…
Alluring pottery and jewelry!
I am familiar with banitsas coiled into large circles which make interesting slices!
Lubo and Vassy should give up their day jobs to become performance artists!
The house is lovely. Looks like it would be very light inside with all those windows.
Ooh, those shoes are pretty! Very much my style, when I’m not wearing hiking boots.
The close-up of the castle got me all excited because it shows remodeling. If the stones used were taken from another structure, then this would be an example of an architectural ‘palimpsest’. This is where old things are re-purposed, cobbled together for a new use. Palimpsests are a nice analogy to evolution, where old ancestral parts are modified for a new use rather than having a new part be made from scratch. So vertebrate legs are repurposed fish fins; the protective wing covers of a beetle are re-purposed from front wings, etc.
Given that Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman empire for nearly 500 years, there seem to be traces of Ottoman influence.
The prevalence of yogurt in Bulgarian cuisine is an example. Once could argue this instead shows a Greek influence, but dishes like the salty Bulgarian yogurt drink remind me of Ayran, and the Bulgarian cucumber and yogurt soup is exactly like Cacik.
Beyond yogurt, there’s the cake Jerry mentioned that was filled with Lokum (Turkish Delight), while Rakia sounds rather like Raki, Turkey’s homegrown hard liquor. Boza is of course Turkish.
The flat grilled meatballs Jerry mentioned look exactly like köfte. Tripe soup, which Jerry refused to try, is popular in Turkey as a hangover cure.
Filo dough is also popular in Greece, but the pastries in the photo resemble Börek and Pogača.
Lastly, “the splendid houses” resemble old Ottoman houses, which are also distinguished by a projecting upper story and elegant woodwork.
” dishes like the salty Bulgarian yogurt drink remind me of Ayran”
well, it IS called Ayran (‘АЙРЯН’ in Cyrillic)
“The flat grilled meatballs Jerry mentioned look exactly like köfte”
they are indeed called köfte (‘КЮФТЕ’ in Cyrillic)
I’m not so sure about the houses
The Bulgarian colleague I alluded to elsewhere mentioned the connection when were at a Turkish restaurant in Bloomington (Indiana) once. He said that the Turkish food reminded him of his original country.
Also, it’s only natural that after 500 years of Ottoman occupation (btw, in BG history books this period is referred to as ‘500 years of slavery’), some customs, foods, etc. have been incorporated.
It’s also an interesting fact that Bulgaria, along with other Balkan states under occupation, managed to preserve itself as a Christian nation after five long centuries of Ottoman(and Islamic) domination.
Well, Bulgaria still has a large Muslim minority, and would have had an even larger one if much of the Muslim population hadn’t immigrated to Turkey during the 19th century. Many folks in Turkey have Balkan roots.
Wonderful pictures. However, I’ve been recently told that a “selfie” with more than one person in it is actually called an “us-ie” (or “ussie”).
I had been wondering why we sometimes see cats (and d*gs) with differently colored eyes.
And people. Max Scherzer, Tigers pitcher:
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/ldmfJFD74NwUrRzhU52Jzg–/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTYwMA–/http://media.zenfs.com/en/person/Ysports/max-scherzer-baseball-headshot-photo.jpg
…me forgetting that everything embeds now….
Can you imagine a baby like that being born a few centuries ago? It’d have been burnt alive — and likely the mother, too….
b&
Chilling to contemplate.
Hey, and if it’d been born some millennia ago, it might have inspired a new religion!
Actually…Diana’s comment about Mila Kunis (who?) led me to Wikipedia and this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_heterochromia
…where I learned that Alexander the Great had heterochromia…so, yeah. New religion (or, at least, new god) is spot on! Whodathunkit?
b&
Surprised at all the celebrities; many of those must hide the condition with contacts.
Yes, their agents are always on the lookout for the most lucrative contracts they can find.
b&
Fun fact – Mila Kunis has the same thing.
& David Bowie.
/@
Actually, I believe Bowie’s condition, as mentioned at the link Ben posted above, is actually a permanently dilated pupil. (I know this because I have the same condition, only surgically caused rather than from an injury). It’s a well-known story on the Detached Retina list-serv.
Well, I guess I should’ve followed that link!
Is your condition problematic?
/@
Not as bad as some vision states I went through in the course of several eye surgeries over a decade or so…
It’s stuck at a pretty low level of dilation…in normal room light it looks pretty much like the other eye. I really only notice it when I go out into the dark at night–man, is it dim. One’s sight adapts, though, after a bit, to some level that allows one to function. Happily driving’s not a problem. (Well, for me anyway…who knows about the other motorists I encounter?) (……..J/K!)
I worry most that I’ll end up in the emergency room someday for something else, and flunk the pupil-dilation test. Not dead yet! 😀
Zombie!
/@
Is it like Ze Frank’s condition?
Well, sort of; but it sounds as if one of his pupils expands/contracts unpredictably, while my right pupil is just fixed at one aperture.
Watching that vid, esp. with all the close-ups, I was sure hoping there’d be a visual demonstration of his condition!
Actually, the term one of my doctor’s used was “paralyzed pupil;” it can be stuck at any dilation, not always widely dilated like Bowie’s.
Aah damn, I want to head over to Central Europe again after reading that!
1) Heath and Safety = you do something unsafe, be prepared for the consequences. I really like that way of thinking!
2) Great fresh veggies and porky/cheesy noms. Not tripe soup either, just the smell is enough for me.
3) Awesome castles.
4) Awesome forests and hills.
Great hospitality & nice folks too.
Bulgaria looks like a great place to visit.
Kotooshu, a Bulgarian sumo wrestler (and one of my favorites) who spent many years at the Ozeki level before retiring earlier this year, used to wear an advertisement for “burugaria” (Bulgaria) brand yogurt on his kesho-mawashi. See http://inventorspot.com/articles/sumo_wrestlings_newest_champion_eurotrashes_stereotypes_13899
I’m very impressed that you have a favorite Bulgarian Sumo wrestler.
Really enjoying your take on a country I most likely will never get to. Thanks.
Jerry,
the yellow car in the picture is called TRABANT: it’s an East German car, and it’s REALLY made of cardboard. The chassis is, anyway. Other parts, such as the engine, are obviously not 🙂
That way of preparing coffee is also common on the Balkan, as it was the way a Serbian friend of mine used to make it.
The geographical spread is suspiciously similar to that of the former Ottoman empire.
Lovely shots! I adore Turnovo, and the food looks delicious.
The car you are posing beside is a Trabant; they are an East-German make and the body of the car is indeed made of pressed paper/cardboard/woodpulp … stuff, commonly though not entirely accurately called cardboard. There are lots of jokes about them, as you can imagine. Ex: they have plenty of legroom for those no taller than a coffee table. They are the longest car in the world: two meters of body, and twenty meters of tail (exhaust). Body work is easy–all you need is a hacksaw and glue.
The necrologue says:
On Oct 14, 2014 was completed
ONE YEAR
From the death of
Kera Pavlova Dankova
Aged 67
And today the candles will burn out
And today we will humbly bow our heads
It is not true that our grief diminishes
We miss you and it hurts a lot
The memorial service will be held on Oct 11, 2014 at 11 o’clock in the Turnovo cemetery.
From the close ones
Check out this interesting and touching bit about a ‘wobbly’ kitten.
http://www.coloradoan.com/search/csu%20student%20rescues%20%27wobbly%27%20kitten%20from%20being%20euthanized/