Purpose in Live
September 18th, 2008Beach, Sea Garden, University, Kebap and more …
September 17th, 2008You are for sure waiting for an update from me, aren’t you? Thanks for all the positive feedback, I’m trying to keep up the work. This week we had classes on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon instead early in the morning, so we could get some more sleep. Theoretically, because the evenings got only longer ;) At least I got enough sleep, so I managed to see some interesting places.
Monday and Tuesday I spent mainly with learning, but as I don’t like to learn at home I went to the beach and to parks. I already wrote about the beach, which presented itself pretty deserted as we finally have autumn. As you can see the waves were pretty strong, I even got wet shoes while taking pictures.
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Next to the beach is the Sea Garden (I was already mentioning it), which is one of Burgas‘ most important trademarks. In this spacious park you find a theatre, lot’s of pubs, several night clubs (especially in Summer) and so on. And for sure lawn, trees, exotic flowers, ways, statues, benches, … For sure it could be in better shape, especially the ways are decayed. The parks foundations were laid by a Bulgarian park planner named „Georgi Duhtev“ in 1910 (For more information read this article on InYourPocket.com). The Sea Garden reminds me a bit on the Town Park (Stadtpark) in Graz, as also the sizes of the cities are similar. You also have the view on and the sound of the Black Sea. The downside of being so close to the sea is that’s it’s quite windy.
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 Monument for Alexander Pushkin |
 View on the Black Sea |
I finally managed to take some pictures of our university, which is an new, architectural interesting building near the city centre. It’s a private university with expensive study fees (150 per semester if I remember correctly), and I have the same feeling that I get when I come across the Business University in Vienna. I just don’t fit between all these fancy dressed people. I got the same feeling when we went to one of these nightclubs in the Sea Garden (The Elite Club – the name says everything). Everybody fancy dressed, everybody looking serious and looking you over and it was really expensive (for Bulgarian standards). We had our fun anyway, but I don’t want to go there again.
 From the outside |
 Central hall |
 The teachers wing |
 Some of my colleagues during пучивка [potschivka] (break) |
 Reflection of the surrounding buildings at the balcony |
 I don’t know what this wing is for |
The owner of Austrian Kebap
Today I finally managed to have ‚Austrian Kebap‘ for lunch. I had a little chat (half Bulgarian, half German) with the owner of the kebap-stand, who worked in our beloved 15th district (Рудолфзхеим-Фюнфхаус [Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus] oh yeah!) in Vienna. He worked pretty close to my home, at the mosque in Pelzgasse (On my way home from university I am always passing this place) for five years and three months. Monday to Friday he was cooking for the children and on Weekends selling Kebap. The kebap here was not especially good, so it’s not worth the long way, but I enjoyed it anyway. But I can’t get used to the habit of putting French Fries in Kebap (so it was no traditional Austrian Kebap).
On the way there I had a breakdown with my bicycle, the back wheel suddenly blocked when I was going like 30 km/h. Thank God (Goddess? Allah? Aargon? Ed? Myself? put suiting entity of worship here) I managed to stop the bike without having an accident. I wanted to repair the bike tomorrow, but one of the spanish people offered to do it – he claims to be mechanic. We will see :)
Bulgarian „Bravo“
Peter asked me in the comments at which level I aim to learn Bulgarian. I think the answer is: We will see. So my Bulgarian is really progressing, it’s already enough for little conservations. Like „Hi, I’m from Austria and I study Bulgarian at Burgas Free University. I would like to have a Hamburger with Chesse. Where is this pub? How much is the Kamenitza? Hello. Thank you. Bye-bye.“ and I sometimes can understand what the other person is replying. I bought a Bulgarian „Bravo“ during first week and at that time it took me an hour to read a sentence. Now I can read the text and get a general idea what the article is about. I still miss lot’s and lot’s of words and they get into my mind very slowly, but I can see a progress. I’m planning to do another language course in Sofia, but not as intensive as now. I’m curious myself at which level it is possible for me to get into a new language. And I have more fun doing it as I expected.
