Monday, March 10, 2008

My new favorite thing

Hey all,
Here is my new favorite band/song. I know, I know, they can't really be considered new when they're from the '70s and '80s. But you know what? They're new to me. Here is their video which I miraculously found on YouTube, which proves once and for all, that YouTube has everything. A little note first about this song: it is incredible and strikes a particularly personal note in my life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria. You can obviously see this by mere virtue of the fact that it is making it onto my blog. I keep this blog to share only my most deeply profound thoughts.



Lyrics - Bulgarian (Cyrillic) / English

За мен отдавна хората говорят / People have long said about me
че вечно съм без пукната пара / that I'm always dirt broke
но аз с всеки съм готов да споря / but with them all I'm ready to argue
дали това е най-важно на света / whether this is the most important thing in the world

живея на последния етаж / I live on the top floor
в една мансарда, точно под звездите / in an attick, right under the stars
прозорецът е моята врата / the window is my door
и аз вървя към тях и ги разпитвам / and i go to them and inquire

дали след време тука под звездите / whether after some time here under the stars
прозорецът ще има светлина / the window will have light
дали тогава пак ще слушат "Бийтълс" / whether then again they'll listen to The Beatles
и вечните поети ще четат/ and the eternal poets they will read

дали хазяйката ще идва рано / wether the landlady will come early
с виенска кифла, с каничка кафе / with Viennese rolls, with a pot of coffee
и вместо да попита тя за наема / and instead of asking for the rent
ще усмихне - спахте ли добре / she'll smile - "did you sleep well?"

и пак ли ще звучи невероятно / and again will this sound unbelievable?
за някой, ако някой пак твърди / to someone, if someone again contends,
че имам най-голямото богатство / that I have the the most riches,
един прозорец и безброй звезди. / one window and countless stars.


Sunday, January 6, 2008

A Ham In Turkey

If my titles are becoming too much for you guys to handle, let me know and i'll tone it down.
Also, this post is a product of not being able to sleep, so it is written back to back with the one below it. So I suggest reading that first and coming back in order to fully appreciate the quality of what I'm saying here.

I want to write a little bit about my New Years experience in Istanbul before I put it off indefinitely or find something else to write about entirely. I will start with day 1, but I will flow freely from there without adhering to linear time as we know it.

As I have been making progress building the 'Mall of Gabrovo/shopping center/golden monument where human evolution will take a new turn', I had let my outwardly appearance become more rugged. I was sporting scraggly hair and a beard. As the new year approached, I took time off from construction and went to Istanbul, where I had figured it was time for a change - to clean myself up. I went with some peace corps friends (shane, mike, and his brother steve who was visiting from the states). On our first walk around some tourist spots, I saw the man below-right wave to me from the big glass window of his barber shop. I figured it was as good a place as any to get cleaned up, right? And I had never had a straight-razor shave before. Now, I release the photos below in true politician style. To explain my story before other copies (of which there are plenty) leak to the public out of context.




After my shave (which turned into a shave and haircut), the barber kept going. By the end I got a haircut, a shave, a facemask treatment, a neck massage, and a free cup of tea for posterity. I did not ask for these things, but they happened... one by one in rapid succession by a man with a straight razor at my throat. But, as the picture on the right shows, we bonded over the inability to speak each other's language. Meet my friend, the overpriced barber in istanbul. It sure wasn't the $2 haircut i'm used to in Bulgaria, but I must admit I look equally more hot.

After that there's not much more to tell. The 5 remaining days in Istanbul (originally 3 but extended by a lack of trains back until Jan. 3rd) consisted of walking, sightseeing, sitting at cafes, and watching live music.

Here's some travel advice though. If you are in the nightlife area of Istanbul, near Taksim Square, watch out for people who start walking and talking with you. It will be twix the hours of 7pm and 2am, and some man speaking turkish will coolly ask you for directions, or for a light for his cigarette. They will be surprised you speak english (even though they targeted you for that reason alone). They will strike up conversation and talk about where you're from, like they want to be your new best friend, or they want to practice their english, etc. They'll walk with you and then suggest you all go to an awesome bar they know about. ***This is a trap. They are taking you to some place that is probably not legitimate, or otherwise they wouldn't have these people out on the street trolling for customers.

