The state of things

Today we meant to do an alphabet happening in the Roma (Gypsy) school in Vrshets, the nearby spa town. It turned out that schools where the elections to the European Parliament took place yesterday were closed for today. We just confirmed that we can do the event the next day, and moved on to have a nice breakfast in a coffee shop, with „banica“, coffee and yoghurt. We stopped by the town museum, where they had a collection of historical artefacts, from the Roman and Thracian times up to last century folklore. There were also small bells that were used to enhance the healing qualities of the mineral water ever since the Roman times.
It stopped raining and the sun was finally out. Suddenly, it felt hot, pleasant and relaxing. We decided to visit the nearby Klisursky Monastery, which was coincidentally also devoted to Sts. Kiril and Metodius. The monastery also housed a tourist hotel, so everything was too nicely decorated and arranged. It almost offered itself as a setting for a music clip in the local superpopular kitsch music style called “tchalga” or else also turbofolk. The only somewhat authentic place around was a water spring in the nearby forest. The water is miraculous, and if you drink it with faith, it will fulfill your wish. The spring comes out at a place where 6 monks were massacred by the Turks, when attempting to rebuild the monastery destroyed at the time. Once we got over the idea that the water comes out from a grave, Standa gave us a lecture about how all this veneration of God is just not for him. He knows that God is, because he feels it, so that’s for sure. But his God just does not belong to any religion. So it is questionable if his wish will work.
On the way back, we stopped at the Сталин (Stalin) restaurant for some roasted trout. We entertained ourselves with comparing what some of the same words mean in Czech and Bulgarian. So for example, the Bulgarians could not believe that we call perfume „voňavka“ (nice smelling), when the word for good smell „vůně“ means „bad stink“ in Bulgarian. We created a list of things following the Bulgarian alhabet for tomorrow’s event, and revelead more fascinating linguistic similarities and differences.
In the restaurant, Standa was trying his messianic guilt-tripping about using recycled veggie oil to save the world, but the waiter answered that in this restaurant, they do not fry things, they only have a grill. On the way back we stopped at the open-air market to get vegetables, and at one house in the village to buy eggs and cheese. As soon as we got home, it started raining again.