Making Banitsa Part II

The making of Banitsa is now continued from the previous blog posting.

After sprinkling vegetable oil and a mixture of egg and feta cheese on the large circle of thin dough, Baba thin rolls this circle of dough into a loose rope of dough.

Baba has already finished several ropes of dough, each prepared as I have described. Now she adds the latest rope to the previous ones to continue making a coil in the large baking pan.

Now she starts all over again with another portion of dough that will eventually become another part of the coil.

Now an assistant enters into the picture. Being a novice, she may need some directions and close supervision.

Maybe more advice and direction needs to be given but the assistant is a fast learner.

The coil is finished. It doesn't go all the way to the edge of the pan because it will rise and spread during baking.

The banitsa will bake in the oven on the left. This is also the electric stove where all cooking is done at Shirley's house. The one on the right is wood burning and will only be used in winter when the heat will be appreciated. Wood is the primary source of heat in the winter in many Bulgarian small towns and villages.

The final result was wonderful banitsa, a flaky pastry with cheese inside.

Micellaneous Pictures

Everyone will want to buy Happy Donuts.

Where are we going for our permanent assignment? This map of Bulgria outlined on a high school gym floor contains paper markers showing the different assignments. In the fron half of the court, our site is the third from the left in the blue.

A street scene in Dupnista.

The Goat Barn Behind Shirley's House

This horse at a neighbor's house doesn't go out for hay. The hay comes to him in a wagon.

Filling the canning kettle for making pickles requires adult supervision.

The Global Economy

Welcome to the global economy.

In Arizona many products that I buy have packaging written in English, Spanish, and French so the manufacturer can sell in Mexico, U.S.A., and Canada, including Quebec. Because three languages take up more space than one, there is now very little information written on the package compared with before when only English was listed.

Consider now Bulgaria.

Sometimes at the magazine (store) I buy a croissant with a cream filling for a snack. My regular brand costs 0.55 leva and is made in Greece less than 200 miles away. Today when I bought my snack, the price was 0.65 leva. I was surprised until I noticed that this was a different brand with a larger package. Well, I thought, a bigger package means a bigger croissant which justifies the larger price. But when I opened the package the croissant was the same size as before. Why the larger package?

In Europe, just as in the United States, there are requirements that packaged food products must list their ingredients. Also the name and address of the manufacturer or distributor is usually listed. But here in Eastern Europe there are many small countries, some not larger than a single state in America, and most have their own language. So, a company that sells its product in several countries has to give the same information in several languages.

On my little six-inch long croissant, the package gives all the required ingredient information in 14 languages, each requiring about 15 lines of text. This package then is written in Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech, German, Bosnian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovene, Slovak, Greek, and Russian, plus one additional language written in Cyrillic letters that I cannot identify.

So, here are 14 different languages written in almost 14 different alphabets, some using Cyrillic letters, some using varieties of Latin letters with extra letters for each language, and of course one using the Greek alphabet.

Now I know why my little croissant package is larger than before. Maybe the bigger package justifies a higher price. Who knows?

The April Uprising

For those who want more information on the April Uprising which started in Koprivshtitsa, here is a slightly condensed account from Wikipedia.

The April Uprising was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876, which indirectly resulted in the re-establishment of Bulgaria as an independent nation in 1878. The uprising was brutally crushed by the regular Ottoman Army and irregular units, leading to a public outcry in Europe and the United States, with many famous intellectuals condemning the Ottoman atrocities and supporting the oppressed Bulgarian population.

The 1876 uprising involved only parts of the Ottoman territories populated predominantly by Bulgarians. The emergence of Bulgarian national sentiments was closely related to the re-establishment of the independent Bulgarian church in 1870. Together with notions of romantic nationalism the rise of national awareness became known as the Bulgarian National Revival.

In November 1875, activists of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee met in the Romanian town of Giurgiu and decided that the political situation was suitable for a general uprising. The uprising was scheduled for April or May 1876.

