Mediterranean visit

Published:  Monday, June 4, 2007 (1 year, 4 months ago)
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Religious items can be purchased in front of the Rila Monestary in Bulgaria. See more photos on page 12.Robert “Cookie” and Louise Miller of Ottoville traveled to Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece last fall. The couple love to travel and have visited 22 countries.
Louise enjoys seeing how people in other counties live. “Cookie” said this last trip was different from any other they have taken and enjoyed the Old World feel.
The following is the second of four installments of a journal Louise kept on their most recent trip.

We stopped for lunch and had lambshish. It was pretty tasty but as with much of the food on the trip, it was lukewarm.
We visited the Blue Mosque. We had to take our shoes off and carry them in a plastic bag. The floor of the mosque was covered with many different figured rugs. Families used to bring their own rugs, which made for a variety of designs. Of course they were Turkish handmade carpets. There is a large dome and under this dome is a very large circle of iron on which are candles. This is where you see men prostrate in prayer. Women stay out of this circle.
There are stained glass windows and blue and white mosaics cover the wall.
We also visited the Topkapi Palace. There were beautiful demitasse sets on exhibit. Some of the chandeliers were Italian Murano, which is blown glass flowers of different colors. I saw a painting by Robert Miller.
Wherever we went there were wandering cats. They seemed very well cared for and well fed. We went to the bazaar in the afternoon. This is mostly a cavernous building filled with small vendors selling everything from jewelry to carpets. It was a beautiful day. We bought a book on Istanbul, found a good place to sit and mostly watched people. We started out into the country, passing many sunflower fields. Sunflowers are used for oil and for their seeds.
We ate in Kera. We had to get out of the bus to get our passports stamped. This was the Turkish border. For the Bulgarian border, an officer came into the bus, collected our passports, took them away and brought them back stamped. Bulgarian money is levers. At the time a lever was equal to $1.50. You can’t sell them back, so you exchange only as much as you think you will need. We stayed in Bourgas, which has a population of 250,000, at the 12-story Hotel Bulgaria. We arrived after 6 p.m. and all the banks and money exchanges had closed. Our dinner consisted of weiner schnitzel and sauer kraut, french fries, a tomato and cucumber salad and a hard peach. The weiner schnitzel was good but we laughed when a hard unpeeled peach was served on a white plate. All breakfasts were served on the tour package and were very good. We were never very hungry for lunch, which was fortunate as Bulgaria and Romanian countryside have very few restaurants able to serve a busload. They were usually outside on a kind of patio and their specialty was soup. At one stop, I had bean and bacon soup. The beans were fine but I couldn’t eat the unfried bacon slivers. The cost of the food was moderate.
Nesbar, by the Black Sea, was a fun stop. We walked up and down among the shops and wooden cottages. The ground in the area is black and when a storm comes up the sea turns very black. We had a coke and enjoyed the scenery. This area was the only place we saw considerable construction. Many hotels and apartment buildings are being built here, a resort area.
We saw a new Trabant, an all plastic car which uses a mix of oil and gas. Otherwise, the cars are all small and mostly old. Many are brought from Germany and France.
We had lunch at Varna. We ate at a KFC. This was outside and stray cats were ambling among the diners. We walked down the street under the motorway and into a Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Bulgaria has a population of 8.5 million people, of which nine percent are Turks.
An accident occurred right in front of the church. We watched as they pulled the top off the car, put it in a dumpster and proceeded to push the rest of the car, too. We stopped at Varga, which has a population of 325,000, and at Balcik.
We were struck by the poverty in Romania, which was under Communist rule until 1999 when Ceausescu and his wife were assassinated. He had ruled for 25 years and had troops quel rebels near Leipsiki Square. We stood in the square where he gave his final speech and was taken away in a helicopter, never to be seen again.
Constantina was our local guide. She was passionate about her country, blasting the Communists for the poor conditions. Bucharest became the capital in 1920. Bucharest is 87 percent Orthodox. There are no statues in these churches but they are completely covered with paintings. There is a dome with a chandelier hanging underneath. People stop under the dome to pray.
I saw a Romulus and Remus statue in Bucharest, a gift of Rome and a statue of Homer’s Ovid. Gypsys are prevalent in the countryside, having been expelled from England, Germany, Russia and Greece.
Constantina said things were very hard in the 1990s. There was no gas on Sundays. The roads are mostly narrow. The cars are small and old and many are parked helter skelter along the road as if they are never driven with flat tires and dusty conditions. Homes in the country have grape arbors, small plots of corn, plum trees, some flowers and an invariable wandering dog sometimes lying in the dust.
Their money is in leis.
I took pictures of the parliament, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. The miles and miles of Communist-built apartments were a sorry sight leading up to this grand building. However, the 41 fountains in the shape of flowers for the 41 provinces were a pretty sight. There was a lighted Leipsiki Square marking the 180 days to joining the European Union. Their hopes are high but they must meet the criteria.

Read the third installment in next Saturday’s Herald.

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