Our Varna host, a great touring motorcycle enthusiast.

Constanta. Our hotel was a modern Ibis for a change, but in the Old Town. Archeology conveniently displays Greek language stele, or life stories written to memorialise the dead to the "Passerby", calling "Salutations".
My favourite was an agoranomus, the market manager, I think, who at 50 left this thought in his life story.
"I considered friendship for all as a title of glory."


Quite a contrast from opinions given to us. Bulgarian thinking Greeks were out to do you, Romanian waitresses asking why on earth we came to Romania, but agreeing it was heaps better than Bulgaria. Yet we are constntly indebted to the kindness of strangers.

Huge Roman pavement from there centre of business. Like Philippi, ruined by earthquake in the 6th C.

Sofia's synagogue is alive and well, Constanta's Jewish history is different, with the ruined synagogue occupied by gypsy squatters.

The local brew, pronounced "chook".








A day in the country in  Renault Dacia Logan.

How others travel.




The shepherd.
From the train we saw 2 successive shepherds on mobile phones. Go figure.......


BIRD OF THE DAY
Stone curlew, a weird chook.
Lots of cuckoos.

Left to right: cuckoo (first good picture), jackdaw and 2 bee-eaters.

Ciprian (Chiprian), whose father captained the big tourist cruiser till he retired. Ready for the speed boat trip with lunch at Mile 23. The people who live there are now encouraged by a pension to maintain their culture and serve lunch to tourists, majoring on fish soup. See next episode.

Our second rail trip, Plovdiv to Burgas. some productive countryside, especially sunflowers, mixed with depressing old factories. One enormous old oil comlex with only a few colourful new pipes. And rain.

People. Out enjoying the sun at last.








Even the kinder kids.

And getting on with their jobs. OHS issues, especially here. The short ladder is held in place manually, but only on a bent old board.





This shows how big the yellow-legged gulls are, like chooks! They are everywhere, and noisy. But this old Crusader knows how to
 see them off.

The Black Sea. Both Burgas and Varna have enormous Sea Parks, large wooded public spaces before the beach. Our bus to Varna was only a minibus, and rather a rattletrap, passing condos waiting for resort visitors, some in the midlle of country, then over wooded hills.

George was our taxi driver for the morning, getting us where no bus could and much cheaper than a hire car. Nothing much doing in the birdwatching line, So George took us to an ancient Thracian tomb. All hidden under a grass mound or tumulus. Sort of doughnut or mushroom shape inside round a central chimney. Deified but dead chief was buried here and rituals sounded like a good orgy.

Curator insisted we take a CD of Bulgarian history for Australia.

With the language, we are indebted to the kindness of strangers every day.

Here are St Cyril and St Mathodii who invented their own cyrillic alphabet based on the Greek. The flowers are from the 24th, their national celebration of this work. A minibus is mhnhbyc, and all the rest is too hard to share.

Another thunderous wet afternoon.





Tomorrow to Constanta, Romania.

And for those who have birthday's right now....

or who wish to remain loved..

but perhaps not so heralded....




HAPPY BIRTHDAY  !!


LOIS


AND


STEVE

Sometimes.....     someone.....     just reminds you.....      of so much...

With apologies to all of you....     who I am reminded of as I write this.... 

but I haven't got the appropriate photo to insert just here....  [Neil]

Central Bulgaria, Plovdiv, an old Roman city, & one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of Europe.

It is quite a place.  I have never been in a place with such ankle-breaking cobblestones !
Huge granite small boulders - it was fun watching a dolly-bird on the toes of her high-healed stilettos...

One man was a key player in the city's restoration.
His name was Atanas Krastev,
    also known as Nacho Kulturata...  !!

We visited his house, full of paintings by other folks, of the man himself !

The architecture was from 100 years ago - in wood : as at right !

Sandra liked the nails in the doors to his compound, large ones, driven through to prevent it being hacked open !

They were very security conscious in those days !


Philip of Macedon (Alexander the Great's father) was one of the founders.

But the Romans followed about 300 years later.
We saw a Roman Wedding and then a re-enacted Gladiator fight.  The one that was wounded & so had 'lost' (but he was not dead) - was despatched by the man in black with his mallet !  Life was cheap !  

Decorated Houses..              City walls & Gates....                   Cobbled places...

Later Ottoman influences are still strong -

even the chimneys suggest it, too !


But it is very arty, as Sandra found.


Tomorrow we take our second train to beside the Black Sea, & hope to see some birds...

      
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