Varshets in the rain

It didn’t. I mean the nice weather from Central Europe that we hoped would catch up with us…didn’t. We’re not that far away, or? How can the weather be so beautiful in Prague and so awful in Bulgaria, all rainy and cold? Bundled in sweaters, we spend most of our days preparing for our evening presentation in Varshets. Finally in the afternoon, the sun peeks out for a moment. Overjoyed, we spend a short moment sunbathing on the terrace of Diana’s house. Nikolaj even manages to do his laundry – he seems to enjoy the chance to wash his clothes outside, under cold running water, using old-school Bulgarian laundry soap. We arrive in Varshets at around 7 p.m. There is a wedding going on, so traffic is limited where our presentation is supposed to take place and it takes some explaining to the police why we need to drive down the closed street. In the end one of them softens up – thanks in part to our permit from the local municipality, after explaining how great our project is, and also after telling him that we would be passing through in a car which runs on used frying oil. He climbs in with Standa and negotiates our passage all the way to the fountain in the main square. We unpack our portable screen, put on music and are immediately surrounded by crowds of curious spectators. Just as Tomáš is beginning to present our project to the audience, the lightning starts. Then it begins to drizzle, followed by rain, which soon turns into a downpour. The audience stands there under their umbrellas and it is clear that they are captivated by the presentation. Some old grannies even stomp to the rhythm of the music. Everyone is waiting for the rain to stop.
But it doesn’t. Not the rain, but our drenched audience begins to go away. Although the weather couldn’t have rained more on our parade, we are happy with the event because the response of the people who stayed against all odds was really good. And this when there was a World Cup match on.

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.

It’s raining

It’s raining and cold the whole day today, and we don’t like it. In the morning we needed a screening room for a presentation about composting, so we turned an old barn in the back of the garden into an improvised cinema/lecture hall. Never mind that the spiders whose barn this was so far would include us in their webs. The topic of composting was more than appropriate for the place, and local people came to listen and share their experiences. The word „compost“ is apparently derived from the Latin „componere“, like the word „compose/r“. Coincidentally, we learned from a book that Roman brought from Pilsen about the history of the cyrilic, that Cyril composed the script partially from an old syllabic alphabet of Pliska, used in north-east Bulgaria, and also from some Greek letters. He as well added 14 letters for specifically Slavic sounds such as [zh] [sh] [ch] [tz] [dzh] [ue] [ua] [yu] [ya] etc. For lunch, we invaded the only local pub which is proudly equipped with 3 tables. So far, the pub owner has been facing some tough issues around its suddent popularity. Today, we were trying to help him solve the challenge of too few forks for too many people.
We spent the rest of the day inside, by the fire in the stove. We also had to chase a small rat from its favourite hang-out place in the food-storage room. In the morning, the rat jumped on Pepa, he got startled, poor thing, and swore, thus waking up the whole house. The rat won the chase, and took refuge in a hole under the staircase. Well, it’s right next to the storage room, so it knew what it was doing, apparently.
Diana read us the spiritual interpretation of the cyrilic by the philosopher Bejnsa Duno (Петър Дънов, another name that cannot be transcribed into latinic). He created the paneurytmia philosophy and started the White Brotherhood movement (Byalo bratstvo). We also discussed why the Bulgarians shake their head to say yes, when every other nation does the exact opposite—nodding. Someone said that once the world goes crazy, only the Bulgarians will look like they know what’s going on.
Now we will have a Bulgarian dinner made with our Macedonian ingrediences (and the still surviving Hungarian mayonnaise), and in the evening we want to have a screening of an old Yugo-Macedonian movie called „Yad“ (Sadness). It is about the Bogomils and takes place in Ohrid.

