The Long-Expected Beast

This here entry is a huge entry about a trip which took place at the beginning of this month.

This is the story of one Peace Corps volunteer’s journey to the far reaches of her host country with a gaggle of her crazy students and colleagues. Some parts of the following epic might be inappropriate for readers with weaker stomachs or overly-sensitive sensibilities. Be forewarned.

The Departure
We left at 6:30 a.m. from Hotel Hemus in the town center. The bus was clean, the students showered and alert even at that time in the morning, and the course mapped before us.

We followed the main road through town towards the Balkan foothills that lie directly to the north. As we began our summit, I learned a new verb: povrushtam. Translation: to vomit.

The plain-raised, rarely-traveled kids took to the mountains like horses to water. It started with Yoli, one of the girls in my fifth grade class. Her classmate, Mische, tugged on my arm. “Gospozho, Yoli povurne!”

At the time I didn’t know the verb. “What?” I asked.

“Yoli povurne!” she repeated.

Rosie, who was sitting next to me, jumped up. “She’s throwing up,” she told me.

Sure enough, Yoli was bringing up her breakfast juice in a little plastic bag two seats behind me. No one was really paying attention or hooting or hollering (as they would certainly be doing in America). She just did her business and tied up the bag.

A few moments later, one of the older boys made his way to the front of the bus. He had turned an unnatural color of whitish-gray, the color of someone who hasn’t seen sunlight…ever. “I don’t feel good,” he told my colleague Toschko, who was in the frontmost seat. Toschko made him sit down next to the window, and the kid laid his head on the window and visibly tried to keep his stomach contents internal.

There was a brief respite from the illness during our first roadside break an hour into the trip. Almost as soon as we started again, the swaying of the bus hit again.

Another of the older boys came to the front, not quite as pale as the first boy, but obviously not okay. He sat down in the aisle, and I dug around my bag for my Peace Corps supply of chewable Pepto Bismol tablets. I gave each of the boys one, and one to Yoli, and decided to keep them near at hand.

Three minutes later a second fifth-grader, Zarko, reached for a bag. His seatmate Stefan alerted us, “Gospozho, Zarko povrushta!” He too did his business without fuss and tied up his bag. I administered some Pepto, and we continued on.

When in Bulgaria
Our first stop was about 3 hours into the trip in the ancient capital of Bulgaria, Veliko Preslav. We immediately disembarked and asked a local where we could find toilets. She pointed to a hill, around which there was the remains of a fortress wall. We headed to the ruins, and set up a system of outdoor peeing…Boys went first, then the girls. There we were, lined up in a row, popping a squat.

As soon as we had finished, we turned around and say actual bathrooms on the top of the hill. Woops.

From that little grove we wandered to some more ruins which were currently being unearthed by a team of folks. Nearby there was what I assume is the only remaining true tourist attraction of the town…the Zlatna Chirkva (Golden Church).

To be honest, I can no better describe the church than its name can. It was yellow, and a church. End of story.

After schlepping around in that set of ruins, we re-boarded the bus and headed to Shumen, one of the bigger Bulgarian cities.

Becca being Grudzina
We arrived in Shumen just at noon, and immediately headed for the main event in town…the huge-ass monument to Bulgarian liberation at the top of a mountain. It’s a thousand-and-some stairs up, and worth every huff and puff.

As usual, I got stuck in a middle gap between the kids who rushed ahead and the kids who lagged behind. I was alone, but it didn’t disturb me because hell, it’s a big staircase. How could I get lost?

I made it up about a billion of the stairs and came to a road. There was an abandoned café in front of me, and a road that went off to my left. Thinking I had made it to the top and needed to just find the monument, I followed the road.

I followed and followed. It went through a little forest, then crossed the plateau on the top of the mountain. For three or four kilometers I walked, all the time thinking I was close, that I HAD to be closing in on it.

Eventually, I did. I saw the huge stone walls across a meadow, and walked towards it.

When I got there, I was alone. It was dead silent except for the wind howling over the mountain and echoing in the stone chamber. I was alone in a world of gray stone statues, twenty-times as big as myself, holding swords and scowls, on the top of a hill with no town or people in sight. And friends, it was creepy.

Just as I was starting to freak out (I had held it off for a good long time), I found the slowpokes from my group. “Wow, where were you?” they asked. I told them I had taken the road, and they all laughed, silly American. They took my camera, snapped a photo of me next to one of the stone beasts, and showed me where the staircase was.

Where I had turned left and followed the road, I SHOULD have taken a hidden stairwell to the right of the abandoned café. Again, woops.

The Mysterious Toschko
Once I made it down the kajillion stairs, I wandered to the town center to meet the bus. We boarded and headed out to Madara, a small town near Shumen known only for it’s ancient carving of a horse, dog and lion on a cliff.

Most of the kids didn’t care about the carving, so they stayed at the bus and Toschko and I took the good…I mean interested…kids up the stairs.

At the top, some of my fifth and sixth graders stared pointing things out to me. After a few minutes, I looked up and saw Toschko “talking” with this group of two women and a man.

