It’s time for the Flora in Burgas once again. Zlatina and I are going to spend some time in the sea garden visiting the exhibition. Pictures to come …
Mar 16
Oh, waiting for spring. When will the storks get here? It’s still at or near freezing at night. Spring, where for art thou?
Jan 20
It started snowing Monday night about 6pm, and continued until tonight (Tuesday) about 8pm. Heavy snow, in fact all the people I talked to here today in Burgas say it's the heaviest snow they've ever seen here.
I took a nice walk from our new place on Rilska street, down to Bogoridi, to the Sea Garden …. out to the end of the pier, on to the beach … back through the sea garden. You can see the pictures below in the embedded picasweb link.
What a great day it's been. It reminds me so much of living in Madison, Wisconsin in the US. Sure, it's not quite as cold here – just a few degrees below freezing, and it only snows like this once a decade here where it snows like this repeatedly throughout the winter in Wisconsin – but hey, it does remind me of the past three winters I spent in Madison, and I did like the winters there for some weird reason 
Dec 30
We're staying at the five-star Grand Hotel Dimyat for a few days, here to enjoy some time with Zlatina's family and some old friends, and to generally enjoy the city of Varna for the new year celebrations.
I guess I have to say that Varna is a prettier city than Burgas, a larger city. Certainly more attractive than Sofia … in fact it kind of reminds me of Seattle, only without all the rain all the time. The city puts up lots of christmas lights, keeps them on through the new year. I hope to go out tomorrow night and take some slow-shutter speed photos to show you.
Well, I ate too much at dinner again, seems it's the time of year for that. Good night, and have a happy new year of if you can.
Dec 21
We're preparing for a trip to Medven, Bulgaria. We'll be spending our christmas vacation there, in a bungalow in the mountains. Hoping for a white christmas 
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Dec 19
On Dec 11 we had our first snow in Burgas
Dec 07
The above is a link to Zlatina’s school, the British Cultural Centre, Burgas. It’s her english-language school, she teaches children from the age of 4 until they graduate from high school.
I designed the website based on the Education theme from studiopress. Zlatina wrote all the Bulgarian stuff you see, her son Petko typed it all in. Stop by for a visit
Nov 15
Photo Gallery
It was a Saturday in Burgas, Zlatina and our friend Boian and I decided we would take the bus south to Sozopol to enjoy the scenery, take some photos, eat at a nice restaurant … just enjoy each other’s company in a seaside town that has become a favorite for us.
Of course I brought the camera I’ve been wanting to play a little with the various light, aperature, exposure time and other settings which I don’t yet know much about. I wanted a long-term exposure of the bay, with some of the hotel lights reflecting. I wanted to play with some of the preset lighting arrangements.
For example, this photo is using the “tungsten” light setting. It has more to do with overhead or ambient lighting, but it always adds a very bluish shading to everything – especially when taking photos during the late afternoon or early evening. Click on the photo to see it alone on the page.
Nov 04
Yesterday morning I checked the local weather forecast on the weather underground website, it said 30 percent chance of rain during the evening. Ok, I can deal with that.
So yesterday evening it started raining, and raining, and raining, in fact it’s still raining this morning – it “30 percented” all over us, all night long.
Shortly after midnight the power went out. I suppose I should be used to that kind of thing, in a way – I spent June and July in east Texas where those big thunderstorms booming through often caused the power to go out, sometimes for hours.
But I still don’t like it 
And it shut down my web server too (whine), and even worse – I could not make espresso!
I don’t know what time the power came back on, I finally fell asleep waiting for it.
Oct 27
| Photo Gallery | Koprivshtitsa Website |
Here we are (Zlatina and Kevin) sitting in the front seat of the bus. I’m on the left … of the picture that is … it’s in the mirror anyway. Zlatina’s daughter Galia took a bus up from Sofia to meet us here, she arrived shortly before we did.
This was the bus from Burgas to Plovdiv (at left), we weren’t able to take the train to Koprivshtitsa because the track is out between Karlovo and Koprivshtitsa.
I have to remark that Plovdiv smelled like Sofia, like Los Angeles to me. I know that we didn’t get to see anything of Plovdiv, other than a nice restaurant and the bus station, so I have still to travel to Plovdiv for a real vacation.
This kind of travel in Bulgaria is easy enough when you travel with your Bulgarian friends The buses were clean enough, the ticket agents and drivers friendly enough, and helpful. The other passengers were well-mannered and quiet, no troubles. Other than having to stay in a bus for hours at a time, this was good traveling.
Leaving Plovdiv on another and smaller bus, here is an example of the kind of roads we traveled to get to Koprivshtitsa.
We left the “main” road a couple of times for the bus driver to let off or pick up other passengers in little out-of-the-way villages.
Some of these little villages were real “village”, goats in the streets, pretty much everyone you saw was old. Walls made of adobe wearing down in the weather and time. Picturesque, certainly.
One of the reasons I went on this trip was to take pictures of the mountains in autumn color. And we did see lots of color – with our eyes. The bus windows were a bit too dirty, the hour was a bit late, the sky was gray and cloudy … not the best day for photography. But I have to say the mountains on the way up were quite beautiful, and even if I can’t share pictures with you I can highly recommend the drive from Plovdiv to Koprivshtitsa at this time of year.
We spent the first night in a nice hotel, “Dzhogolanova kashta” if I’m remembering correctly. Nice breakfast, they didn’t charge us for it. Good coffee, good pancakes, good food generally.
About mid-day we walked east out of town onto a mountain road. What can I say about what I saw there, that you can’t see in the photo gallery linked at the top of this post? It was beautiful.
Koprivshtitsa is a town, a village full of history. Continue reading »
