Permaship sails!

I randomly found myself at a Permaculture workshop at the Permaship in Shipka, Bulgaria. Oddly enough the instructor ended up being from the states, which was an unexpected pleasure since I was able to understand on a level superior to what could have been otherwise. Doug Crouch is an amazing instructor and I highly recommend any course you can take from him. He is extremely knowledgeable in the area of permaculture and teaches with practicality and enthusiasm. You can see some of his projects here:

http://treeyopermaculture.wordpress.com/about/

The PermaShip itself was a wonderful space that managed to gather a real lovely group of people for this workshop. It was a period of interaction, engagement, and friendship building and I feel fortunate to have been a part of it.

Permaship is part of the Liveplaces collective of spaces around the country of Bulgaria. It is an innovative project that is putting into effect the changes we need to sustain our future. Unfortunately from Turkey I can not access theses websites to link, so you will have to wait for more…….coming soon

Village Living…..in a ‘Live’ Village

After the Greek madness, Nenad was kind enough to chauffer me past the Bulgarian border and through the fairytale like mountains of the Rhodopi. We battled ogres and wild horses before heading into the valley of Gotse Delchev where I met my hosts, a lovely couple from the UK who have decided to create a homestead in the Muslim village of Krushevo, successfully using their gorgeous piece of land to experiment with sustainable building methods and create a place to exchange ideas and experiences.

Time warp…..

While there, I spend some time out in the fields working with a kinship group in the community. The backbreaking labor is performed exclusively by hand or with the aide of a horse, and yet there is not one complaint. The hours depend on the day length; work can last for hours on end. Entire families go to the fields cultivating potatoes or their other cash crop of tobacco, working the land to benefit the entire village. The work is also seasonal, and the winter months bring a time to work with in the home and rest from the years work. There is a spirit to the people that I don’t see often, and the interactions between family members is endearing. Children are ever-present. During breaks in the field the family recollects fro tea and snacks and the children at times participate if they are strong enough to hold a tool. It is a collective effort and the job gets done. There is a social aspect to the work that you have to experience for yourself, and I really wish I could communicate on a higher level as I aided in the feels. It was a semi- surreal experience. As I looked beyond the fields at the green mountains and big- ever-changing skies I realized that hard work has incredible reward, and I take a lot for granted.

Both sides of the spectrum.

We went down to purchase stone from the roadside yards, a field trip of sorts. Series of palleted local stone are strewn alongside the road heading to Krushevo. Mountainside quarries extract a beautiful rock rich in mica and ranging on tone from greenish slate to a yellowish brown color. The high mica content gives it a glittery overlay, and leaves your skin with a costume makeup sparkle. The stones are hand cut with a chisel and the workers sit in the hot sun daily splitting slabs on small cushions. I was in a state of shock when I heard the prices paid for such amazing product. Having formerly priced stone, I could not believe the cost when purchasing direct from the source (pennies in comparison). Furthermore, I could not believe the prices we pay for similar, possibly the same, stone in California. It blew my mind how little is awarded to the laborer in comparison to the buyers. It also made me visualize the carbon footprint that trails the demand for such luxuries in life, and made me question: If the person buying comes from Bulgaria or California the worker gets paid the same, so why do we insist on not purchasing locally? One of the many questions that arise unanswered.

Village Homestead

Lily and Yan are an amazing and inspiring pair. They have managed to relocate their lives and become an active part of a village with very particular cultural values and living standards, enjoying and embracing every moment. It is total immersion and they handle the adjustment in a beautiful way.

As individuals, their wealth of knowledge and amazing patience makes them great teachers (or rather ‘sharing professionals). The practical knowledge I attained during my stay will stick with me for life (my cake baking skills have gone from dependent to equated and I will never NEED a basic cake recipe again, and that is only one newly developed skill!). It was valuable and memorable time spent, and I hope to re-vist the site as it shifts and changes in the coming years.

Thank you Lily and Yan for sharing your space, good luck with the developments to come.

Please check out the village website for more information and images (my camera was still broken at this point): http://krushevo.com/

Detours lead to terrible tan lines

A crisis has struck and I had to experience it. A brief stop in Nis, Serbia turned into a 10-day journey and the formation of an amazing friendship. My host in Nenad managed to talk me into detouring through Southern Serbia, Macedonia, and Greece before heading to Bulgaria for work, an adventure defying international borders and imposing cultural edification. The history and conflicts in the Balkans are so complex that I have just begun to wrap my head around what has gone on and what is going on…..it is hard to understand so I opted to accept and enjoy the ride

It was an experience to say the least. Protests, beaches filled with Malakas, job-hunting in horrendous seaside tourist resorts and tacky towns, finding abandoned greenhouse production sites and trying to understand why, sleeping in cars and on beaches, discovering a sea-side sanctuary and making it an alter to Athena. There was not a dull moment and the days flew past with little time to register how much we had actually done.

Here is a taste of the spectrum of places we visited,

The very expensive and successful Sani beach resort( http://www.saniresort.gr/en_GB) and this video I shot of the abandoned and beautiful greenhouse (former eco-village), contrast the interests in the tourist industry:(

The job-search was particularly amusing, and I had my doubts from the beginning not looking at it as a waste of time, but instead an experience. Going door-to-door asking for work at every hotel, restaurant, and tchotchke shop is exasperating, and constant rejection gets old fast, but the stories that came along with the regrets were worth the effort. Thankfully I was travelling with a person that has lived through this sort of ‘crisis’ for the past 20 years, and we managed to make light of the situation. He put into perspective our values in life, and made me recognize what type of person you become when you let all the bullshit go. Nenad you are the most positive being I’ve met yet. Don’t change. Thank you for softening my realism with optimism and laughter… until the next Balkan adventure!

A side note. Bosnia-Herzegovina is one of the most beautiful and green countries I have ever seen and I would love to return and explore with a car and a companion.

Sarajevo is a melting pot of culture, and I wish I could have spent more time there, without the downpour of rain. My camera broke after enjoying a Nescafé (!!), but I managed to collect more pictures of myself then ever with the aide of my photographer/travel guide and American enthusiast George from France (a lovely, though contradictory, character…think as to why).

Here is a taste of my most tourist documentation yet (try to ignore what I am wearing):

Amongst Balkan Giants

I sat in a bar in Thessaloniki, Greece with the Balkan ‘Mafia’, the only native English speaker, and realized whether I was there or not the group would carry on interacting in foreign tongue. The lingua franca continued to dominate road trip tunes and beachside conversation, woven with a mix of Serbo-Croation, Bulgarian, Greek and the occasional Duetch bit.

Amidst this collection of characters I realized how much I want to be able to fully communicate in a different language, and how lucky I am to be born a native English speaker. I reference this thought often as I consistently change countries and know one day my brain will deliver. Spero que oui.

Moral: Learn at least one other language. It’s good for you. If you don’t, travel to the Balkans you will not regret it.