Bela Rechka

After breakfast in Diana’s house at noon, where we are staying, we met up with the other workshop participants, who would present their projects about letters at the Goatmilk Festival. The festival is organized by Diana, Mariana and Kalin from the Nova Kultura foundation for the fourth time. The festival is called after the goats of the village, which probably outnumber the people in the village.
One of the projects for the festival is called Glagolic Dictatorship. It was presented by Atanas as a member of the group who worked on it. Their argument builds on the fact, that with Bulgaria now being in the European Union, there are two official scripts in the Union. To avoid the problems this will inevitably cause, they propose to use a third alphabet, so that both the Europeans and Bulgarians at least share the same problems with a script. It turns out that the only pan-european script other than latinic that was ever used, was glagolic. So only the glagolic alphabet would be suitable. Clearly, a dictatorship can easiest be established by means no other than revolution. The Glagolic dictatorship is thought through to the smallest of details—including a flag, revolutionary indoctrination (the Slav version is rather intoxication) and a word-to-word transliteration of the European Constitution into glagolic script. Cveti and Desi work on a project that follows how the latinic transcribes public notices and road signs. The latinic is not able to capture properly certain Bulgarian sounds, so when a word is transcribed into latinic and read back, it is not only imprecise, but it also reduces the sound richness of the language. Some sounds do not have their letter in latinic, and their transcription can differ, such as in ъгъл (angle) is written as „agal“ or „ugul.“ Place names as Кърджали are transcribed as Kardjali, Karjali or Kurdjali, but none of the transcribed versions have the proper Bulgarian sound. Vania prepared a pocket guide of different styles of transcriptions of cyrilic into latinic, as practiced in „business“ and in informal personal emails. It is clear that somewhere deep, the Bulgarians are a bit irritated by the presence of latinic, and try to brace themselves against it. They have a very emotional relationship to their script. Those who live abroad even nostalgically miss the possibility to use a cyrilic keyboard. No wonder, when you go back and realize that their script was a revelation from God captured by Saint Cyril. The pope even recognized the cyrilic script as sacred already in 867 A.D.. So the cyrilic is not be taken lightly! It was around way before any of us were even hoping to be born!
Bela Rechka is in the Stara Planina mountains, which, together with the Dormitor mountains in Montenegro and mount Olympos in Greece, were the three pillars that held up the heavens in Aristotle’s idea of the world. We are travelling in this imaginary triagle—it is a territory of three sacred scripts—the Greek, the latinic and the cyrilic. And the food is good too.

From Prilep to Sofia

In the morning we pack up and continue on our journey towards Sofia. A message arrives that Roman has already landed there. But it’ll take us another five or six hours before we can pick him up.
On the way to Sofia, we detour off the main road after Kumanov to look for a church in the small village of Staro Nagoricani. The church dates back to the 11th century and its interior is decorated with 14th-century frescoes from the floor all the way up to the cupola. There is a unique scene in which Jesus is arguing with artists who are mocking him on his way to Golgotha for looking like a king. There’s also St. George with a very pretty dragon – a snake with horns. Above the church entrance is an inscription in old Cyrillic and under an opening into the corner church tower is a fresco containing a plaque written in old Cyrillic.
Only later, when we are further on our way, do we learn that Kokin, only a few kilometres from the church, is home to the oldest megalithic observatory in the world, older than Stonehenge, which was not discovered until six years ago. The site is surrounded by several plateaus rising above mild rolling hills, which gives the whole area a friendly and open spiritual energy.
Standa’s car manages to get a puncture so we have to change the tire. The roads after the Bulgarian border are even worse than before but we are in a hurry to reach Sofia. We arrive before 8 p.m., say goodbye to Agnes, who is flying back in the morning, and pick up Roman who arrived in the morning from Pilsen and Radmila, a journalist from Sofia. There follows a night-time rallye to Bela Rechka on winding and bumpy mountain roads. We arrive after midnight. Diana has been expecting us, with dinner, an open fire and rakija, also known as loza. We discuss how the Cyrillic alphabet is viewed in the countries through which we have already travelled. Diana said that everybody in Bulgaria knows Cyril and Methodius, that they’re almost a cliché. In retrospect, when comparing the various relationships people have to the alphabet, the role of Cyril and Methodius, and the political situation, history and future of various Balkan countries

