Excursion to rural Bulgaria

I organized a trip with a local guide to visit a sheep farm and to buy a traditional woven apron that the ladies wear. This is after we spent the morning in the Spa first.

Toshko (Theodor) Landzhov came to fetch us in his minivan for our trip into the country. An open and friendly individual, he said in all the years as a guide, noone has ever requested a trip like ours. He is a geography teacher at a high school.

Before we leave town we say: please can we go to the market. Sundays are markets days. I see chickens in a pen, and we stop to see what is going on. Rabbits, quails and even Guinea fowl are on sale. We walk between stalls, that sell fruit and vegetables, honey, curtains, and decorative gear for horses. We find a shop that sells seeds and we buy packets of Balkan flowers and even vegetables. We also buy honeycomb to eat later, my absolute favourite! Plenty of gypsies are about!

We then go into the country, he parks the car next to a railway track and start walking into the veld. In front of us we see a rural scene so typical of Bulgaria, the picture out of our train window now manifesting right in front of us.

The farmer and his two sons come to greet us. The wife is in the veld with the sheep. The nephew is there too. We see how they quickly put the hay into a barn before the rains come, then we sit underneath a Sour plum tree and over the hill the wife comes with the sheep in tow.

The wife arrives and dishes out real Bulgarian yogurt, it's potent and tart, and really needs some Bulgarian honey.

The sheep drink some water and then it's time for milking them. Open, out in the veld, in the sun, they milk the sheep 3 times a day and supply the local coop with the milk that becomes the wonderful Bulgarian yogurt.

The farmer dishes out seriously powerful grape brandy, we all take a swig and kill off all the germs and bacteria of the rural yogurt.

She is bone thin, the poor woman, I give her some money and mom takes off a dress ring from her finger and puts it on her little finger. He hands are huge and fill of corns. Mom starts to cry and says that we have a lot to be grateful for.

Toshko then takes us to the local Muslim community. They keep all the Bulgarian traditions and still wear the traditional clothes. They are hard at work, collecting hay, and in the fields. Woman work very hard here. We go to a female bath house, and naked flesh for mom and my eyes only, are on friendly display, come join us, come join us, they chant in Bulgarian. I touch the water out of the spring, nearly burning my hand, 100 degrees Celcius.

We visit a local weaver and I finally buy my apron that I have been looking for all along. The traditions are kept, even though they converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule, they still keep the icons of their ancestors.

I try to buy the most beautiful fabric with embroidered roses from a shop but the shop keeper is nowhere to be seen.

We head back to town, as we have ordered lunch at a restaurant. We eat potatoes and marinated sheep, quite delicious.

We buy flowers for the ladies at the Spa as a thank you, and now we are all squeaky clean after our final spa bath and lying on our beds, ready for our final trek home.