Last working days were bizarre. We started our working days pretty late, some days even later than 10 o'clock. It was caused by weather conditions, autumn have had arrived to Bulgaria. Days were cooler and rainier. Site turned really muddy, it was even hard to step, all the mud was stuck under your footwear. We were at the end with work in our archeological site, Andrea had moved away and we had two working groups. One group started working in the new medieval site. Funding to clean this site came from this business man, who hosted us one night in his farm. We needed to collect cutted grass and branches. It was nice to work in another place surrounded by forest, not in the field anymore. Most fantastic thing about working there was to see the progress, at first (first days in Sveshtari when we visited the place) it was place with wild nature and it was hard to recognise old walls. But day by day the progress has been more visible. The end of August was in general pretty weird. So much grazy things happened and relationships were really complicated. At this time we were inseparable with Heleri because it was hard to find one language with foreigners and Anna spent most of the time with Mustafa. You know, at some point you have the whole world and another moment you are left alone. It is not the best feeling in the world, but it is still better than spending time with people you don't care about. Oh, and those frozen wines in our fridge, insane drinking games and other melanholic things that happened in those cold nights. Pretty lonely feeling but fortunately phone calls to my Estonian friends helped a lot. I remember one call really brightly, it was thunderstorm outside and it was so cosy to watch it from our room balcony. Some people watched a Spanish horror movie on our eating place and yeah, the view to the lightening sky was amazing. Even though the relations with all the participants wasn't so good anymore, it was hard to say goodbye to them for a week. Even harder was leaving Dani's hostel. It had been a home for us for weeks, so I cryed a bit before leaving. Then we took an epic night bus to Sofia with Italians, Kaloyan and Tsvety. We got seats to the last row and it is insane if you need to sleep while you are sitting without a seat belt on bumpy Bulgarian roads. Heleri told me about my funny positions, so, Kaloyan I am very sorry if I interrupted you 😆 Now it is a proper time to share some pictures from Sveshtari that I haven't published before. I didn't take much pictures at all, so nothing special to share with you actually 😕
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Diliana had organized a trip to ex-capital cities in Bulgaria. At first we visited Pliska. We saw beautiful ruins of basilica. They are currently reconstructing it and it looks fancy, I can only imagine how the original building looked like. At some point Quirino climbed up the walls and after a second other guys followed him. It is like a domino effect. Then we visited another ruins and a museum near by. One part of that was more like open-air museum. Then we continued our trip to Madara. We climbed up the stairs to see a rock. It wasn't nothing special and I have no idea why we even went there. At least there was a good souvenir kiosk. The way up to the wall was easy but somehow Marat and Giuseppe got lost up there. We waited for them for nothing, like, how you can get lost on this kind of site 🤔 Then we went to another place called Veliki Preslav museum, we watched a movie about the city and it looked really interesting place. We also had a rare opportunity to see golden treasure usually behind locked doors 😝 Then we visited another place in ruins. There lived thousands years ago high civilization, they even had water pipes. I loved the place between forest and mountains, relaxing area.
Then we divided into two groups. One group went back to Sveshtari with professor. With buses we drove to Shumen. I had already visited the city when we hitchhiked to Greece, but now we had an opportunity to discover more the main street of the city. Shumen looked pretty much the same to other cities in Bulgaria. Because we had limited time we found a fast-food place with Heleri, Anna and Mustafa, a Turkish one by the way. We visited Billa shop with Heleri and that was kind of it, we had no more time to discover something else. I was in the same bus with Spanish guys, during that time we all had experienced that if they are sitting next to each other there is not even a minute of silence. So, I changed the situation sitting nex to Antonio or Hutman to separate Mommo from the group 😂 We were almost back in Sveshtari, when Diliana remembered that Ast have a birthday tomorrow and we need a cake to celebrate it. It was again Italians time to shine and to prepare a tiramisu. So, we drove back to Razgrad big supermarket. I loved it. Since then I had only visited quite small shops, Billa was the biggest one so far. It was good to walk around a shop and discover all the goods. So much space and bigger variety than usual. I bought pudding from there just because the information was written in Estonian on it. Those small things really matter if you are far from home and if you are Estonian. When we got almost proper ingredients for the cake we tried to choose a gift for Ast, but it was too complicated and we bought sparkling wine to celebrate this important event. Fun fact is that in the evening when we celebrated birthday we couldn't drink the sparkling wine because someone decided to but it in the freezer, so it was frozen like water 🤣 Our decision to go to Greece was really random. We got one extra free day thanks to professor's visit to Sofia. We tried to rent a car or search for bus times but at the end we still didn't have any proper plans. We started our journey with Heleri and Italian guys. Professor gave us a lift to Razgrad. Then we hitchhiked to Shumen and at the end of Thursday we found ourselves in Plovdid, in front of our rented appartment. Really cheap, oldfashioned but cosy place with cockroaches 😂 We really had an intention to visit city center but it was dark anyway and we were exhausted, so, this plan didn't work out.
