September 13, 2004
Tryn, Krusha, and Dobri's place in the wild
Another weekend not spent in Sofia: we had originally planned to gather some people together and spend Saturday night at a chalet in the mountain of Vitosha, but then Iva's coworker Dobri came up with a much, much better idea - his folks' place in the village of Krusha (see the note below for the pictures). On Saturday Dobri had some work to do with a good old friend, Hristo Erinin (some people might know him better as 'zorlem', at least on IRC), and when Iva, Petya and I dropped by to get a map of sorts so we could actually find the place, Hristo regretfully refused to come along, citing his four-month old daughter as a fair enough reason. So Dobri drew us a map, we picked up Iva's university dorm roommate Polly and her husband Milen, and drove off into the sunset... well, alright, not all the way towards the sunset, merely towards Krusha.
This village, near Tryn, is just a couple of klicks off Bulgaria's western border with Serbia. We took the southern road, along the road to Tryn. Consequently, the first set of pictures shows mostly the countryside in the lands west of Sofia. There were a couple of fun moments when we had to leave the road to Tryn and drive through a couple of other villages to get to Krusha - there were no signs for that detour, and there were no signs at the entrance and exit of the first village, Vrabcha. Still, we found the way somehow, and reached the bus stop at Krusha.
There, we got off the cars and started the second part of the journey - the search for Dobri's place itself. This involved a couple of wrong turns too, a scouting expedition by Iva and me, and two phone calls to establish our exact location (and among the mountains there, the coverage is not all that good for purely physical reasons) - but in the end, we made it!
Once we got there, we pitched the tent, gathered some wood, built a fire, and set on the daunting task of cooking, eating, and generally having fun :) After a couple of hours, Dobri called to say he was getting ready to bring his girlfriend along and asked whether it was cold out there. Imagine our surprise, then, when it turned out that Hristo and his wife had decided to come along with him, and to bring their daughter, too! And come along they did - Dobri, Vassi, Hristo, Mira, and the four-month old Dara - out in the partly-tamed wilderness...
The rest of the camp pictures were taken on Sunday morning, after Iva, Petya and I had spent the night in our tent, and the others - in the small house. We fixed some quick breakfast, fried some fish, Iva and I helped Dobri at bringing water up from the well, then we ate the fish... and then it was time to go. The drive back seemed so much shorter than the way there, maybe because Dobri took us the other way, through Dragoman and Slivnica. Anyway, we ended up in Sofia at about 5pm, somewhat tired from the hot sun beating down on us on the way back, but quite rested and happy to have escaped the city for yet another weekend.
Ah, about the pictures... As noted in the previous entry, anonymous access to the Ringlet gallery has been disabled, but all you have to do to view them is just drop me an e-mail.
Posted by roam at September 13, 2004 08:16 PM
