Bulgarian Bike Blog

The end of the blog

See the final days of the trip, showing the completion of our travels in Bulgaria, from Breznik to Pernik. Click here to see them. Or click on the link under the "Photo Gallery" section on the left.

And Borislav has a new website of his own up now, for other bicycle tourists who may be interested in taking a tour across Bulgaria with him. You'll find it at bgbybike.tripod.com

The end of the blog

See the final days of the trip, showing the completion of our travels in Bulgaria, from Breznik to Pernik. Click here to see them. Or click on the link under the "Photo Gallery" section on the left.

And Borislav has a new website of his own up now, for other bicycle tourists who may be interested in taking a tour across Bulgaria with him. You'll find it at bgbybike.tripod.com

Borislav's mud treatment

No, Borislav is not on a bicycle tour with Annie Leibowitz - but oh my, what a dream tour that would be. Sign me up for that one. But I would refuse to carry her photo equipment up and down the mountains on my bike.

This is Borislav's self-portrait taken after he applied the full body mud treatment from the evaportated salt pits near where we had camped on the shores of the Black Sea. He was back at the site recently while on another bike tour. Apparently this mud has some sort of healing or restorative powers. But really it was just a reason for him to put on his speedo swimming suit and play in the mud.

Varna to Breznik photos are up

Yes, I finally put up more photos. I can't believe it myself. Click here to see them. Or scroll down and click on the link under the "Photo Gallery" section on the left.

Luckily Steve had helped me with the hardest part when he was here visiting, editing through all of the photos. Hopefully I'm on a roll and will put up the rest tomorrow nite.

Steve has survived the hurricane - it changed course and went north of Ft. Lauderdale and he didn't have to evacuate.

I swear we're gonna finish this

Uncle Steve is visiting up in Cleveland and last nite we finished editing the final portion of the trip photos and we have about half of the pages built for the last 2 sections of the slide show (see Photo Gallery links to the left). So it'll be up soon and we can finally close this door of our lives.

Steve shamelessly admitted to me the other day that he has not been on his bike since returning from Bulgaria. His reason is that the airline popped open his Bike Friday case and damaged part of his bike and he has yet to get it repaired. Needless to say, he muttered this lame excuse as he started in on his second bowl of butter pecan ice cream and proceeded to drip it from his spoon onto his returning paunch.

This is not the end of the blog after all

For those of you who have been following along, my hands are doing better and the repetitive stress injury I've been battling seems to be going away. Both my massage therapist and chiropracter think that it's related to cycling as well as working on the computer. I had to do a lot of braking in the mountains of Bulgaria and that seemed to have stressed a certain muscle in both of my forearms, but I have stretches and strength exercises for it now and it is definitely better.

So I am going to finish the photo gallery, so I can at least have some closure on this thing, even if Craig is the only one still watching the blog. Only one more section yet to go. I just finished the Plovdiv to Varna section. See the photo gallery links on the left, or click here.

This is the end of the blog

I doubt that I'm going to put up any more photos on the blog here - I'm having problems with a repetitive stress injury on my hands (I work on computers for a living) and publishing the photos involves lots of mouse work, which is the main irritant.

If you really want to see more photos, put a comment here and let me know. If I see enough comments, I'll put some up later when my hands are feeling better. Otherwise, thanks for watching, everyone. All of us (Ann, Steve, Marty, Borislav, Maya, and Laura) enjoyed interacting with the blog watchers and appreciated your support and interest along the way. So long, and may the road always rise to meet you.....

Bansko to Plovdiv photos

The next section of photos is up now. Click here to see them. Or scroll down on the right and click on the link under the "Photo Gallery" section.

Melnik to Bansko photos

More new photos just posted, of the section of the ride from Melnik to Bansko. Click here to see them, or on the photo gallery link on the left. Adventure Cycling just put a link to us in their newsletter, so tons of new visitors are coming to the site from there. If you are new here and want to see what we wrote while we were on the trip, see Archives links on the left of this page. We were in Bulgaria from May 12 through June 1st.