So much for tonight. Tomorrow we will have class in the afternoon again, so I have to think what to do with the free time in the morning (repair the bicycle probably). For the next days I’m planning to narrate you about the magic of an internet technology called RSS which helps you keeping updated with all these blogs and news sites you usually visit. Hope to read from you in the comments :)
Minority Government!
September 15th, 2008As you might know (most of my readers will know) there are parliamentary election at the end of this month in Austria. I think the current election race is one of the most thrilling of the last years, due to the fact that the outcome is more or less unknown. Even the Liberales Forum (liberal) is running again, who had little successes during the 1990s. Assumedly the will manage to enter the parliament again (you need at least 4% of the total votes).
One of my favourite politicians currently is Christoph Chorherr from the Grüne (green), not due to the fact that he has views similar to mine, but mainly because he has a very active blog. This makes politics somehow palpable, I would wish that most politicians would have a blog, where you can read their personal statements and meanings. Now during election race he started to do „Videoblogging“. GIve it a try and check it out.
His last Videoblog is about the stagnation of the parliament in Austria. He would propose to have an other form of Government, e.g. a Minority Government, because he wishes more lively discussions and not only implementations of the coalition pact.
That’s exactly what I would have wished after last parliamentary elections in Austria two years ago. The SPÖ (social-democratics) should have tried a Minority Government, so the Government may have also only lasted for a short time, but they would have at least made their politics and not the politics of the ÖVP (christian-socialist). It took more than three months to build the coalition and it was a deadlock from the beginning.
Let’s hope that these elections will bring a better result, although I think we would need some other kind of parliamentary discussions for this (as Christoph Chorherr also says).
Bye, bye Summer!
September 14th, 2008So, 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 |
Compare Google Maps and OpenStreetMap
September 12th, 2008I’ve already told you about the OpenStreetMap Project before. To understand why OpenStreetMap is better or will be better as Google Maps soon, one Frank Sauter wrote a tool to compare these mapping services: http://sautter.com/map/. Both services will be displayed as transparent layers and you can change the transparency with a slider. Here is an example:
I’ve also been mapping in Бургас (Burgas), most ways in the parks and of the district Лазур (Lazur) are my work (but not yet finished):
Also in Burgas the Google Map is way from perfect, even though it is more complete. It looks as if a large part of the town is flooded and the Lake Atanosvko is missing.
If you are not satisfied with the OpenStreetMap in your neighbourhood, than become active yourself … The community will be thankful. (I got a message this week from an OpenStreet-Mapper from Bulgaria who thanked me for mapping in Burgas).
Weekend again …
September 12th, 2008So, 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“ |
The Beach
September 8th, 2008Argyll 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. |
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Lake Atanasovsko
September 7th, 2008Today I used the great weather (it’s still summer) for my first real cycling trip. This time I wanted to see one of the other lakes. As you presumably not know the geographical location of Burgas, here is a little Map (thanks to Google, who provide these satellite images):
This time I wanted to see the Lake Atanasovsko (Атанасовско езеро), which is located to the northeast of Burgas and close to my current home. I assumed that I will be much nicer than the Burgas Lake that I visited yesterday, as part of it is a nature reserve, due to the fact that it lies on the Via Pontia bird migration route. The Lake is very salty, that’s why the water doesn’t look very nice too … this time it’s natural. It’s also used for mud therapies, I could see lot’s of people covered in black mud.
My plan was to circuit the lake once, which unfortunately didn’t work out. On the west of the lake I would have needed to use a highway (which I accidentely did for a short distance), so I tried my luck from the east which was more successful. At least I could see a cemetery and a recreation area which currently hosts an exhibition of sand artwork. On the eastern part I passed a salt mining factory, an inlet from the Black Sea with lots of Jelly Fish, and some other interesting spots. See the pictures below for some impressions.
Altogether I cycled about 40km today and got a bit sunburned. Therefore I’m quite tired and don’t want to write more. Next week will be exhausting again, so presumably I won’t manage to update my blog. You can use the time to think about things you like to know about my visit, shall I write about some things in more detail? Have a good time!
