Somusing

Here I happened to be walking by as evening began and the bells were ringing at the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (църква Света Богородица, Пловдив, България):

The Plovdiv Regional Ethnographic Museum is really close to us. Like it takes less than five minutes to walk there. So I don't know why it took us so long to go, but we finally did, and it was cool. First, the kids had fun in the courtyard. This is a huge, beautiful painting in the very large entry area. From the second story windows looking out into the front courtyard. I took tons of pictures of traditional costumes. They are so colorful and varied and have beautiful hand-knit socks and intricate scarves and sashes and all kinds of fancy braiding. I'll spare you all of my pictures of that stuff, though. Here's just one. I think this is a typical rich person's Revival-era room. Mira with some awesome rugs. The kids exhausted after exploring the whole place. (Not really that exhausted. They just liked those wide window seats.) From the front courtyard of the museum, which is a house that was built in 1847 for a wealthy merchant...

There's a lot of really cool street art in this pedestrian underpass in Plovdiv, but unfortunately, I don't have pictures of much of it. Somewhere in Plovdiv. This is a swimming pool on top of Mladezhki Halm, the tallest hill in Plovdiv. Somewhere else in Plovdiv. Somewhere in Sofia. This is at the bottom of a memorial built for Buglaria's 1300th birthday, which Seth blogged about here (at the very end of the post). Near the ancient aqueducts in Plovdiv. A couple by Plovdiv's graffiti artist Билко (Bilko). Jon mentioned him here and included a link to an article about him, which is in Bulgarian, but Google Translate can help with that.

Tomorrow we leave for Sofia. Early on Friday morning, we have a flight from Sofia to Paris and then a flight from Paris to Salt Lake City. It's hard to believe that we'll be in the States in a couple of days, though we won't be back in our own home until the first of March. And while the kids are packing and cleaning, I'm doing some random last-minute blog posts. Ah, my life of leisure!

Every day at about 8:00 am, 8:35 am, and 5:00 pm, the bells ring at Sv. Nedelya, the Orthodox church that is almost right next to our house. I can tell that someone is actually ringing them, because some days they're slow and rhythmic and sometimes they ring kind of fast, like someone's in a hurry. And sometimes they get a little out of sync. The times are a little different on Sundays: 8:00 am, 9:00 am, and 4:00 pm. And on holidays, they sometimes ring at different times and for longer. I love hearing them. Here's another video from Christmas Day. It's long, so don't feel obligated to listen to all of it, but it's an example of how different it sometimes sounds. And here's a video that I took during the call to prayer at Dzhumaya Mosque. Another sound that I hope I don't forget is the sounds of the caged birds chirping at our neighbors' house. There are several small cages attached to the outside walls of their house, and each one ha...

Изгрев (Izgrev) is a neighborhood of Plovdiv. Some people call it a “Gypsy” neighborhood. On the surface it looks like the poorest neighborhood in the city. There is no hard dividing line from the surrounding neighborhoods, but you know you’re here by the decaying buildings, trash, toxic burning garbage, horse-drawn wagons (sometimes carrying new washing machines as seen below!), and lots of people without work. However, there are people working. Some commute to distant jobs. Others run small businesses such as the blacksmiths below who were hammering out horseshoes when we visited, lots of small stores and car repair places, people trying to get by. There are both large apartment blocks as well as small individually-owned homes. In the midst of it all are some freshly renovated nice homes, one of which we heard was funded by family members working in Germany. The last photo is of our friends from church named Христо (Hristo) and Иван (Ivan) who live there and introduced me to some...

The house is not at all clean in this video, but it's also not as bad as it sometimes is. So this is what you might see if you just dropped by sometime! And you're welcome to do that. :) As I'm posting this, the kids are watching the video tours of all of the places we've lived this year. I'm hearing lots of nostalgia about places we lived in just a few months ago!

Last week, the Plovdiv Branch had a folk dancing activity. I'm so glad they had it this month, so we could go. I'm not a great dancer, but some of what we learned was easy enough even for me. It was fun to learn dance steps in Bulgarian -- there was enough physical movement going on that we could see what we were supposed to be doing, plus about half of what our instructor was saying was counting. It becomes recognizable after a pretty short time when you're just hearing "1, 2, 3, 4!" over and over again. (Except that she wasn't saying "one." Instead she was saying "Ras!" or "Raz!", which seems to have something to do with music and starting.) The beginning, before we did the same steps in a circle: You can tell that everyone in this circle is Bulgarian and knows what they're doing: Seth and Polly, the 2-year-old daughter of the branch president and his wife. Seth is her favorite, and I've heard him speaking B...

Today I visited the Рогошки гробища (Пловдив) , a cemetery on the northeastern edge of Plovdiv . It's a large cemetery, with graves mostly from the past 50 years from what I saw. I was surprised to find along its western wall a sign stating "Гробище за домашни любимци", a cemetery for pets. Literally I think it uses the term "home beloveds" for pets here: To the left is an unnamed dog, in the middle is Daisy, and to the right Aiya: Here are a couple I liked especially, with detail views. First, a dog named Karla, 2000–2013, with the note "Обичаме те" ("we love you"): And then a cat named Viktor: I guess pet cemeteries probably exist elsewhere, but I don't think I've seen one in person before. On the topic of cute pets, here are two cats that seemed perfectly posed for a paparazzo like me to come along and take a picture of them:

Yesterday was an amazingly beautiful sunny day here in Plovdiv. Not typical for January. The skies are also much clearer than usual — no smoke or haze. I took a few panoramic photos with my mobile phone camera. The first two are from Небет тепе (Nebet Tepe), one of the smaller hills right near our house where lots of people were out enjoying the nice weather. This one is looking west to northwest: This one is looking northeast to east: This view is from Сахат тепе / Данов хълм (Sahat Tepe / Danov Halm) looking east, with the Roman amphitheater in the middle between Таксим тепе (Taksim Tepe) and Джамбаз тепе (Djambaz Tepe): Click on the images to see a larger rendering, or click here , here , and here for the original full-size panoramas.

Here are a few things we've seen in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, over the past couple of weeks. Two cats keeping warm in a cardboard box with some food provided by the people at this pastry shop: Huge McDonald's banner advertisement on the side of a concrete panel apartment block: Graffiti by Билко (Bilko), whose doings are covered in two articles in a local newspaper: Miniature Plovdiv counterpart to NYC's Flatiron Building? P LOVE DIV on the wall on the hill: The Централна поща (central post office) interior: Lillian, Seth, and Mira went ice skating at a little skating rink by the post office, which is in the background: Sunny winter view of the city looking northwest from Небет тепе (Nebet Tepe): If you have to cut down a tree, why not make the stump into a chair? More Roman-era ruins: Old stone road near the Културен център - музей тракарт (Cultural Center - Museum Trakart). The museum has always been closed since we've tried going...