On April 14, 1876, a general meeting was held in Oborishte to discuss the proclamation of the insurrection. One of the delegates, however, disclosed the plot to the Ottoman authorities. Ottoman police made an attempt to arrest the leader of the local revolutionary committee in Koprivshtitsa, Todor Kableshkov.

In conformity with the decisions taken at Oborishte, the local committee attacked the headquarters of the Ottoman police in the town and proclaimed the insurrection. Within several days, the rebellion spread to the whole Sredna Gora and to a number of towns and villages in the northwestern Rhodope Mountains. The insurrection broke out in the other revolutionary districts, as well, though on a much smaller scale.

The reaction of the Ottoman authorities was quick and ruthless. Detachments of regular and irregular Ottoman troops were mobilised and attacked the first insurgent towns as early as April 25th. By the middle of May, the insurrection was completely suppressed. One of the last sparks of resistance was poet Hristo Botev’s attempt to come to the rebels' rescue with a detachment of Bulgarian political emigrees resident in Romania, ending with the unit's rout and Botev's death. As few records were kept at the time, it is impossible to know exactly how many people were killed. The figure ranges from around 3,000 to over 12,000 with the latter being the generally accepted figure.

News of massacres of Bulgarians reached Istanbul in May and June 1876 through Bulgarian students at Robert College the American college in the city. Faculty members at Robert College wrote to the British Ambassador and to the Istanbul correspondents of The Times and the London Daily News.

An article about the massacres in the Daily News on June 23 provoked a question in Parliament about Britain's support for Turkey, and demands for an investigation. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli promised to conduct an investigation about what had really happened.

In July, the British Embassy in Istanbul sent a second secretary, Walter Baring, to Bulgaria to investigate the stories of atrocities. Baring did not speak Bulgarian and British policy was officially pro-Turkish, so the Bulgarian community in Istanbul feared he would not report the complete story. They asked the American Consul in Istanbul, Eugene Schuyler, to conduct his own investigation.

Schuyler set off for Bulgaria on July 23, four days after Baring. He was accompanied by a well-known American war correspondent, Januarius MacGahan, by a German correspondent, and by a Russian diplomat, Prince Aleksei Tseretelev.

Schuyler's group spent three weeks visiting Batak and other villages where massacres had taken place. Schuyler's official report, published in November 1876, said that fifty-eight villages in Bulgaria had been destroyed, five monasteries demolished, and fifteen thousand people in all massacred. The report was reprinted as a booklet and widely circulated in Europe.

Baring's report to the British government about the massacres was similar, but put the number of victims at about twelve thousand.

No other investigation of the massacres was made. A century later, one historian claimed that the number killed was exaggerated, and was closer to three thousand. But it is difficult to ignore the accounts of MacGahan, Schuyler and Baring, who visited the massacre sites three months after they occurred, and saw many of the unburied corpses. The actual number of victims will never be known.

MacGahan's vivid articles from Bulgaria moved British public opinion against Turkey. He described in particular what he had seen in the town of Batak, where five thousand of a total of seven thousand residents had been slaughtered, beheaded or burned alive by Turkish irregulars, and their bodies left in piles around the town square and the church. He described "Skulls with gray hair still attached to them, dark tresses which had once adorned the heads of maidens, the mutilated trunks of men, the rotting limbs of children..."

The political impact of the reports was immediate and dramatic. The leader of the British opposition, William Gladstone, wrote a booklet denouncing what he called "the Bulgarian Horrors," and calling upon Britain to withdraw its support for Turkey. "I entreat my countrymen," he wrote, "upon whom far more than upon any other people in Europe it depends, to require and to insist that our government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigour to concur with the states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves...."

Prominent Europeans, including Charles, Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Garibaldi spoke against the Turkish behavior in Bulgaria. When Russia invaded Romania and Bulgaria in 1877, the Turkish Government asked Britain for help, but the British government refused, citing public outrage caused by the Bulgarian massacres as the reason.

