One last trip

Here we go... finally a posting after too many busy (read lazy) months without. This will be about the trip I took at the beginning of July to Poland. In short summary, I went with a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer from my group. We traveled by train from here, through Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and then finally to Krakow. On the way there, we had a trying time finding trains and seats on those trains which would finally get us to Poland. Apparently summer in Europe is a popular time to travel (sarcasm and regret). When we pulled into Krakow, I wish I could say it was a great feeling to finally be there, but really, the 3 days of train travel with no shower, no change of clothes, and the fact that it was 6am and check in was not until 2pm, all added up to a not so agreeable morning sight seeing adventure. Plus, it was 6am... and not even coffee places were open, even if they did accept smelly, disheveled customers. So we walked around the center, the town, and saw the outsides of the sights I promised Joe we would go into as soon as I had showered. This pic below is me in front of the old marketplace in the city center (marketplace building to the left) and the tower. The market building sits right in the center of the square and divides the area. Joe said that Krakow's center was the biggest or one of the biggest in Europe. I guess because I am too lazy to Wikipedia it, I will take his word for it.

The next picture is of me (post-shower and happy) in front of the St. Mary's church. Here, Pope John Paul often spoke from the bronze pulpit that you can see on the outside of the church. Every hour from the top window of the left tower, a trumpeter plays his horn. Standing in the center, walking around the cafe lined sides, watching the people ride in the horse drawn carriages, all made for incredible evening walks. It was definitely a different atmosphere than what I was used to in Bulgaria.

Here is one of the drivers with spotted horses and his bowler hat to complete the ensemble.

All of the privately owned carriages were different styles and colors, and the drivers reflected that by dressing similarly to their carriage. Some were driven by women who wore green bows in their hair and white skirts to match their lime green cart and all white horses.

Below is me in the bell tower of Wawel (pronounced Vavel) castle. I am standing under the Sigismund Bell which is 500 years old and still in working order. I have around my neck the most amazing part of the Polish tour experience, in my opinion of course. It is an iPod shuffle tour guide! How insane... they have programmed the sights on the shuffle, you can skip ahead if you didn't buy tickets for the bell, or go back and redo a sight if you were lost. It was amazing to me that they could do that... it's so much better than a tape player where if you lose your place, you spend another hour rewinding and fast-forwarding to find where you left off. And... it was only like $2.50... I was just floored. Bulgaria needs to stop wasting EU money (rather stop pocketing EU money) and invest in something as smart as this to boost tourism.

We also took a day to go to the salt mines in a town just outside of Krakow. The mines were closed only about 10 years ago, and inside, almost every wall surface was the salty rock that has been dug for passages and caverns, which our tour guide assured us was harmless and lickable. (Yes, I did lick the wall... just as you would expect, salty). This photo is from one of the caverns, the statues were carved entirely from the salt rock and by the miners themselves.

After Krakow we briefly stopped over for a night in Warsaw to meet up with a friend who was in Bulgaria with us, but left early to live in Poland with his dancer/super star girlfriend. Warsaw was incredibly expensive compared to Krakow and I am happy we had already decided to not stick around. Our next stop was Gdansk, the port city on the Baltic sea. The pic below is on one of the canals leading into the center, this was taken from the deck of the boat hostel we stayed in.

Gdansk is the city where the Solidarity movement (labor movement against communism) began. The city was also almost completely destroyed by the Germans in the second World War. Most has been rebuilt, but they kept the original brick foundation on many of the buildings so you can see the old brick and how much of the building was just leveled from the invasion. Below is the clock tower and church at the end of the walking street. I kept thinking that with the colorful and virtually new facades on the buildings, the street vendors, the accordion players, the ice cream stands every 100 meters, that I was in Disney world. It's a strange feeling to associate something real with a place that is all make believe. Epcot's big money certainly does the job in making you feel like you are really there.

Here is another angle of the church and clock tower. The statue/fountain to the right is Neptune.

