Flitting around in Svishtov

My permanent site pretty much rules. Svishtov, the town where I will live is a small university city. It has friendly people, an amazing history and my organization (the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds) is great.

I arrived in Svishtov on Wednesday afternoon, and then promptly had a "pochifka" (bulgarian for nap, vacation, time out, weekend, etc, from what I can gather). Then I met up with my counterpart (Emil) and went to a local establishment for dinner and to watch the Bulgaria-Luxenburg football (think European) match. Luckily, BG won. I will have to introduce my new Bulgarian friends to Big Papi and the other patron saints of Red Sox Nation.

My apartment, which I stayed in, is pretty classy for a 6th story walk up. It is definitely worth the walk, as I have a lovely view of the Danube River, lots of light, a sweet kitchen and, as a super bonus, a living room with a pretty stylish red faux-fur decorating scheme (not sarcastic, when I am able to post pictures you will see). A previous volunteer (who is actually one of my trainers now) lived there and pimped it out pretty well.

Thursday, I went to the office to read up on the English website. It looks like I will be helping implement some of the conservation activities, as well as working on environmental education, and possibly some international partnerships with other birding organizations (ex: the Romanian Ornithological Society). Luckily the EU recognizes that birds and wildlife don't particularly adhere to borders. I also met more friends and volunteers for the organization (AKA the Bird Boys), mostly teenage boys with a bent for birds and natural history. I also met my land lady, who sat me down for cake and coffee and promptly inquired about my love life, my tastes in food, my family in America, etc. Oh, and furthermore according to her, I must be 17 and not 27 because I am so pretty.

After that, I met my site mate who teaches English. We went for a walk around with a Bulgarian friend (Tiso, not sure of the spelling in either the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet here) to see a giant sundial on the top of a hill; you stand in the middle on a spot determined by what month it is and your shadow reveals the time. Later, we met up with Emil and went to see the Roman ruins near town, as well a memorial to the Russian soldiers who crossed the Danube first at Svishtov during the Russo-Turkish war. Svishtov was the first free city in Bulgaria (the Russians set Bulgaria free from the Ottoman Empire), a fact of which Svishtovians are extremely proud.

Finally to cap off the night we went to a concert at the sundial. The performers were these international musicians who were traveling down the Danube by boat with a bunch of French tourists (with whom I spoke some pretty broken French at a restaurant when they were confused by the Cyrillic Menu. It was pretty heinous, I kept putting Bulgarian words into French sentences, but at least they knew they were ordering spaghetti). There were musicians from: Albania, Morocco, Romania, Algeria, Spain, Italy, France, Cameroon and more countries that I don't remember. The opening act was a local folk-dance troupe, followed by a collaboration of the international musicians with a local choir. They sang a heavily accented, but enthusiastic version of, "When the Saints Go Marching In," which was an extremely surreal moment for me to hear a pretty quintessentially American tune with nary an American in sight.

The next day we met at the office early with two bird boys and headed to the field to install nest boxes for the European Rollers, an endangered species here. We pretty much just sent boys up trees on a ladder with the boxes and a bunch of nails and they hammered away. At first, they being guys, they didn't want me to help carry the ladder, but I didn't listen to them and helped anyways. While I didn't hammer at any of the nest-boxes, I became the GPS lady to mark each box site. Ten nest-boxes and a fashionably leisurely lunch break later, I felt like one of the dudes. I am pretty psyched for more field work, I must admit.

I am now back in my training site. My host family greeted me with hugs and kisses and food and drink and a zillion questions about my new site. I am feeling torn now between wanting to prolong my wonderfully traditional rural experience with my host family who I adore and moving on to do work that I am really exited about about in a gem of a small city (aka "The Pearl of the Danube.")