The April uprising was a tragic failure as a revolution, but, thanks to publicity that was given to the reprisals that followed, it led directly to European demands for reform of the Ottoman Empire, and the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78, , which ended in Turkish defeat, and the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, followed in July that year by the Treaty of Berlin. It thus ultimately achieved its original purpose, the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

“But let me tell you what we saw at Batak … The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni, on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be … It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odor, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them … The ground is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odor, that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible.”

Eyewitness account of J. A. MacGahan on Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria in a letter to the London Daily News of August 22, 1876.

Koprivshtitsa, Cradle of Liberty

To tell you about what makes the town of Koprivshtitsa so special, I must first tell a small amount of Bulgarian history, so bear with me. Perhaps someday I will write a long piece about the history but today only a short one.

Since I am sure that all of you studied ancient Greek history, you will know the land where I now write was called Thrace several centuries before Christ, but Thrace doesn’t concern us right now. I want to write about Bulgaria.

There has been a land, a kingdom, called Bulgaria since at least the 7th century A.D. Like all European kingdoms, the boundaries of Bulgaria expanded and shrank with the vagrancies of war and conquest but Bulgaria existed as a country for 700 years until being conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the late 1300s. Not only Bulgaria fell but also large areas of eastern and central Europe before the Ottomans were stopped “almost at the gates of Vienna.” Today’s Muslim populations in Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia are a result of conversions to Islam by local populations during the occupation. Some Bulgarians converted but a relatively small number.

After Bulgaria fell to the Ottomans, Turkey ruled this land for the next 500 years. In Bulgarian history these years of oppression are known as the “Turkish yoke.” Throughout these long years, Bulgarian culture was kept alive through the unique Bulgarian language and the structure of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The Muslim Ottomans normally did not force conversions to Islam in Bulgaria. It was not in their best interests. The Turks charged higher taxes to Christians so there was a disincentive to force mass conversions.

By the 1800s a cultural revival began in Bulgaria with the publication of a book on Bulgarian history and a resurgence of efforts by Bulgarian intellectuals. With the new interest in a national identity, Bulgaria’s yearning for freedom from the Ottoman yoke finally boiled over in April 1876. The April Uprising began right here in Koprivshtitsa with the first shots being fired at the Turks. It can be said that Koprivshtitsa is the cradle of modern Bulgarian liberty. It occupies a spot in Bulgarian history somewhat similar to Concord Bridge in the American Revolution.

The April Uprising failed when it was put down brutally by the Turks. But the Uprising also succeeded because it generated sympathy among the Great European Powers (Britain, France, Russia) for the Bulgarian people. So two years later when Russian defeated Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, the Great Powers carved out an autonomous Bulgaria which became fully independent about 20 years later. And it all started with events here in Koprivshtitsa.

So that is one reason why Koprivshtitsa is an important and exciting small town. There are monuments to the patriots and an ossuary in the center of town containing the relics of those who died in the Uprising.

But there are yet more reasons for you to visit Koprivshtitsa and for us to want to live there. So back to a little history.

Koprivshtitsa was founded in the 1400s by Bulgarians fleeing the invading Turks. Soon, however, Koprivshtitsa became a center of commerce selling to the Turks and others. Sheep and goat farming formed the backbone of the town’s wealth and the resulting wool and dairy products, including carpets, woolen clothing, and cheese were traded throughout the Ottoman Empire and the local merchants became rich. These merchants traveled to Egypt and Venice and beyond. Local houses are decorated with scenes from these foreign locales. Rich men build rich houses and Koprivshtitsa had more than its share of both. By the time of the uprising the town had a population of 12,000 and rivaled the capital, Sophia, in both size and importance.

After the liberation, however, commercial life began to shift to lowland towns and places like Koprivshtitsa stagnated, leaving it as a kind of fossil. Today the town has shrunk to a population of 2400 but what remains of the town is magnificent beyond words. The houses of the middle and upper classes of 1870 Koprivshtitsa are all still here, built in the elaborate Bulgarian Revival style.