Here are some tricks to get them to leave. 1. Speak some obscure language (Bulgarian works) 2. tell them you're meeting friends at a certain bar you know of, and beg them to come with you 3. as they are chatting up with you, slip in that you are a volunteer teacher and make no money (they start walking faster immediately to try to lose you in the crowd) *yelling after them "hey, why are you walking so fast, I thought we were friends!" is optional. 4. make up lots of personal information about yourself, and then tell them you're going to catch a train, but you hope they have a good night.

The option you decide rests solely on whether you want them to leave as quickly as possible or you want to waste as much of their time as you can. Another fun game is waiting around on that street for a bit until you see them double back, probably to the place they first 'ran into you'... as they are likely going back to snag someone else less suspecting.

Remember, you can't teach street smarts in school.
Straight street, I'm out.

The Price of Brie-dom

Since it has been almost 5 months since my last update, there is alot I first want to brag about. Deep breath, Go. In the past 5 months I've visited Poland, Athens, Istanbul (twice), and several places inside Bulgaria such as Sapareva Banya (to see the host fam), Bourgas (for thanksgiving), Veliko Turnovo (for halloween), Apriltsi, and of course, Plovdiv.

But what I really want to talk about is this:


and, of course, this:



The former being the new Mall of Gabrovo, and the latter being, well, brie. I don't want to specifically talk about brie, but I fear if I was just talking about cheese you wouldn't take me seriously. So seriously, let's discuss.

For you detectives out there, you may already have figured out that Gabrovo is my peace corps site, the town in which I live and work here in Bulgaria. It's a sizable town that stretches several kilometers. Well, about 7 months ago an old movie theater near the center of town was demolished to make way for, you guessed it, a brand new mall. What you see in the picture above is post-demolition/hole-making for a foundation/pre-construction of this new mall. There are pictures up around the construction site about what the new mall will look like, and I will try to post a picture of that picture soon. As luck would have it, the construction is, let's say, 'close' to my apartment.

Your first concern would be for my health and safety. "Is Joe getting enough sleep with all this noise? Is he breathing alright when bits of rubble from the demolition phase spontaneously combust sending fire and smoke in the air?". Honestly, none of that matters now. Because of the famed 'proximity rule' (mostly used in college dormitories to quickly determine who will answer the door or take out the trash), I have decided I am able to take full credit for what will be called the grandest peace corps development project ever, a f*ing mall. All this simply by living near it. This bastion of american consumerism is the least I can do for my town.
What kind of compensation do I get for my work/illegitimate credit taking? Well, it certainly isn't monetary... which brings me to brie.

As a peace corps volunteer, I'm certainly not rolling in the Aleko's. Sigh - a joke I must explain. Aleko Konstantinov is a Bulgarian writer who is on the 100 leva bill. Absorb. Laugh.

To seemlessly throw out a possibly innaccurate figure by couching my statement in vague language: the price of some food staples in or around Bulgaria have gone up between 15-20% in 2007 alone. Cheese did not escape this fate. Cheese might not come to mind as a 'staple', unless you are a lover of Bulgarian 'bahnitsa' or devoted to shopska salad. I am these things.
What was different about 2007 you ask? Would you like to explain it by mere virtue of Bulgaria joining the EU on jan. 1st 2007? Plausible. It's not for me to decide. I couldn't tell you how much the price of brie has gone up, since I don't remember buying it even though I'm tempted each time I pass it in the store. I spend the extra money I pocket away on the rarer beast - cottage cheese, which finds its way to our stores only on occassion.

But enough about my personal life. What am I working on? Kind of a ballsy question to ask since I already told you I am personally building a mall/shopping center/kingdom *where people will fly for the first time ever*, piece by piece from scratch with my own two hands. But yes, I have other work going on too. My park and I just got a project grant through USAID and Peace Corps to train park staff and a group of high school students in monitoring species of birds of prey in our park and elsewhere around our town... so, we got that going for us. And here is where I will abruptly end.

I hope to not wait another 5 months to make my next entry.
*credit to Mike Clark for unknowingly contributing to my joke*