Palette cleansed, by art

Don't want to leave the blog (weekend off line) with the bitter taste of sartre and smoking.

So, a palette-cleansing Bulgarian Icon painter.

My favorite (because he looks like an Edward Gorey figure), and the most famous (R said). The esteemed Zahari Zograf (I believe, my translation from Cyrillic on museum ticket).

He was on the 100 leva note until, unceremoniously, in 1999 being replaced by Aleko Konstantinov. Writer (of modern life) trumps artist (of religious scenes and saints). Progress marches on.

We went to a gallery full of his works (icons all) in Old Plovdiv. A few funny moments of him modeling some better known saints on his own face + figure but otherwise entirely un-hubristic and rich stuff.

Here's to weekend.

C

Thursday's Bulgaria post

Meeting of modes, Koprivshtitsa Bulgaria.

The day's Bulgaria post (working through a little notebook).

Sofia, Aug. 24
Emerging from his parent's apartment block, first day, I comment to R that the air smelled like wood smoke.
R replies,“Everyone's roasting peppers.”
When I look at him, incredulous, he adds, “or possibly making compote.”

C, impressed

Of Plovdiv

Entry to Hindliyan House, Old Plovdiv

Notes to get through, Bulgarian moments to share.

Realize I have near nothing up yet on Plovdiv - Bulgaria's second capital of classical ruins (an amphitheatre even), Byzantine churches, mosques and very handsome houses of Bulgaria's mid-18thc "National Revival Movement." (the photo depicts one).

The highlight of the city (for tourists - wouldn't make a claim for locals), is the Old Town. As one'd expect (or as I expected having read a lot and tried pitching Plovdiv to a few magazines), it's all very charming and cobbled and well preserved, cafes tucked in, history come alive, galleries and jazz festivals and all good things.

We spent half a day but, with R's extreme diligence, managed most of the highlights, a coffee and an apricot nectar, a look around the rooms of a hotel I'd recommend, and a lot of pictures.

What we didn't get to see, but which draws me back - is the Plovdiv of old, the "colorfully Ottoman" Plovdiv of which Jasper More noted critically, but I'd argue, winningly:

"Narrow streets at night pervaded by a Stygian darkness and dingy looking billiard rooms where they smoke the narghile."

Now that's the town you'd want to visit (having brushed up on vocab beforehand.)

C (in this Stygian night)

How to stay: at a monastery

One of my guides mentioned you could spend the night at the Rila Monastery: for cheap, in a (monk-less) monk's room, linens included and with an early wake up call.

(The monastery is deep in the Rila Mountains (away from the Turks) and attracts hikers as well as sightseers. Its rooms-for-rent therefore cater to an entirely different crowd than the yoga-and-a-view monastic retreats of upstate New York.)

Intrigued, R and I plunge in to investigate. Like so many things in this country of enigmatic proverbs (In the summer bring clothes to the mountains, in winter bring food), the seeking was a journey, the answer simple but hidden, and the process utterly mystifying via English alone.

Aug. 26, Rila Monastery
Tried to track down information about staying at the monastery. No one on-hand to answer questions, no posted signs, so bothered the ticket taker behind the desk at the museum.

She directed us to Priest T___.

We seek him, eventually ending up back in the church where the candle/holy water lady starts to point him out (engaged in some matter at the altar) then, discerning that our need for a room is not immediate, answers the question herself: $15 a night.

You will find what you seek in Bulgaria but the answer may involve the lady behind the candle stand.

C

To the traveler

Today, via emails, reading and the mail, has themed itself "travel." (Even as I sit at my kitchen table and contemplate packing up apartment.) Travel in the BIG/romantic, seeking, calling on the ghosts-of-great-wanderers past, sense.

A friend sent the following quote - treasure-able for many reasons, not the least as one more passage about Marco Polo (must be an archive, somewhere).

"Further on comes the desert of Lob: a stony plain, tiers of clay precipices, glassy salt ponds...In this desert are preserved traces of an ancient road along which Marco Polo passed six centuries before I did: its markers are piles of stones. Just as I had heard in a Tibetan gorge that interesting drum-like roar which had frightened our first pilgrims, so in the desert during the sandstorms I also saw and heard the same as Marco Polo:

"the whisper of spirits calling you aside"

and the queer flicker of the air, an endless progression of whirlwinds, caravans and armies of phantoms coming to meet you, thousands of spectral faces in their incorporeal way pressing upon you, through you, and suddenly dispersing.

In the twenties of the fourteenth century when the great explorer was dying, his friends gathered by his bedside and implored him to reject what in his book had seemed incredible to them - to water down its miracles by means of judicious deletions; but he responded that he had not recounted even a half of what he had in fact seen."

V. Nabokov, Dar/The Gift pp. 124, 5.

(Photo's mine, of Gandaki Valley, Nepal)

C - thinking big thoughts, living local

Sorting through

Bulgaria house-cleaning to do.

On the physical end of things: bought books, took notes, bothered locals and amassed a stack of unsorted stuff (should be a word for ____ that returns with you from a trip and is neither trash nor knickknack nor incorporate-able into life-before-trip).:

A small bottle of Rila Monastery holy water (1 lev.)
A severely bound book called The Bulgarians that introduces, among other gems, the theory that: Europe would be speaking Turkish had the Bulgarians not "barred their entry with their blood, faith and freedom."
Menus stolen from restaurants (research).
A box I found in the sweets section of the supermarket which R says is Turkish delight (Bulgarian delight that would be).
Postcards of icons and murals I couldn't photograph but will never send.
Tickets from museums in Cyrillic which I can't read but find pretty.
Business cards.

Can't do much about all of that but put in a box and label.

The other stuff - the notes and thoughts and quotes - will have to be interspersed throughout later posts.

Stay tuned Bulgaria-watchers, she has not yet sung.

C

You say progress, I say...

This from my nostalgic Blue Guide to Bulgaria.

On the Grand Hotel (now reinvented c/o Radisson as a non-descript business hotel with a sheer face of dark glass.)

“The Grand Hotel Sofia is a fine gloomy old place that offers cavernous, dusty and slightly sinister rooms with vast armchairs and velvet plush curtains...
There is a nightclub downstairs that is much used by visiting Greek businessmen.
The bar is popular with ex-communist functionaries and is a place for connoisseurs of old party chic.”

Later, Pettifer gamely notes:

"Although the gangster's often lethal quarrels should not deter the holiday visitor, it is a good idea to have some awareness of the power of these forces on Bulgarian society."

C

Photos of the trip

R: Captured, capturing me. Rila Monastery

Started into Susan Sontag's On Photography this weekend (heavy on the camera-as-gun thing but, still, thought-prodding), and am now self-conscious of this whole: must travel and capture with camera thing.

(Briefly.)

Which is precisely what I did in Bulgaria and am introducing here.

Without further ado, Bulgaria through a highly subjective lens, edited for content and heavy on photos of people only some of my readers will know.

Bulgaria Photos Here.
More substantive posts soon, promise.

C w. camera (capturing)

One of them

Bought this t-shirt in Sofia airport as we were leaving early Tuesday. Have worn pretty solid since (like the insrutablity of Bulgarian cyrillic, like blue).

Discovered wearing shirt doing Union Square errands today:
Hipster/inscrutable t-shirt types give you a second look, and some version of slacker-respect, for a t-shirt they don't get get but get.

C (inscrutable)