Jan 20

Heavy snow in Burgas

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria No Comments »

Picasaweb Gallery Photos

 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 :-)

 

 

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Oct 27

A Walk through Koprivshtitsa

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria, Travel 6 Comments »
Photo Gallery Koprivshtitsa Website
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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.

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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.
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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 »

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Oct 11

October day in the sea garden (morska gradina .. морска градина)

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria No Comments »

Gallery Photos Link

I went to a play with Zlatina Thursday night, I think it was Thursday.    There are a few photos in the gallery from that night.

Did I understand what they were saying?  No, but I went anyway.  The theater was completely full, people were standing in the aisles to watch.  Music, lights, actors, audience.  I got everything except the language.

Yesterday we went for a walk in the sea garden. A mid-October day, pretty nice. The wind was coming in off the black sea, and it was really too chilly for anybody to be out there on the beach as they were all summer. The trees aren’t quite ready for fall, but they’re getting close.

The birds are beginning winter migrations too I think.  Here along the western shore of the southern Black Sea we’re going to be seeing all sorts of interesting birds I could never see in the states.  There are even locations in Burgas for people to do bird watching, maybe I should try some of that this month before it’s too late.

All the tourists are gone now, the season is over in Europe and Russia.  I wanted to take some photos of the people of Burgas enjoying their own sea garden.  It is located right along the edge of the sea, as you might expect.  In fact it is in such a location that nobody just “cuts through” the sea garden to get from one part of the city to another — everybody who comes here came to be here, to walk here, to enjoy the garden itself.

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Oct 08

Accents

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria 2 Comments »

On the recent Saturday I went with my girlfriend to her bank, to deal with bank stuff.  The only branch open on a Saturday is on the north side of town, so we took a taxi.

She and I were chatting in the back seat, as you might expect.  I don’t speak anywhere near enough Bulgarian yet to have a conversation in that language, so we spoke in English.

When we got out of the taxi the man driving asked her if I was an American – I know enough Bulgarian to understand that.  But I didn’t understand the rest.  Zlatina translated for me – he was basically saying he enjoyed my American accent, that understanding British people speaking English was difficult for him.

I’ve heard this before, from other Bulgarians.  As there are a lot of Brits here in Bulgaria, one would think the people should be used to “British English.”  I have a very flat un-accented english, growing up as a military brat and living much of my adult life in California.  Is this what it is?  I have no problem understanding the english spoken by British people, but of course I lived there for some time when I was a boy.

Anyway, it’s a curious thing that I would hear this ‘compliment’ from so many Bulgarians.  That’s all, just curious.

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Jun 10

Texas

By Kevin Hagel Texas No Comments »

Yes, I’m back in Texas.  Longview to be exact.  My Bulgarian adventure continues from the US this time.

I’ll be traveling to Washington D.C. this Sunday afternooon, arriving 12:30 am in the morning.  I’ll spend the next day or two pushing my paperwork through the Bulgarian embassy, about a 15 minute walk from the condo my friends own.  They have been nice enough to allow me to stay there for a couple of days (thanks Jeff, Don, and Dave).

In the meantime, I bought a new Canon PowerShot SX10 IS. I already own the PowerShot S5 IS (I think that’s the model) and I’ve always been quite happy with the colors you can get, especially daytime colors on the Foliage setting.  But one thing I didn’t like was the inability to get really good closeups, with really sharp focus.

Photos.

I took some experimental closeups of the flowers and bugs in my parent’s yard.

Here’s a closeup of my cat, Tonka, after I woke him from still another nap on the front porch.

And here’s a closeup of a dragonfly


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Apr 24

Flora – The Exhibition Of Flowers

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria No Comments »

http://www.burgas.bg/en/news/details/1/3186

The national exhibition of flowers “Flora 2009” will be held April 22 – May 3 at the Sea Garden of Burgas. Parallel to it there will be honey and bee products fair going on.

The Municipality of Burgas has sent invitations for participation to many Bulgarian and foreign companies and it is still open for new applications. To get further information about the exhibition or submit an application for participation, please call 056 / 84 18 78 (Landscaping Department, Burgas Municipality).