I couldn’t understand what was happening. He was speaking broken Bulgarian and using his hands with random English words. At first I thought the people were Bulgarian, and I couldn’t understand why he was talking that way to them. This went on for a good minute or two until he saw me looking at him.

“Becca, Deutsch!” he called to me, pointing at the people. In Toschko language, I knew this meant they were Germans.

In English, one of the women said, “We aren’t German. We’re Swiss.”

The English, as it always does now, caught me off guard and I stared at them for a moment. Then I said, “Oh, you speak English?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Toschko was trying to explain to you what is carved into the cliff.”

At the mention of his name, Toschko perked up and yelled to the kids, “Kazhete na Angliski ‘kohn!’” (Say ‘horse’ in English!)

All of my little fifth and sixth graders hollered, “Horse! Horse! Horse!” and began flailing their arms pointing to the horse on the cliff.

“A sega, ‘kuche’!” (And now, ‘dog!’) Toschko yelled.

“Dog! Dog! Dog!” the kids replied, this time franticly pointing to the dog.

The poor Swiss tourists had no clue what was happening. Finally the other woman said, “Oh, we read about this in the book.” Then she added, “Are you a school group?”

I explained that we were on a school trip, and that these were my students who were eager to try out their English.

“So, you are Bulgarian?” she asked.

“No, no. I’m American. I am just teaching here,” I said.

“Oh, I THOUGHT you spoke English awfully well,” she said with a chuckle.

By that time Toschko and the kids had become bored with all the English and started to leave me behind to go to the caves. Not wanting a repeat of the Shumen mishap, I trotted off after them. Unfortunately, the caves were closed (a rock fell on a kid last fall and they decided it was unsafe…) so we headed to the bus and rolled on to Varna.

Introduction to Zarko’s Whistle
Zarko (one of my fifth grade boys) bought a whistle in Shumen, one of those recorder-type whistles sold the world over. It became a full-blown character of the story, in my opinion.

As soon as he got it, it was evident that he and Naska, one of my colleagues, would exist at opposite ends of the whistle-spectrum – Zarko on the side that the whistle was always appropriate, and Naska on the side that it was better used as a weapon.

Zarko played and played. On the bus he played. He played in the toilet and when wandering outside. He tooted it along with the songs on the radio, tunelessly but rhythmically. He did it without malice, but without regard to those around him and just how annoying it was.

Finally, as we neared Varna, Naska had had enough. She had told him to put it away, stop playing it, but he had continued, and she wasn’t in a good mood anymore. She grabbed the whistle from the boy, and smacked his hand with it.

He huffed and reached for it. She snapped his hand again.

An older boy came up to ask if he could smoke. Naska was fed up with him to, and smacked him with the whistle.

Zarko began to cry. “Not the whistle! Not my whistle!” The older boy cowered beneath the light smacks, but didn’t relent. Naska kept smacking him, and Zarko kept wailing “Not my whistle!”

After a while the boy returned to his seat, Zarko calmed down, and Naska kept the whistle caught in her tight fist. But it was not the end of the story of the whistle…

White White People
On our way to Varna we stopped at the second capital of Bulgaria, the name of which escapes me, to climb around the old basilica ruins.

We arrived in Varna around 4 p.m., the sea capital of Bulgaria, and were dropped off by the Archeological Museum in the town center.

It was a special day at the museum. It was one of the rare occasions when the collection of the world’s oldest worked gold (which is almost entirely made up of gold found in Bulgaria) had found its way home to Varna. Most of the time it travels the world, only returning to Bulgaria once every several years.

Some of this stuff was amazing. No, scratch that, all of it was. I am not generally terribly impressed with Bulgarian museums (it happens when you’ve lived in London…), but THIS impressed me. The younger kids really appreciated it. The older kids tolerated it while waiting for their next cigarette.

Once we were done there we set the kids free in the city (a common feature of Bulgarian fieldtrips) and we teachers headed for some grub. After two hours, we boarded the bus and went to our hotel – a “Rest Center” north of the town.

Since Bulgarians don’t have much money, and their resorts’ prices are catered to foreign wallets, they rarely have a choice but to stay in such Rest Centers rather than hotels. Rooms are generally clean, but Spartan. This center we were sharing with a group of Russians who were on their 23-day vacation.

These Russians were…white. They were literally the whitest white people I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to Sweden in November. It was as if their skin had never seen sun, EVER. While we were all putting on sweatshirts and jean jackets to ward off the evening chill, they were in bathing suits and flip-flops.

Most of my kids have studied a little Russian, and the languages are close enough that with hand gestures, they could understand one another. The Russians, however, did not understand MY Bulgarian, but had studied English.

The center was not in any town, so the kids’ antics were confined to the pool and the immediate area, another bonus to the out-of-the-way rest center. I slept in a room with the other three female teachers (Rosie, Tanya and Naska), and actually got a decent night’s sleep.