Much of the town is a huge museum. More than 330 of the old houses remain and most have been restored. Much of modern Bulgaria is stone, concrete, or block houses (not counting all the communist huge apartment blocks). Here in Koprivshtitsa are wonderful half timbered houses with tall walls around the yard (to keep the Turkish officials from looking in.) Almost every house has elaborate wooden gates, carved wooden ceilings and brightly painted exteriors.

For me it is pure delight to walk the narrow streets full of old houses, some going back 250 years. You must see this town.

Of course this a tourist destination. There are 20 or more small hotels and guest houses. The largest hotel has 70 beds but most are 15 or less. Guest houses may have two or three rooms. So if you come, there are plenty of wonderful places to stay for around $50 a night. A number of outdoor restaurants and cafes are great for summer and fall evenings but winter snows will drive us all indoors.

Even the non-historic parts of town look historic. This has been declared a “museum town” since 1952 and there are strict codes for any new structures. They must blend in. Except for the main street through town, all streets are cobblestone.

But more than a museum, Koprivshtitsa is still a working agricultural community. Every day we saw numerous horse-drawn wagons hauling hay, farm workers and goods. Every Friday is market day with merchants coming in from out of town. The hardware stores still carry horseshoes, farm tools, and other necessities of daily life.

Yes, we like this town and we hope to fit in once we learn more Bulgarian and learn our place in this community.

Here are just a few of Shirley’s pictures of Koprivshtitsa. More will follow next month.

Koprivshtitsa in the Sredna Gora

Koprivshtitsa (Копривщица) is slated to be our new home town come October 10, a week after Shirley’s birthday. Unless you have a detailed map of Bulgaria you will not easily find us because Koprivshtitsa has a population of only 2400 people. However, we know that everyone will want to jump on an airplane and come visit so here is where we will be.

From Sophia, the capital and largest city in Bulgaria, we are 110 km. (70) miles due east. From Plovdiv, the second largest city, we are 90 km. northwest. Both cities require a 2 ½ hour bus ride. If you divide Bulgaria in two, north and south, we are right on the dividing line. If you divide Bulgaria into thirds, east and west, we are right where the west third meets the middle third. So draw one line north to south and another east to west and Koprivshtitsa is close to where the two lines meet.

Koprivshtitsa is in a region known as the Sredna Gora (Middle Forest). This is a mountainous region with rounded peaks reaching 1600 meters (5200 feet). Koprivshtitsa itself is 1060 meters (3500 feet) above sea level. About 40 miles north of town is the Balkan Mountains with peaks above 2200 meters (7200’). The Balkans are a very long, continuous, east-west chain of mountains that divide Bulgaria into north and south halves. They are the most prominent natural feature in Bulgaria and these mountains lend their name to the entire Balkan Peninsula and the Balkan Region.

To some of us from Arizona these elevations may not seem high at first until we realize that in Bulgaria we are starting from a much lower elevation. Is also useful to realize that in the United States, east of the Mississippi, the highest mountains are only a little over 6,000 feet in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. Most of the mountains in the eastern United States are in the 3,000 feet range, a little less than Sredna Gora.

The lower ranges of the Sredna Gora are covered with beech forests and lots of birch trees which look much like American aspen trees. But with just a short rise in elevation the forest changes to pine then spruce and fir. There are still wolves and bear in these mountains along with the Imperial Eagle, an endangered species. Hiking is a big activity with eleven trails stretching out from the Koprivshtitsa area into the Sredna Gora and people come from Sophia and other areas to enjoy nature and escape the summer heat of the lower elevations.

My first clue about the climate of Koprivshtitsa was when I looked at the houses in town and realized that they had no vegetable gardens, just grass with a few apple or plum trees. There were no grape arbors, no tomatoes, no cucumbers, no large amounts of peppers, nothing to can for the winter. That all says something about the length of the growing season here in these mountain elevations which are also as far north as Chicago.

From the brochure I learned that the climate (Yes Shirley, take a deep breath!) is “mountainous and the winter is cold and usually lasts from December to April. The snow cover holds a long time. The winter days are sunny and fogs occur very rarely. The spring is short and humid. The summer is cool. The highest average (daytime) temperature of 30 degrees C. (86 F.) is measured in the hottest month of July and the lowest average (nighttime) temperature of minus 15 degrees C. (+5 F.) is measured in January.”