In the morning we drove to Kavala, a city in North Greece coastline. The ride took about 8 hours, this is insane. Bus stopped about every hour in different gas stations. On one stop I saw an interesting small church and few meters away a chicken and a cock in the barrel. Creepy thing, I thought they are dead, but nope, they were pretty alive. I also got experience to use toilet with lizard. Crossing the border was smooth, we passed our document control twice but at least it was quick. And using Estonian ID card was a convenient act. In the evening when we arrived it was super-hot. We just went to the first beach to cool ourselves, actually kind of pointless because even water was warm and bottom of the sea was covered by sharp rocks. After beach experience we walked around the city to find a place to eat and sleep. Quirino talked with one printing office guy, he helped us a lot, reccomended place where to eat local food and showed us a hotel street on the map. He also gave us advice what to do in Thassos. We had a plentiful dinner in the local restaurant and finally found a hotel where to spend a night. On the next day we started our trip to Thassos island. First thing after leaving our hotel was finding a coffee bar. It is Italians habit to start a day with coffee. We ordered ice cream with Heleri. In my opinion, more reasonable choice on a sunny day. Ferry took us to the island, it took about 1,5 hours. A bit oldfashioned but functioning vehicle. The view to Kavala was amazing, this light blue water and mountains, breathtaking. It was weird that people gave food to seagulls from their hands. It is insane to feed wild animals that way. Our first shopping on the island included a lot of snacks and new flip-flops for Giuseppe. Then we spent some time in the beach, pretty close to the harbour. Water was warm, blue and sand wasn't full of sharp rocks. We wanted to travel other part of the island but bus system was uncertain. So, we rented scooters. I was against of it at first place. It was the worst moment during my EVS. I literally had a mental break down there. I was scared, far from home with strangers and without a plan what we even do there. It took me approximately 10 minutes to find former Eleri again. Finally we started our way to Golden Beach, unfortunately it was a really touristic place and we continued our trip. We visited a random shop and they also sold Estonian coctails as well as Billa shop in Bulgaria. Fantastic is to find piece of home in random shop in Greece. Thassos is a wonderful island with varied nature. Mountains, sea, forest and animals. Suddenly Quirino saw a small island and was interested in to explore this place. We found a wild road down the hill and decided to try our luck. It was curvy and desolated road. When we thought that we are close to the sea we noticed a car standing on our way. The blue car was covered in dust. The car had a lot of stuff inside and it was even working. What an insane situation, we had so many theories whos car it is and why it is here. The path ended with a car and it was almost impossible to reach sea. After walking uphill it was a great feeling to be back in the civilization. After our expedition in rural area we drove to Paradise beach. It was a nice place (it actually means it is a place that you can't find in Estonia), there was a sandy part and a rocky one. We went to the rocky one because there were a few people. Actually reason was pretty laconic, it was really close to the Nude Beach. We took many photos and had a good time in the water swimming with Heleri and seeing small fishes around us. It was getting dark and we decided to make a small picnic on the front of the cliff. Rocks were warm in the darkening evening. Everything wasn't so fantastic though. There were many mosquitos, and Quirino fighted with them in really interesting way. He put a lot of plastic bags on his legs. We couldn't stop our round trip around an island. In the dark we drove further and finally reached our first city. We were aware of our situation that we need to sleep on the beach. In the daytime we just didn't find a moment to search for an accommodation. At least it was warmer than sleeping in the Bulgarian park. Early in the morning we started our trip back to Kavala. We walked around the oldtown part of the city and started hitchhiking from the city centre. It seemed kind of impossible thing to do but it worked, after 5 minutes we got a car. A man who was heading to fishing picked us up. He was kind in every way 😝 Then we got another car also pretty easily, this man has a friend who has a business in Estonia by the way. Our journey back to Bulgaria had gone pretty smoothly at this time, but then we got stuck on the random highway. It didn't help that we divided ourselves into 2 pairs. It was sunny and hot day and we walked in the middle of nowhere. Many cars passed by but nobody wanted to pick up 4 backpackers before a border. So, we walked for a while until we reached the gas station. We bought a lot of munch there. And ice cream has never tasted so good than there. Our situation was pretty horrible, so we needed a plan. Suddenly, I have got an idea to ask help from drivers who got there. We waited for a lonely driver to arrive and asked a favour with Heleri. I don't remember much from this moment but he agreed. I excelled myself, I really discovered new side of myself and got a lot of confidence. The driver was an old Cyprus businessman and with his BMW X5 we hurtled really fast. We passed every car that was ahead of us. Insane but it was so exciting. I really loved that ride, it was full of adrenaline. Everyone in that car tried to sleep for a while, except me and a driver. In my opinion, it is impossible to sleep on curvy and bumpy roads. We passed a border with businessman and actually a huge part of Bulgaria too. We left the car in Ruse, near to Romania because the man's destination was Romania. Then we struggeled again but at the end boys found a Bulgarian driver who gave us a lift to our Sveshtari hostel. It is a thing that I admire about Bulgarians, they are always willing to help you every way as possible. For example, the driver didn't speak English nor Russian but somehow we still communicated and found our language. We arrived late at night but Anna still wasn't back from Istanbul. It was scary but at some point we got information that she is kind of stuck in Turkey with Mustafa. But it is already another story. Oh, and it is possible to hitchhike with four people, it took us only 4 cars to pass more than 500 km. |
AuthorJust another confused youth. Archives
November 2017
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