“Flora 2009” will open on April 22nd, 16.00 h.

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Link to Photos

 

A beautiful sunny and windy day in Burgas in today.  We walked to the sea garden just to get away from the computers for a time, and what to our wondering eyes should appear but 10,000 flowers everywhere, an entire day set aside for Flowers.

 

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The wind was coming in from off the Black Sea, something I’ve seldom seen here.  Choppy waves on the shore, it even changed the color of the water from it’s normal sea-blue to a kind of turquoise-azure, you can see it in the pictures.

 

Wish you were here to enjoy it with me.  You have to love spring in Burgas :-)

 

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Apr 07

Driving to Sofia

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria, Travel 4 Comments »

We’re leaving for a 2-3 day trip to Sofia today, sometime today I think. We’re going to try to arrange for my Bulgarian Marriage, so I can stay here and work.

This mean signing papers, visiting embassies … and while we’re there we’ll just visit Sofia too.

Going to be staying at the Hemus Hotel, from what I’ve read online it should cost 79 лв per day.  At today’s exchange rate that’s about $54/day.

Here’s something useful I can tell you:  go to google, type in “79BGN=?USD” … you’ll get the … well here, let me google that for you.

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Mar 22

аз уча бьлгарски в Бьлгария – I am learning bulgarian in Bulgaria

By Kevin Hagel Bulgaria 1 Comment »

So, I have engaged a tutor for a couple of one-hour lessons per week.  I want to learn to speak Bulgarian, I want to be comfortable with the language.

A friend of a friend knew someone, she runs (owns) the British Cultural Center here in Burgas. It’s primarily an English-language school for Bulgarian children, but she has found time for me and I’m grateful for that.

We walked to a local bookstore, she picked out a couple of books for me of which she approved, and today was our first lesson.   So here I am, a 50-year-old man trying to learn a new language, one for which I have no background at all.  I can speak a little Spanish, a little French, a tiny bit of Turkish, but none of these languages share any roots with a slavonic language like Bulgarian.

Ahh, we’ll see.  She is good, she knows her business.

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Oct 05

Longview

By kevin Bulgaria, Texas, Travel No Comments »

Well, the Romania idea is long dead.  As best I can tell, a new law or set of laws were passed in Bulgaria on Sept 4 regarding how long a foreigner can stay without a visa, how visas are obtained, how registering a company in Bulgaria works … and all that.

Basically, I can only stay in Bulgaria without a visa for 90 days in any 6 month period.  July 4th to October 2nd … so the idea that I could just leave the country for a day and come back in (the trip to Romania) no longer would do what I needed to be done.

Second, to apply for the visa-D business visa, I must return to my home country and apply at the Bulgarian consulate there, waiting 30-40 days for the vias.  Thus, my trip to Washington D.C.

On Wed October 2nd we went to a travel agency and purchased a flight to Washington D.C., and that night we drove across country once again to Sofia, where at 6:15 a.m. I got on my flight.  First to Brussels, Belgium, a 4 hour stay there, then an 8 and a half hour flight to Washington D.C.

I spent the night with my friends Don Mackay and David Jones, living near the corner of N and 22nd street.  I arrived there in D.C. about 3 pm local time, Dave picked me up, we met Don and headed for an Outback Steakhouse – I haven’t eaten steak in 3 months you know.

On friday oct 3rd at 10:30 am I showed up at the Bulgarian consulate on the corner of R and 22nd streets and applied for my visa.  The woman I talked to seemed to be saying to me that my situation should not give me problems, that I could have a visa D in 30-40 days.

So after that, Dave and Don gave me a ride to Dulles airport, and I flew down here to Longview Texas to wait out the time for my visa.  I’m staying with my parents for the next 6 weeks it looks like.

I really did not want to have to return to the US for this, it’s had a significant impact on my work … I can continue working from here on the MacBook, but it’s not my favorite development platform.

Anyway, that’s the current story.  There is a chance I might be flying up to Madison WI again to see about a possible new remote contract with a friend’s company … we’ll see.  I really don’t want to be in Texas, I really don’t want to be in the states right now.

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