So much for the brochure. Milena tells me that sometimes the temperature goes to –20 C. (-4 F.) Also in some years the snowfall reaches a depth of one meter….and yes we walk everywhere. Shirley take another deep breath!

Did I mention that all heating in houses is done with wood with sometimes a little coal. Electricity is too expensive to use very much. Would somebody please tell how to bank a fire to last the night!! If the fire doesn’t last the night, Shirley may not last! And I’ve had enough of bachelorhood.

Those who know me well, know that I love the mountains and that the little I’ve told you about the Sredna Gora would make me excited to be living there but I still haven’t told you what makes Koprivshtitsa so special.

I don’t mean to tease but I will have to save that for another time. It’s late and I must be to bed.

Three Buses and a Taxi

We’ve been in Bulgaria for six weeks now and gone from home for almost seven. It’s been 14 months since we applied for this adventure. All this time we’ve wondered just what the Peace Corps had in mind for us and we’ve certainly wondered WHERE?? Half of the where question was answered last March when our names came up on the list for Bulgaria. But Bulgaria is as large as Tennessee and ranges from sea level to 9,000 feet, so the where question has been hanging over us until this week.

Last Monday the four of us in Sapareva Banya traveled by bus 25 kilometers to the larger town of Dupnista. There we were joined by 24 more fellow trainees traveling in from six other satellite sites. Our original group of 30 has been reduced by two young women who decided to return to the states for personal reasons.

All 28 of us marched down several blocks to a local high school and upstairs into the gym. There a large outline map of Bulgaria was marked out on the floor in masking tape. The map was so large it took up the whole basketball court. Inside the map were 27 pieces of paper, with town and village names, placed at the proper location on the map. Twenty-seven locations for 28 people. Maybe somebody remembered that there was a married couple here. Perhaps there was hope for a ranger and an accountant tired of playing bachelor and bachelorette.

The Peace Corps Country Director began pulling names of trainees out of a box and finally the where question was being answered. As each name and location was announced, the trainee was escorted to the proper spot on the gym floor map and given a long-stem carnation in congratulations. Shirley’s was the 4th name called and she was escorted to the center of the map to a piece of paper labeled Копривщица. Several more names were drawn out of the box until someone called out, “Don’t you think Richard ought to go to the same town?” Common sense prevailed and the ranger got a carnation and an escort. Soon all us were standing on the Bulgarian map on the gym floor. Now we could all see where we were going in relationship to our classmates.

But just what is Копривщица? It was just my luck to get a town with a name ten letters long including the letter “щ” which is not to be confused with the letter “ш”. The former translates in English as “sht” while the latter is “sh”. If at first you don’t see the difference in the two letters, look for the small downturn on the right-hand end of the letter. The letter “щ” is one of the two most confusing letters in the alphabet for me. The other is “ц” which translates as “ts”. This one is easy in the middle of a word but difficult for starting a word. And Копривщица contains both letters.

I guess that I should have counted my blessing that Копривщица contains only ten letters in Bulgarian. In English the town name has 13 letters, Koprivshtitsa. Try saying that ten times real fast. After three days I am still trying to say it right every time. To get the accent right say Ko-PREEV-shtit-sa.

To introduce us to our new home each of us were given a packet of information. Some people got only a single sheet of paper. It was hard to say much about their village of 200 or 600 people. Shirley and I were luckier. Our packet included a full color booklet and three brochures and all bilingual. We were headed for a tourist destination in Bulgaria that had printed brochures in an attempt to lure even more tourists.

Now with a town name and a small information packet, we all reconvened for a Peace Corps session on travel logistics and what to do when we first met our local counterparts from these towns and villages because in just two hours we were going to meet them.

