Plepe's Blog

So, the weekend is nearly over. What have I done since last post? On Friday there was the Bulgarian Picture Gallery on our schedule, which is located in a former synagogue. That must have been an impressive building before the three floors have been drawn in (reminds me on the Gozzoburg in Krems which I visited in April). The Jewish community still uses the building for singing due to the great acoustics. As I said it’s a Picture Gallery, the two lower floors display contemporary art, the top floor old religious icons.

Sozopol lies to the south-east of Burgas at the Black Sea coast

On Saturday we had to get up early again, as we met at 8:15 at the bus station for our trip to созопол (Sozopol). Our trip consisted of three parts: Expensive coffee, a tourist shop labelled „Art Gallery“ and a museum. I would have awaited a tour through the city and the visit of some historical buildings e.g. churches.
The Museum displayed several excavations, which ranged back up to the 7th century BC, when the first town (Apollonia Pontika) in that region had been founded by greek settlers. The city developed to an important trade centre in the following centuries, especially for wheat. One of the excavations on the display are the remains of a granary. The rest are remains of the fortification walls and an old well.
After that I explored the city myself and made lots of pictures and collected geo data for the OpenStreetMap. The city is famous for it’s buildings from the 19th century in the style of the „Bulgarian National Revival“. The newer buildings usually try to imitate the old style.
After that I joined a CouchSurfing-Meeting for lunch and the beach afterwards. I had lots of fun and some interesting talks there, hopefully I will meet some them in Sofia again.
Presumably that was the last chance to enjoy the Summer and the Beach, in the night to Sunday the temperature dropped by 10 or 15 degrees and it was really cold and rainy today. According to the weather forecast it will not become better this week :(
Sunday was a lazy day, I just went out for lunch and to buy my first Bulgarian book: „Хари Потър и философският камък“ (Who is the first to guess the English title of the book?) … I think I need to learn and practice a lot to read more than one sentence per hour. By the way: Thanks Pro for the dictionary, I don’t know what I would do without it.
Have a good week! What are you doing with the End of the Summer-Season?

The Bulgarian Picture Gallery	Icons on the top floor and you can see some of my colleagues	The church Santa Maria in Бургас (Burgas)
View into the granary in the Museum	The renovated fortification walls. There are also my colleagues :)	Sozopol from the beach. It already got cloudy.
Old houses in Sozopol	Some more houses in Sozopol	Small boats in the port

So, weekend already arrived. No school until Monday morning (at 8 again).
Yesterday we had the idea to have two days off, so that our Spanish people would have time to catch up and have private classes, and we can go to Istanbul or travel the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Unfortunately this was not allowed, although the teachers and our custodian would have been okay with that.
So we are sticking to the original plan: Today in the afternoon we will visit the Bulgarian Picture Gallery and tomorrow we all go with one of our teachers to Созопол (Sozopol), which is a little town nearby. We still don’t have plans for Sunday, let’s see when we will wake up (we have to get up at 7am each day, including tomorrow for the trip).
Apropos Istanbul. On Tuesday I had a short visit of to friends from Vienna, Monika and Cornelia who are also studying Spatial Planning with me. The were on the way to Istanbul and had a cheap flight to Burgas and then a bus to Istanbul (which is only about 5 hours away). Unfortunately (mainly due to communication problems) we only met for a short time, but it was nice talking anyway.
Waiting for Monika and Cornelia I spent lot’s of time at the Central Bus Station and could see some old Austrian Buses in original paint (you can see one on the pictures). I also found two other places that reminds me on my home: A „Charly Temmel“ which is an ice cream shop in Graz, that has branches in Los Angeles and Sunny Beach (The last is a huge hotel resort nearby). The other is somehow curious: „Austrian Kebap“. I have to get one of those, I’m really wondering what this is like.
So stay tuned about our experiences on the weekend, enjoy yours as well. By the way, this is my name in Cyrillic letters: стефан плепелиц.

One of the austrian buses in Burgas (going to Sunny Beach)

Charly Temmel (Graz – Los Angeles – Sunny Beach)

Original „Austrian Kebap“

Argyll asked me in one of the comments, whether the beach in Burgas is nice.
I wouldn’t have expected it, but the the beach here is really great. According to my Tourist Guide it should be quite dirty because of the industry nearby, but I’ve really seen worse.
Between the town and the beach lies a huge park, called the „Sea Garden“, where you can relax, get food (e.g. „Sprat“, roasted small fish) or go for a party in the evening. The beach itself is a narrow strip (about 20-50m) of sand. Sand as you expect there should be on a beach. Also the way into the sea is totally sandy, and it’s really flat. In the mornings until around 1pm (that’s the time when we have class) the sea is still, in the afternoon a strong wind comes up, so there are strong waves. Last week we always had a red flag, so we couldn’t go swimming or just near the beach. This week it seems to be better, it also got hotter again (at 19pm it had about 28°C today).
Stay tuned.

Burgas from Space.

The view from our hotel room.To the left the black sea

I’m wondering why I went to the smoky internet room with this old PC yesterday. I’m now sitting in my hotel room and using the hotel’s own wireless network. Much better :)
So, time for breakfast!