Pernik to Melnik photos

The next section of photos is up now, showing the first few days of riding, as we went from Pernik to Melnik. See photo gallery link to the left, or just click here.

Photo Gallery has begun

Sorry for the delay folks, but I was busy cleaning up after the video party. I have prepared the Sofia and Pernik section so far. It's in a slide show format, so it tells a story from image to image as you click. See the Photo Gallery section on the left side of the page and click on the link or just click here. More links to additional sections coming soon as I finish them.

Photo gallery coming soon

I have about 500 photos to sort through, but I plan to have a photo gallery of selected images posted here some time this weekend, so you can all stop clamoring for photos now, and stay tuned.....

Shopska salad recipe

The Bulgarian video party last nite was a great success - about 35 of our most ardent blog followers showed up to join us for pizza, shopska salad, and Morenas, followed by a one hour presentation of the best of Bulgaria on video. 6 of the attendees arrived by bike! This was my highest bike/car ratio yet for party attendees. I believe that for my next party I will offer some special incentive prize to those guests arriving by bicycle.

Everyone LOVED the shopska salad and the Morena, and many wanted the shopska recipe, so here it is. Order of ingredients is extremely important, according to Borislav, so in the following order, apply the following generously to a plate:

Cucumbers diced, fresh dill, peppers (yellow or red roasted), tomatoes diced, garlic, onion (green or scallions), feta cheese grated, all topped with a singular black olive (must type that includes the pit). Then apply olive oil or sunflower oil on top, and vinegar (white or cider) around the outside edges.

Borislav likes to chase it with Rakia, that unusually strong liquor found only in Bulgaria, but I have found that Sprite works just as well. Enjoy!

You read the blog, now see the video

If you've been reading this blog, you probably know one of us. We're tentatively planning a Bulgarian video party for Friday nite (that's tomorrow, 6/4) at Ann's house at 7 pm. See Bulgaria in full living color action! I brought back an entire box of a candy bar that we basically subisted on - we called it More-ay-nah. Please don't make me eat this entire box. We'll also be making Shopska salads for everyone. We ate them there almost every day. We've been craving Geraci's pizza, so we'll have some of that as well, along with appropriate beverages. If you would like to attend, contact me at ann@greengrrl.com and I'll let you know when I have more details. Ping pong will likely be involved as well (weather permitting), so plan appropriate foot attire.

Through new eyes

We are back in the USA, and I see it through new eyes now. And as we got off the plane at Dulles Airport in DC and shuffled sleepily toward the endless customs maze, I tried to imagine what it would feel like to arrive in the USA for the first time, if Bulgaria was all I knew.....

]]> Maya and Borislav were both born in Bulgaria and have never been outside of its borders. What if I were one of them, coming here for the first time? All I knew was the USA before this trip. When I landed in Bulgaria, I immediately noticed so many things that were different from what I knew - to me it was like another planet. But would their experience here be like that?

As I tried to put myself in their shoes and see the US through their eyes, as if for the first time, the main thing that struck me was the "bigness" of everything here. It's like the world has been super-sized. First, there was the maze of the customs line, then the giant warehouse sized baggage claim area, and then...... the parking lots. The endless parking lots. I did not see a single parking lot in Bulgaria. But here, we wandered for a good 30 minutes through lot after lot, and then to a multi-tiered parking garage where we finally found Edie's truck on the 3rd level. And of course, all the cars in the lots were big as well.

We loaded the truck with our gear and Laura's bike and Edie and Laura drove off to get some food and would meet Marty and me at the hotel. Marty and I got on our bikes to start what turned out to be a harrowing nite ride to the hotel. We stopped at the parking lot gate to ask for directions to the hotel - amazingly, the attendant spoke English, not Bulgarian! And off we went down enormous 8 lane roads. We arrived 30 minutes later at the hotel, which featured - can you guess it? - a huge parking lot! We got our rooms and when I opened the door, I could not believe how huge it was! And the bathroom - I could have set up my tent in there.

And so we are back in the land of parking lots and big bathrooms, where the car is king. But never the less, it is so good to be home! There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home......