Site-specific in Prilep

We found out we have an extra day we can spend in Prilep because Agnes was flying from Sofia one day later than we thought. Since we did not have enough time yesterday to do the events we planned, this was a great opportunity for us.
As we were preparing for the afternoon and worked thru the materials we collected, there was a game we spontaneously started with the kids in the yard of our house. We created a table with fields for each letter of the Macedonian alphabet. Each field was for an object that started with that letter. The kids played shop, where if you wanted to „buy“ something, you had to show the given letter, either with your fingers or the whole body.
In the afternoon we organized a similar event in Varosh, where we went already the day before to see the old churches. With help of the people in the village shop, we bought things „according to the alphabet“ and placed them on the „alphabet table“ in front of the shop. We were then „selling“ each thing in exchange for a letter, as we did earlier with kids in Prilep. Our alphabet shop sold out while we managed to engage and entertain half of the village. As we were leaving, even the kids who did not participate in the event already played the letter game on their own.

From Ohrid to Prilep

Leaving Ohrid. On the way to Prilep we stopped at the Monastery of St. Naum by the Ohrid lake, close to Albanian border and right next to a large spring of crystal clear water. St. Naum and St. Kliment travelled with Cyril and Metodus all the way to Great Moravia, from were they eventually returned and founded the Ohrid university. In the monastery there is a church with the remains of St. Naum from the 10th century. The chapel with the tomb of St. Naum is covered inside with frescoes depicting the life of the saint, including one scene where Naum is being chased by the heretical Bogomils. By the entrance to the church there are two marble pillars which have grafitti-like slavonic cross engravings in several places reminiscent of glagolic signs. Almost all churches from this period have a special intimate atmosphere of a spiritual encounter, perhaps because the saints who are crowding alongside you on the walls, are lifesize and within reach.
In the ticket office we met our old friend Danko, who Standa, Tomáš and Martin interviewed when they were here last year in the fall. He happily pulled out a bottle of rakija and shot glasses from under the counter, and this church foreroom turned, for a few minutes, into a bar.
Danko chose as his favorite the letter Д as dům (house), duša (soul), dobro (goodness), da (yes) and Danko, his name. His second letter was T, because there is a table in the house, or a sacrificial altar. He chose the glagolic letter ŠČ for St. Naum, as „ščot“ (the sum) of D and T.
We climbed up over the Galičica mountains on a small road, and saw beautiful views both of the Ohrid as well as the neighboring Prespanske lake. On the way to Prilep we passed by Bitola, which has both the remains of Roman settlement and the messy but pictoresque gypsy quarters.
Vladimir’s family welcomed us in Prilep. His father took us to the village of Varosh, on the outskirts of Prilep. Above was the towering rock with the fortress of King Marko, and right below the rock but high above the village was a monastery of St. Archangel Michael. We met a young monk at the monastery. He told us how originally, in the 9th century, this place was a hermitage, and the monk’s teachings were so attractive that eventually he gathered followers who settled in the caves around, and founded a monastery. The door to the church was guarded with the fresco figures of king Marko and his father. Marko was depicted in white dress to mark the mourning after his beloved father’s death at the time of building this church. Inside were lines of saints, most of them doctors, such as St. Cosmas and Damian. The monk showed us a glagolic text carved into the marble pillar at the church entrance. He mentioned that he was surprised that Kliment changed the glagolic script into cyrilic, because the glagolic was developed as a divine act. By changing it, Kliment would be committing a sin against his teacher and God, so there must have been political pressures for replacing the glagolic with a new script. Kliment would most probably not have done this on his own.
We descended to the village of Varosh, which was the oldest serttlement in the area. As the city grew and other settlements were being „glued on“, the city came to be called Prilep (glueing), at least according to Vladimir. There were originally 70 churches in Varosh, one for each house. Several churches are still preserved, almost right at the houses‘ backyards. They are from the 13th century and several of them still have wonderfully preserved frescoes. You can see how recycling worked at that time—each of the churches has carved marble stones build into its walls, still with the Greek inscriptions and reliefs.
After a great banquet that Vlado’s mom prepared for us, we still went to explore the town center and ended up in the ВИРУС bar. The last item on the day’s program was a showing of a film called The Secret Book about the legendary sacred book of the medieval Bogomils. Part of the book took place in visions and dreaming, and since we watched from the beds, some of us naturally transitioned from the dreams in the film into their own.