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Author: Bas

  • EvilAngle – TheSummerFiles (Free House/Dance Mix)

    For those of you that know me, also know I mix music every now and then and post the mixes on my site called The MiX-Files. One and a half month ago I made a summer mix to get ready for the summer and to entertain me while travelling. Summer’s half way over, but it’s not too late to get into the right vibe if you haven’t already!

    It’s summer! Sun, beaches, swimming, relaxing outside, reading, partying, holidays, seeing friends, picknicks… and here is the soundtrack! Here’s 3 hours of the best summer house music to get into the holiday mood!

    Featuring artists like David Guetta, Bob Sinclar, Laidback Luke, Alex Gaudino, Axwell, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Dave Spoon, Tocadisco and Ferry Corsten. For the complete tracklist, read below the download links.

    All files as MP3 at VBR (Variable BitRate). You can choose from any one of the free file hosting sites listed behind the file.

    Download first hour – MegaUpload | uploaded.to | rapidshare.de
    Download second hour – MegaUpload | rapidshare.de
    Download third hour – MegaUpload | rapidshare.de

    Download whole 3 hour set in one file – MegaUpload | vipfile

    Enjoy the music, enjoy the artists, enjoy the summer. Support the scene, support the artists, support the magic.

    Tracklist below.

    (more…)

  • velvety adipic gracious indignity machiavelli

    Got some weird spam in my inbox again… My mailbox is turning into the twilight zone. Without further ado, the email.

    From: Shelly Ames
    Subject: velvety adipic gracious indignity machiavelli

    prefatory yoke embroidery? flashlight, omicron grosbeak.
    yolk prejudice literature coincidental receive grosbeak, steradian
    museum corona circe coincidental walt.

    disciplinarian yolk disciplinarian

    moroccan moravia libretto? adipic, prefatory machiavelli.
    yolk sombre coincidental yolk mit definition, seater
    moroccan coincidental noxious yoke prefatory.

    burp disciplinarian couscous

    frolic disciplinarian cube? adipic, circe moravia.

    prefatory cube.

    Wow.

  • Black Sea Coast: Nesebar

    As we got to Nesebar, we were a bit confused where to go. Everyone got off the bus at the beginning of the town, so we did the same, but we didn’t have a clue where the centre of the town was. Immediately an old woman comes up to offer a place to sleep and we take it.

    A few hours later we’re ready to go and explore Nesebar. As we head out, one of the first things we come across is… a horse.

    Hooray for Bulgaria. Anyway, we continued down the streets of the new town towards the old town. Once you get close to the old town, you’ll start seeing an increasing number of tourists, tourbuses coming for day trips, boats and harbours… and sea!

    Tsvety at the harbour

    To get to the old town you have to walk over this dam built in the water. I suppose Nesebar used to be an island. It has 3 millenia of history behind it, which is slightly noticeable because of old ruins, but recently tourism has been on the rise and with the growth of the beach resort Sunny Beach (Slanchev Bryag), Nesebar seems to be getting swallowed by tourists. Not really my thing, I prefer to explore a bit myself. Therefore for food and shopping, I found it better to get out of the old town and into the new town, which was slightly more Bulgarian.

    Since we were told there are no good clubs in Nesebar, we went for a night out to Sunny Beach and see what all the fuzz is about… See if it’s really a unique place in Bulgaria. And it was…

    It’s not Bulgaria. If you want to see Bulgaria, don’t go to Sunny Beach. If you’ve been to Sunny Beach, don’t tell people you’ve been to Bulgaria; you haven’t. You’ve been to Sunny Beach, which is interchangeable with any extremely touristy and club-filled town at the Spanish coast.

    Having said that, it’s an interesting place of modern architecture. Wealthy Bulgarians (some of them undoubtedly involved in the mafia) build huge palaces in honour of… err.. themselves probably. These palaces are beautiful and it’s no wonder so many tourists are willing to pay big bucks to sleep in Bulgarian mafiosi’s penis extensions.

    The clubs… they’re decent. At most. The first we went to was called Lazur… and it was like high school, but with a LOT of alcohol. Kids dancing like it’s the first time they’re in a club, etc. We left soon and found a slightly better club where a waitress tried to rip me off, so I’m not even going to mention the name of the club. Actually, I will… Don’t go to Mania.

    We got a taxi back which was 30 leva (15 euros), but because of my girlfriend, who’s Bulgarian, we only paid 15 leva (7.50 euros). Pretty expensive for a 5 minute ride, especially in Bulgaria, but oh, I forgot… Sunny Beach is NOT Bulgaria.

    At the place we were sleeping, we discovered some kittens the next day and took some shots of them. They seemed to be rather sick though, so we kept a little distance. The pictures worked out well though. Click to enlarge.