After Gdansk, we began our journey back to Sofia, Bulgaria. We should have known it was not going to be easy going when the only train we could get out of Gdansk left at 1am and arrived in Krakow at 11:56am. We didn't have a sleeping car, but more worrisome was that we had already bought tickets leaving Krakow at 12:10pm to Budapest. The way the trains were treating us, I knew we would not make that 10 minute window to catch our train to Hungry and sure enough, our train didn't pull into Krakow until 12:20. Luckily though, Poland understands late trains and accommodates it's travelers (unlike BDZ) and we were able to transfer our ticket to another train leaving Krakow at 10pm... yay!... another day of showerless Krakow tourism.
We make it to Budapest and this time had a while to walk around until our next train to Serbia. So we saw the sights...

This is the Parliament building on the Buda side of the Danube. Though the weather doesn't look great, at least we didn't have rain... so I was thankful for that.

Lastly, this was a view of the inside of Budapest's train station. I had never been in a station like this one. I am used to the small, two rail stations that only have a building for the ticket booth inside, or like Sofia's, a huge depot that has no architectural appeal. This was where we finally departed on our 20 hour ride back home.

Baba Marta with the orphans :)

Here is a look at the kids that live in the orphanage where I work 2-3 times a week. Above is Indira. She is in the room/group with the younger crowd, I think from 3-4 years old. Some are older though, but stay in this room because they have Down Syndrom or other physical and mental handicaps. To the right is Alex and behind her is Stoyan.

Tomorrow is Baba Marta Day but since tomorrow is Saturday, they celebrated the holiday today. Some put on vests and dresses and received martenitsi from Baba Marta herself. So to explain a little, Baba Marta is the woman of the hour on March 1st. The day is dedicated to her and the coming of spring. Martenitsi are red and white yarn bracelets that are shared and worn until the first stork is seen. Once you see a stork, you take off a bracelet and tie it to the nearest budding tree branch. For more detailed stories and descriptions, you can go to this site http://www.abvg.net/Traditions/Marta/Marta.html . Above is Martin and Roberto.

Here I am with a girl that just came to the orphanage today. She was all dressed up in her traveling clothes. Her name is Sisi. She wasn't dressed up for Baba Marta, but cute nonetheless.

These two are twins who we work with almost every time we come. They both have Down Syndrome and are learning how to walk. Martin (right) can walk all over town while just holding onto one of my hands. The other day he took a couple of steps all alone and then plopped... but he is already stronger than before. His brother (and I am awful that I can't remember his name right now) still walks while holding both hands. They are cute and I love seeing what they will do next time.

Happy Baba Marta Day everyone. May spring bring warmth, happiness, well-being and optimism!

day to day life... and more inane details

Today an old friend messaged me with an update of her life and asked at the end, "what is a day in the life of Bulgarian Karli?" When I started to think about it, I decided that it would make a pretty good blog post for those (like my grandma and Missy) who think my blogs come too few and far between.

I will tell it like it has been for the past couple of weeks... for me, routine tends to change quickly and without intention. But for what it is worth (which is not really worth a whole lot to Bulgarians who rarely keep to a set schedule), I think this will represent my life for the next couple of months.

(First, here's a view from a ski lift gondola on the way up a mountain in BG)


A typical weekday for me can start between 7:30am and 8:45am. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to work at the orphanage which cares for infants and children up to age 7. I go with the temps who have been working at the NGO since November. One has a degree in psychology, and the other in pedagogy. We work there from 9:30-12:30 on the developmental stepping stones that the kids should be learning but are not really reaching. Most of the kids are either disabled or very closed off to interaction. They, like most other kids in "orphanages", are not orphans in the American sense of the word. They have parents who have checked them into this institution, and who will most likely take them back after 5-7 years. Nonetheless, they are there and need more than just someone who will feed them and give them a stuffed animal to play with. The work we do with them right now is very fundamental; getting them to interact with their peers is one of the most important and yet easily overlooked. The three of us work with a handful of kids each time we go, and I am looking forward to seeing how far along they will have come in the 3 months that the orphanage has agreed to let us volunteer there.