 A newer part of the cemetery. |
 An older part inbetween trees. |
 A typical suburbean settlement. |
 The Lake Atanasovsko with Burgas in the background as seen from the west. |
 The Lake is used for salty mining and for mud therapies. |
 Another lake (apparently created by gravel mining) |
 Inlet from the Black Sea to the Lake Atanasovsko. |
 Jelly fish in the inlet. |
 Horse carriages are still used. |
 „BurgaSandFest“, a temporary exhibition of sand artwork. |
 A strip of beach with black sand. |
 Yeah! Cycling! |
The first week has passed …
September 6th, 2008Nearly a week has passed without a message from me – Sorry. But this week has been pretty busy. As you already know, I’m doing this Erasmus Intensive Language Course in Burgas, Bulgaria. „Intensive“ is the right word for it – Every day from 8am to 1pm we are sitting in a class room at Burgas Free University and having class – like in school. And our teacher Salutska is giving us a hard time, as she speaks hardly English (and I think she doesn’t want to). We also have to repeat things in the afternoon, we won’t manage without.
You want to know who is „We“? At the moment we are a group of eight people, half male-female. Two students from Poland, two from Italy, one from Finland, Czech Republic and France. On Monday another three students from Spain shall arrive – I think they will have a really hard time in the language course, and we will have time to repeat.
A thing that’s really confusing is the alphabet – there are not only other characters, there are even two different alphabets: a printed and a written one, and both are used in printed form. Sounds confusing? It’s confusing. For example: The sound ‚d‘ has the printed characters ‚Д‘ and ‚д‘ and the written characters ‚D‘ and ‚g‘. ‚i‘ has ‚И‘ and ‚и‘, written ‚U‘ and ‚u‘. ‚t‘ has ‚Т‘ ‚т‘ or ‚M‘ ‚m‘. And so on.
Some words about the place where I’m staying: I’m still at Хотел Космос (Hotel Cosmos) in Бургас (Burgas). We were searching for a flat all week, but it’s really hard to get a flat for a month. Yesterday we visited a flat, where we would have lived with the owner (a 60-year old man). Actually the flat was quite pretty with a beatiful view on the black sea, but it was to small for us and some of us were anxious to live with such an old man in a flat. So apparently we will stay in the hotel all September. Fortunately it’s quite cheap.
The town itself is not very beatiful and there are just a few sightseeing spots. In the center you have a shopping area, which consists of two perpendicular pedestrian roads. There are just a few shopping malls, usually you just have small shops with very specialized variety of goods (like Clothes which is very common, Mobile phones or wall painting colors). You have those shops all over the town, so even the suburbs are quite lively. If I have more time I will write a longer report about Burgas with a lot of pictures. At the moment the beach is calling, so I try to be short.
Today I already hiked to one of the three lakes that surround Burgas. As a couchsurfer in Burgas (who is actually American, but lives here for two years now and is supporting doctors at a medical service for Gypies around Burgas) already told me, the Burgas Laks (which is to the west) is not worth seeing. It takes quite some time to go there by foot and you even have to cross a highway and than the view is not beautiful at all. The lake is an ugly, stinky, dirty spot. There were some fisherman, but I can’t imagine that there are still creatures in there. I don’t think that I would like to eat one of those.
On the way back I crossed an older suburban area near the lake and I actually found a „Вело Сервиз“ (say: Velo Service) and I bought a refurbished bicycle there. It looks like a bike from the 1970’s, but there’s an additional break (so it has front, back and back pedal break) and five gears. And it’s blue.
I have to take good care when cycling, the car drivers don’t take care (about anybody). It’s really hard to cross a street because zebra crossings are being ignored. Pavements next to the roads are not for walking but for parking, so using them is like an obstacle course.
So much for today, thanks for your attention :) I’m always pleased to read your comments, so keep on posting. See you next time!
Here you have some pictures:
 View of a street in Burgas – little shops, parking pavements |
 The Burgas Lake – a dirty spot |
 My new bicycle |
Good morning, Bulgaria!
August 31st, 2008
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!