When we left Sapareva Banya that Monday morning we each carried a suitcase or backpack with clothes for six days without being told where we were going. The Peace Corps loves surprises. We knew only that we were spending the first two nights in a nearby hotel for conferences and then we would be traveling to our new sites, with our counterparts, for a two-day look-see and meet-and-greet. So there was soon to be an actual place to go with the name Koprivshtitsa and the booklet and the three brochures. But first we had to meet our counterparts who were in the lobby of the hotel.

Just as we had come to Dupnitsa that morning not knowing where our permanent sites would be, so the local counterparts came to Dupnitsa not knowing which Peace Corps volunteer was coming to their town. They knew nothing about the prospective volunteer, not even their name. As I said the Peace Corps loves surprises.

So each of us walked into the hotel looking for someone from our new town identified by a name tag with location listed. We were nervous. Would our counterpart speak any English? Some don’t. Our new counterparts were equally nervous. Who was coming to their town? Could they communicate in Bulgarian? Shirley and I found Milena from Koprivshtitsa and started a three-way, bilingual conversation. We hit it off and all is well!

A full day of conferences followed for all of us. (You don’t want to hear about conferences.) Then on Wednesday it was time to go for our site visit, traveling with Milena. Of course we are going by bus. With gas at over $8.00 a gallon the bus is the cheaper option.

Leaving Dupnista, we traveled north to the capital city, Sophia, for an hour and a half. The fare was 5 leva, a little under $4 per person. In Sophia there is more than one bus station so we have to travel from the Ovcha Kupel Bus Station to the Central Bus Station. Usually one would take a trolley car (called a tram here) from one station to the other but we have three large bags and one small suitcase plus my daypack and Milena’s small bag.

All of us trainees brought two large suitcases to Bulgaria. Most of the contents are for later in our service with things such as winter clothes that we don’t need yet. So to avoid having to take all the bags later when we make our permanent move to our new site, we were advised to take one of our large bags now and drop it off at the new site for later. Shirley and I decided to take three of our four large bags now while we had an extra person to help.

So now we had too many bags to transfer to the other bus station by trolley. We needed a taxi. There are many taxis from many companies in Sophia and all are yellow. We were advised that a reputable taxi company was named the OK taxi company. They are reliable and have cheap rates, 0.59 leva per kilometer.

That’s all well and good but in this land of new and often unregulated capitalism there are three or four taxi companies that use some variation of the word OK in their logo and they try in every way to mimic the reputable company, except in price. Some will charge 2.49 leva per km. Or 4.90 leva or even 5.90 leva, ten times the price of the original OK company. All prices are legal so they are not violating any law. The only saving grace is that the law requires that the price be posted in the right hand corner of the windshield. So one must look carefully. The unwary will see 5.90 leva and forget that the good price is 0.59 leva. We had to search through 20 different taxis at the bus station to find the right one. Then it was a matter of putting a large suitcase, two large duffels, a small suitcase, a daypack, a small duffel, two trainees, and one counterpart in one small taxi. Oh yes, the driver has to get in there too.

We made it to Central Bus Station and the total bill was only 6.80 leva, a little over $5. I don’t know why it was so cheap. We were told by the Peace Corps to expect 10-12 leva. In any case it was much cheaper than the 60 leva ($48) that the unwary might be charged.

At the new bus station there was the chance for a sandwich (ham and cheese) before catching another bus for Koprivshtitsa. That town is only 110 km. (70 miles) from Sophia but the bus takes 2 ½ hours while stopping at small towns along the way.

Hooray, we made it! I’ll tell you about Koprivshtitsa in another posting. This one is too long, just like our bus rides. I’ll just say that we had a wonderful visit for two days and three nights.

Then came the kicker. We had to travel back to Sapareva Banya but this time by ourselves with no Milena to help us. We now got to use our Bulgarian language and knowledge. So it was back on a bus to Sophia, back across town to the second bus station, back on a bus to Dupnista, and then on another bus to Sapareva Banya. All told it was 5 ½ hours travel to come back. But here we are “back home” ready to start our classes again. We have another 4 ½ weeks of training to go.

Next time the beautiful town of Копривщица.