Burgas, Sozopol Pomorie, Bulgaria May 5, 2004 Varna, Bulgaria May 10, 2004 Hi Folks, I finalize this note and log from Varna, the northern major port in Bulgaria where we arrived this afternoon at about 1300. So far we are very comfortable here in the Varna Yacht Club; we even have showers with hot water! We are moored alongside, as opposed to Med mooring bows on. The people at the yacht club are very friendly and we have a date to go for a cruise on a tall ship back to Nesibar on Friday. Judy, more than I, is learning the Cyrillic alphabet and several words. She can actually count from one to ten like any 5 year old child. The alphabet has 30 characters, some similar to Greek, some to English and some to the Russian Cyrillic. For example the English word for this city of "VARNA" in Cyrillic looks like "BAPHA". The Cyrillic alphabet originated with Saints Kiril (Cyril) and Metodi (Methodius), monks in the early 9th century from what is now Macedonia, but who worked throughout the Balkans. They are revered in Bulgaria for developing the Cyrillic alphabet in 863 AD, now used throughout Bulgaria, Russia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Yugoslavia, and Mongolia. Being from Macedonia it uses many Greek letters with Balkan adaptations. Right now we are snug onboard Veleda, with electricity, and warm with our small ceramic electric heater going during a raging thunderstorm outside. May 12, 2004 We were in the past two days to Shumen (?YMEH) and Veliko T?rnovo (BEJI?KO TbPHOBO) about which I will comment in future logs. We are back home on Veleda now and enjoying the several friends we have already made here. Hopefully I will get this log out tonight. With my last log #32e, I had several returns mostly from Hotmail addressees. If you did not get my last log #32e Bulgaria - Tsarevo to our formal entry, let me know and I will try to send again to you. Enjoy log #32f about Bourgas. All the best, Aubrey ***************************************************************************** Log #32f Burgas, Sozopol Pomorie, Bulgaria May 5, 2004 Now that we are legitimately in Bulgaria, we can enjoy Burgas and the rest of the Bulgarian coast. The first thing we did was to enquire from the very helpful harbourmaster who spoke good English where we could get a SIM card for our mobile. He actually took us through the gate and pointed out the corner for a Globus mobile phone agent at the corner of the pedestrian mall across from the train station. The lady at Globus, a modern mobile phone service, was most professional and helpful, not only explaining the operation of the SIM card and phone number attached, but explained a change in the area code to take place the first of May, and activated the SIM card and our initial calling credits. The "B Connect" service came with not only the SIM card and calling credits, but also included a tee shirt and video music disc. Our phone was now operational, but AOL has no local access number in Bulgaria, and so we have to dial a long distance number in Istanbul at a cost of about $2.50 Cdn per minute. However, Judy can contact her Dad and he can call us more economically than we can using our Nokia. I think I have mentioned before how happy I am to finally be able to send E-mail from the boat via our mobile and laptop using a Bluetooth adaptor. Thanks Henry (Judy's Dad) for getting the Dell laptop and to Brian (on Seraphina) for helping us get the Nokia, the Bluetooth adaptor and for setting it up for us. Happiness is …! Burgas, an industrial port, also spelt Bourgas, is the 4th or 5th largest city in Bulgaria,. The pedestrian mall has several side malls, and is reasonably trendy. Many of the women are well dressed, but with somewhat garish and possibly out of date styles. But what do I know? Perhaps mini skirts (always appreciated) are coming back as are pointed-toed high heeled alligator or zebra ankle boots. Henna-dyed hair styles go to red, maroon, electric purple and orange. Skin tight jeans, leopard pants, and dazzling multi-coloured stretch slacks 3 inches above the ankle adorn some shapely legs, while a variety of low-cut off-the-shoulder, bare midriff blouses decorate the upper halves, with solid red lipsticks and either heavy mascara or trendy sunglasses on the faces. The men did not seem to be stylish or trendy. (This from me who wears soft soled work boots, jeans, L.L. Bean bush shirts and an HMCS York baseball cap.) Anyways, the idea is to suggest that this former communist block eastern European country is more colourful than anticipated, and is trying to get with it. It should be a good candidate for the next round of EU applicants. We went to a modern BMS lunch counter (listed in our Lonely Planet guide) where we could just point to the foods in the case and say, "Da", pointing to the interesting looking stews (a karvama, for me which I liked, and a "Je ne sais quoi" for Judy which she didn't). The price for a soup, two filling stews, and a tea came to only about $5.00 Cdn. Prices are definitely lower here in Bulgaria. There were internet cafes, book stores, a MacDonald's, pizza parlours, international goods including Nike, Adidas, GAP, Diesel, all the brand names of electronic devices, computers, stereos, games, mobile phones, and foreign exchange booths in abundance. We had been warned by several people to watch out for or avoid these foreign exchange offices. We use our Canadian VISA card at ATM's to withdraw Bulgarian Leva, which are given at whatever the daily exchange rate is (presently around $1.00 Canadian for 1.15 Leva). Judy is doing a good job of trying to learn the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet which seems to be a combination of Russian and Greek alphabets seen through a mirror. The people are not unfriendly, and we have been pleasantly surprised by the help we have had in spite of our total inability in Bulgarian. We enjoyed our wanderings around Burgas, along the beach stretch, the park ( in which there was an exquisite flower show), and the pedestrian walks. We caught a taxi out to Poda Conservation area to do some bird watching. This area links the Black Sea Burgas Bay to salt marshes and inland lakes. Although no guides were there on Sunday, we were allowed to go up to the observation platform, loaned binoculars, and had the opportunity to watch egrets, cormorants, and herons. In our walk back towards Burgas, using our own small pair of binoculars, we saw swallows darting about like fighter jets, Spanish sparrows, house martins, terns, coots, pochards, tufted ducks, shellbacks and swans. On the electricity towers were dozens of cormorant nests. Pelicans and storks abound in the hundreds in the area during their migrations. It would have been nice to have come to this area in a more active season and to have had a guided walk around the conservation area. In the port area at the "yacht club" we met a German couple on board "Olga", and a local gulet owner, all of whom spoke some English, and were most helpful. We also met George Paunov, a local yachtsman who is an International Judge for the International Sailing Federation, and who also speaks excellent English, as does his son. George told us about an interesting rally from Turkey to Crete and another from Crete to Nauplion for the Olympics, an interesting possibility. At the "yacht club", we were hooked up to electricity with water available on the high industrial dock. There were stern mooring buoys, but our own line had to be attached to the one we were using, as opposed to having lazy lines extended to the dock to which we could secure. The two main disadvantages of this location were its great distance from the main gate (about 1.5 kilometres) and that it was downwind of dusty coal, sulphur, and other bulk piles of materials. The last day we were there, they were loading coal, not with conveyor belts, but with clawed cranes that would clamp a load of coal from the pile and swing it over to the bulk carrier's holds, releasing cascading fogs of coal dust blown over Veleda by force 6 to 7 winds, covering the boat with a patina of black dust, spotting the decks and bimini windows, and coating our lines, stanchions, halyards, sail-cover, furled genoa, bimini and topsides with a fine black film on the windward side. Horrible! We had to get out of there. I would not want to risk another day of that dirty situation. The next day was reasonably calm, and so we paid the small amount of 4.00 Leva (about $3.50 Cdn) per day for the week, and 6.00 Leva for a week's electricity; but before we left I washed the boat, hosing down with fresh water from the dock. It was good to get out to sea again, and off to Sozopol. Next log