On the other days of the week I work in the office that is literally right across from my apartment door. Being a NGO, they can set up shop just about anywhere... and they chose an apartment to convert into an office. Well when they got their first Peace Corps Volunteer, they looked for an apartment for her in the same building as the office, and by a crazy coincidence, the one across the way was vacant because the girl that normally lived there was living in America (Orlando, FL to be exact). So I inherited the apartment, and therefore live right across from and share an adjoining wall with my office. It comes in handy for the mornings when they don't come in to the office until close to noon... I can just knock on the door at 10am (my normal arrival time), and if they are not there... I return home, put the TV on CNN, and listen for them to come up the stairs.

While in the office, normally I am busy helping with project ideas, writing a project (as we have been doing the last couple of weeks), or just trying to improve the Bulgarian I sort of know by talking with everyone about whatever is floating around gossip-wise or in the news. I work with all ladies, so we get talking about hair care, social inequalities, skin products, the homeless, exercise, school systems, the elections, and cooking. It's a mix bag and I never know what kind of words I won't know for that day.

This morning I was asked how I know if a pineapple is ripe... I was at a loss as to how to explain in Bulgarian. Also, I was sort of surprised when I found out throughout the course of the conversation that most children and even adults don't know what a whole pineapple looks like. I needed to find a way to explain how to know when the pineapple was ready to eat and how to then cut it... and which parts were OK to eat. My friend who was talking to me about these pineapple logistics then told me the story of when she brought this strange fruit home. Her son (who is in kindergarten, so not shocking I suppose) asked what it was. She said, "a pineapple." His response, "but what is it??"... "A pineapple."..... "what is it!!??"..... "a pineapple," she repeated for the third time. And then she said, he just silently nodded and walked away. Then her older son asked, "so when are we going to eat it?" To which she thought, and then had to say, "well, I have to ask in the office tomorrow how to know if it's good and what parts we can eat."

That conversation made me jot down in my notebook verbs and words like ripe, squeeze, soft, core, citric, and prickly, so that tonight I can look them up in the dictionary and be able to describe how to determine the ripeness of fruit.

When I leave work, most of the time I take a stroll around town. If I don't, it would mean that I would not have left my floor of the apartment building or have been outside all day. And that is just not healthy on any level. The downside to this is that I normally always spend money while walking around, whether it be on necessary food items like milk and bread, or on unnecessary sweets like chocolate and vafla. Upon returning home, I say hi to my cat, make some dinner (normally nothing to really call a dinner... just a sandwich, some yogurt and musli, or something easy with eggs), and then sit in front of my computer or TV to catch up with friends or with CNN reporters. I feel as if I know them at this point... the reporters that is... should this be a sign that I should find a new use for my time?

Speaking of new uses for time, I am trying to read more, and the first book I picked up from the collection left behind by the old volunteer is "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", what a strange book.

Weekends are spent so many different ways, mostly depending on the season. Most weekends I am here in my town, just hanging out and cleaning. But when I travel I go see other volunteers and what their towns have to offer. In the last weekends, I have been out skiing! It has been great because the weather is amazing and the snow is beautiful. However, I quickly realized that I don't know how to ski... I thought I did... but I don't. I am a novice/beginner who just goes out there an does whatever she can to get down the mountain. I would insert a "hahah" in there, if it was indeed funny. But for the kind, kind friends who have stayed behind with me while I fall and snowplow down, it is not really funny. But I have a blast! And hopefully we will get one more snow, and I can go in another weekend and move up to beginner-high status! We shall wait and see!



As this has turned into quite the lengthy blog, I will start to wrap it up here. Also because my leaky faucet is at an all time annoying level of drippage (I know that's a made up word... whatever) and I desperately need to get up off the couch and use the wrench to turn the knob to stop the insane drip-drop.