Water, water....water

Remember my past problems with water?

Last year,

• I had a boiler that was attached to the whole apartment complex which gave me a huge electric bill.
• Some one burst a pipe while trying to fix the boiler which flooded my apartment for 10 days before my landlord came with someone to fix it. (I had a water floor between the cement and my plastic tiles)
• My waste water backed up into my bathroom and they had to clean it out.
• Sometimes I didn't have running water for a couple days at a time (which is good water from the village central system).

This year,

• I went 8 days with no running water and I was getting upset. I finally stalked down someone to come over and fix the electric water pump so I could at least get flowing well water. During this time I went to the closest well to help my needs. Drinking water, I had filled bottles at an earlier point and I was buying soda and juice for hydration. Presently, I've been forced to use the nitrate (500ppm) filled water since the other water system has been down for the last 2 weeks. (US regulation: 5ppm, and EU regulation: 50ppm) But nitrate is great for the plants!

(Here's a video of me getting water at the presently closest well. Apparently I waddle and I was listening to Blue October that evening to pass the time. My plants were dying, so I made 14 rounds that evening).

• Then my toilet septic was full and I had to pay quick a large sum to get it emptied (1/4 of my month's pay) and you know what I learned?! They just toss the waste in the nearby forest! I am presently working on a project to promote a waste water treatment center...and I don't think people are connecting the two. So forest: dead dogs, lots of pampers and other trash, and now septic waste...great.
• Now, my landlord and the neighbors are making a bigger septic tank so I can't pour water down the drain anymore. At least I have running nitrate water! So I can't clean myself over a drain, I can do it over a bucket if I want to do it inside my home...or maybe I'll just clean myself out in the open. Lol.

That water stuff, back in my old life it was very much taken for granted. I am surprised how many water related problems I've experienced this last year and 1 month.

My chicks are a little older now

They're 1 month and 1 week and my! how they've grown.
Updates:

• 1 chick died of unknown cause or heart attack.
• They put themselves to bed promptly at 9pm.
• I have 4 roosters and 5 hens.
• I have 1 chick so much smaller than the rest.

Here is Bandita (she's a girl) and she used to pass out under that light bulb after a full day.

Like, she would face plant (so cute).
Here they are at 1 month, and they're all buddies now. I left them out of the coop now cause the threat of crows stealing them away is less. Bandita is way small as compared to the rest.

They do my weeding for me.

REALLY! Look! They are in bed! It's daylight at 9pm, and the chicks are in their coop. They're better behaved than kids.

Cute story told by my neighbor Cosmina:
So, a chick somehow got a plastic bag stuck to its foot, so it was scared and running around trying to get away from this monster. It saw Cosmina, ran up to her panting, and tweeted at her to help it. Cosmina said that it was the most adorable thing because it was really panting and scared and knew to come to a human for help. She told me she thinks my chicks are smart. Uh oh, plans for chicken soup.....

Okay, so here is Bulgaria, Sofia (last country of this trip)

So here is Bulgaria's rural area. There were lots of tunnels we went through.

I thought it was flat, but there's lots of elevation.

Here's our next train. We got 3 beds per a room here (so here Emily and Nils tried to squash onto one bed) and there were 4 of us. Oddly, the bed on top was shorter by a foot than the other two, so I got it.

In our train, there was no English written on these signs. This corner table is a sink too! What a surprise. Thinking back, we think we had sinks in our previous trains too (but didn't know about this secret until our almost last train).

Here we are in Sofia! The capital of Bulgaria, like the capital of Romania is Bucuaresti, and like...do we have a capital of the US? I don't think so, so, like how California's capital is Sacramento.

So...we arrived in the morning and we had a train leaving that evening. Ergo, we had the whole day to explore the city of Sofia. Would it be enough? Look. Mountains in the horizon.

I got this plastic bag that showed us all the important landmarks in Bulgaria. jk. There's probably more.

Looky. Another country that celebrates Martisor (by the way, I don't know if I mentioned that the word Marti-sor means "little march." "Marti" means the month of March, and "-isor" is one of the diminutive suffixes you add to words to make them small. That's latin.

We walked for a bit, then we took a rest. I saw a honey faire. It was expensive expensive honey, but they all tasted so different. Pretty awesome to taste sweet in so many different ways.

We found 1 of the monuments on the platic bag. *checked off the list* Then we saw this building in the distant too. I think we did walk up to it eventually.

There were these old stones with Latin on them. Man! In so many of the places I've been: Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, the really old scripture is often in Latin and I can't read latin! I can guess at it, but apparently it's worth learning still even though it's a dead language.

We decided to take a food break and where did we go?
Well. We didn't' know what traditional Bulgarian food was, and we didn't' really see any Bulgarian restaurants, so after 30 minutes of following signs to get to a KFC then being disappointed because the place was still under construction (we decided that it would make more sense for KFC to build the place first, then advertise its location), we went to the safe fall back restaurant of McD.

Cool how the menu is all in Cyrillic and they have free internet.

After lunch, we did so much more wandering cause what else is there to do?

Orthodox church or Catholic or other?

Hallu Bulgarian flag.

Here are old statues outside. I wish there was information on a sign next to them cause then things would make more sense. Why statues of old people? Why there? why?

Park Park. I think we passed 5. Here we decided to settle for a little while.

We took naps. It's hard to get fully rested in trains and this last ride was particularly short.
We took shifts taking watch. Lol. We must have been a sight, 4 middle aged people passed out on a bench for 2-3 hours.

Nils needed to pay for this port-a-potty. (Yet, another reason McDonald stops are so important: use of facilities is free (with purchase of something)).

More wandering.

Saw this old prison that was used during a war.


That was pretty cool, but so random. It's next to a restaurant. We also saw a very old church. I think it dates back to 1400 or 1500. It's weird how there's a whole building build around it though.

All around it.

Then we saw an important political building with the Bulgarian flag draping down.

We had a pleasant evening stroll through the market place. This place is supposed to be cheap, but the prices I saw were high. I did get decent priced sweet Bulgarian bread for the break-fast home. Bananas were super super expensive here!! 11 Lira/Liva for 1 kg of bananas! That's like 24 ron/kg of bananas, or $8 for 1 kg of bananas. We are so fortunate.


Before we left, we found a fast food Bulgarian place and food wasn't too expensive, or that that fresh (it being evening and we know how buffets food are usually kept til eaten), but it was tasty and different. I'm glad we ate here because I love my food and I want to try exotic foods.

Chicken with creamy soup, stew with potatoes, potatoes baked and rolled about with spices and ham bits, and meat balls in sauce.

Nils got fried rice. Bulgarian fried rice.

Here was a receipt, and it's here so you can see Cyrillic. That was our day. Off we went back home.

Our 7 days, 7 nights trip. 2 nights in a hostel in Turkey, 1 night in a hotel in Greece, and many-a nights on sleeper trains. It was a good trip. Nils did all the planning and I appreciated that for my first international traveling experience.

Here was the view on the train ride home by myself. It was Easter weekend = equivalent of pre-Thanksgiving, or pre-Chinese New year. I sat on my suitcase the whole way back because thankfully, the transportation system doesn't feel bad about overselling seats.