A Changing Bulgaria
Day two started with the same monastery built into a cliff I saw the first time I went to Varna. Cost of admittance had increased from 50 stotinki (like 30 cents) to 2 leva (like $1.50) due to the new rules that Bulgarians and foreigners must pay the same price for things. While this may not seem like much, when you have budgeted a trip to last stotinka, it’s a hit.

Once we had our look around we headed to Balchik, a town further north up the coast. The main sight there is this amazing botanical garden overlooking the sea, which tops any garden I have ever seen.

I ended up wandering around with my little group of fifth graders. While precious, they were also annoying as hell.

Each one of them wanted their picture taken in exactly the same place, but by themselves. This basically meant that every ten minutes I had to take four separate pictures of the same exact thing, only switching up the kid. When I suggested group shots, they all scowled and huffed. Then I called them Japanese tourists, and though I doubt they got the joke, it became our little catch phrase. I’d say, “Where are the Japanese tourists?” and they’d all come running.

After the gardens we drove to Cape Kaliakra. It is a cape with these crazy high and jagged cliffs and a tragic legend…Apparently when the Turks were invading, some of the Christian girls who lived on the cape decided they’d rather die than be raped by the Muslim Turks, so they tied their braids to the rocks, wrapped them around their necks, and jumped off of the cliff to hang themselves. There is a creepy monument depicting this at the entrance to the cape.

Besides being a beautiful, very wild-looking spot, there wasn’t much to do. We took our photos and headed out towards Silistra on the Danube.

Not So Blue
I hadn’t yet seen the Danube, so I was very excited. You hear so much about it…It’s more famous than even the Mississippi! But, like the Mississippi, it is just a river, a fact that hits you when you visit it and see, yup…it’s water with land on the other side. (Granted, in this case the land was Romania, but still).

After touring the city’s fort, we were set loose in the center for a while to find food and find the river. Some of the boys immediately found beers to drink, which infuriated Tanya, who until that point had been overly lax with the kids. “Most of them have never SEEN the Danube,” she said. “They aren’t people!”

Once we had taken a sufficient amount of photos, we herded up the kids and found our second “hotel,” – an old communist campsite outside of the town. (During communism they used to send kids to these camps where they lived in dorms and such. Now they are run down, but still operate for such trips).

It was in the boondocks, if ever I’ve seen boondocks. Flat river-plain all around. Grass up to your ass. A brick building that had once been an attractive dorm now dilapidated to a roof and some walls.

I was in a room with Rosie, which shared a bathroom with the room where my fifth grade girls slept. Rosie and I and the other teachers lingered outside chatting while the kids caused a raucous inside. At around 10 p.m. I went inside to find my cell phone and found my girls hiding in their room.

“Gospozho! There was a MOUSE!” they cried.

Not sure I had understood them, I asked, “A mouse?”

“Yes!” they yelled. “We called one of the older boys and he chased it out, but it went into your room!”

Great, I thought.

As I was getting ready for bed, Mitko, one of the sixth grade boys who is a bit of a pansy and had been with the fifth grade girls for most of the trip, asked me if he could sleep in their room because he was scared to sleep downstairs with the older (and drunk) kids. I couldn’t make him do it, so I told him it was fine.

A few minutes later Galka, one of the fifth grade girls, came and said they didn’t want him busting in on their slumber party. In an effort to salvage the kids’ feelings, I told him he had to come sleep in the room with Rosie and I to protect her from the mouse. He took the bait, and took his responsibility seriously by sleeping with a shoe in his hand.

Payback’s a B****
The kids partied and partied. They drank beer they had bought in town. They played loud music and danced and danced. Naska was on duty that night, and the kids never let her go to sleep. With Naska, apparently, this was a mistake.

Naska is a matronly lady, and as such she is accustomed to disciplining children with smacks and hollers. When she was denied sleep, her usual ways were heightened by acute sleep deprivation and a thirst for revenge.

When we boarded the bus, the older kids looked rough. Haggard. Utterly hung over and tired.

Naska grabbed the bus microphone and announced, “No one will sleep. You didn’t sleep last night, so you will not sleep on this bus.” She then brandished a stick she had found outside. “If you fall asleep, I’ll hit you with this stick.”

A few minutes into the drive, the kids in the back of the bus started to nod off.

Zarko began to toot his whistle again. But instead of Naska yelling at him, she grinned at him and said, “Go play that in the back.”

Happily, he hopped out of his seat and ran to the back of the bus, playing nonsensical notes into his whistle and squeaking and bouncing around.

A few minutes later there was a loud screech and Zarko came barreling up the aisle with an eight grader at his heels. The older kid grabbed the whistle and started smacking Zarko with it, pushing him into his seat. Naska stood up and started beating the older kid with her stick. The eight grader hightailed it back to his seat, and Zarko grinned at Naska.

We stopped briefly in Ruse, the most European city in Bulgaria, and then began the long trek home. From that time on, there are no stories really worth recounting…It was hot, and everyone was exhausted.

We arrived back in Straldja around 6 p.m., just as dusk reached its prettiest. And we all headed home to rest.