    Click here to see the whole Nesebar album…

    After Nesebar, which is definitely a place to have seen in Bulgaria, we went to Sofia, where Tsvety did her things and I did mine for a few days. Then we both got on a plane and went to Holland. Time to show Tsvety where I’m from.

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  • Black Sea Coast: Sozopol

    As I arrived in Sofia by bus from Macedonia around 8 in the morning, I was seriously considering skipping Sofia and just heading into the first bus to the Black Sea coast. I had told my girlfriend I’d be back in Sofia though and when I realized I’m too sweet to be a total dick, I let the idea of going straight to the coast go. I checked into the Art Hostel in Sofia and met up with Tsvety, my girlfriend, later that day. I think I must have told her about 20 times that she should come to the coast to me and she told me she’d have to see how her parents felt about it an equal amount of times. After all, she’d be coming with me to Holland for one month in just one and a half week time.

    The next day I got the news… Yes, we were going to the coast together. That evening we met up at the central bus station in Sofia to take a bus to… Sozopol.


    View Larger Map

    We did some basic planning and online orientation to see what hotels would be good there. Tsvety printed a map and marked the hotels on it. This was only to be used in worst case scenario, because generally Bulgarian old men and women offer quarters (kvartiri) to travellers for really good prices. As soon as we arrived 3 or 4 elderly Bulgarians gathered around my girlfriend and I and started promoting their place and telling each other to shut up. This was all happening in Bulgarian and since I had just fallen asleep at the end of the busride, after 4 or 5 hours of restlessness, I was in a very confused mindstate. One of them won, apparently, and I followed my girlfriend and him up a hill. He presented our room which was very clean and we crashed and slept ’til noon(ish).

    The next day we went to the beach at the new part of town, since that was closest to our place. Sozopol is split into two parts, the old and the new. The best about the old part is all the old buildings (plus the only place with WiFi I could find was there (the bar’s called Lipstick)), the best about the new part is the strip with bars and restaurants along the beach.

    We spent the first day exploring the new part of town and looking for wireless internet in the new and old part, since I had a conference website to do some work for. It took hours (literally) to find a place with wireless internet and once there I got to work. Tsvety walked around a while and took some more pictures. After that we went back to the hotel to change clothes and head out to the beach. Finally! However I’m more of an eater than a beach person, so we soon repositioned our asses from beach to restaurant.

    The next day I got back to work at the bar. At the end of the day we walked around past Sozopol’s port and had dinner at a sea food restaurant. For the first time since becoming a vegetarian last November, I ate an animal. Mussels, to be exact. Only a few, since Bulgarian mussels don’t come close to Dutch/Belgian ones šŸ˜‰ Never decided to completely stop eating fish though, it just turned out that way. That night Tsvety got rather sick from the chicken she ate (or maybe the mussels) and we spent the night at home.

    See the whole album on Picasa…

    We stayed one more day in Sozopol and then we took the bus north to Nesebar, for some more Black Sea coast time! More about this soon.

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  • Strumica – Last Days

    That evening Mite and I decided to get our hair cut. For him it was his beardhair, for me it was the other headhair. In total, we got our whole heads cut. We walked a bit out of the town and into the hills. There were still a bunch of houses, but they got more and more sparse. We walked up a hill and up to the shabbiest barber shop I’ve ever seen. The guy did a decent job, although my hair wasn’t really shorter afterwards, only crooked, but it was for free since he was a friend of the family (not mine; Mite’s).

    Being so happy with our new cuts, we decided that night was party time! Or maybe it was pre-decided. It doesn’t matter for the story, so I’ll keep it to myself, possibly carrying it to my grave. We got the whole group together and went to a few loud bars with FashionTV on their big screen televisions that were hanging from the ceiling. No difference between Macedonia and Bulgaria there. We ended up in some club and had a lot of smiles on our faces and alcohol in our blood. Excellent. The next day we did the same. See the pictures.

    The next day we took all the children out to play in the park. It was really good and actually made me think twice about what I’m pursuing in my life. Activities like this make me feel really centred, calm and happy on a deeper level than the superficial level of every day happiness. For now I’ll just postpone this thinking about what I want to do with my life until a later point in time, probably mid-life crisis. Without further ado; the pictures! (As always, click to enlarge)

    Click here for entire photo album…

    The next day we chilled out and in the evening got together for one more drink since I’d be leaving. To those that were present: thanks for coming out to say bye! To those that were still up when I got into the taxi: thanks for staying up so late! Speaking about the taxi… I still had to go past a cash machine before I got into my bus back to Sofia (at 3am). We stopped at one machine, I tried… No luck. Other cash machine… same story. I started to get worried. We tried another, but nope. With the fourth one we finally had success. We headed to the busstation where we discovered the driver had no change. I went in quickly to buy a ticket, so I would have change to pay the driver. I tried to buy the ticket, but the guy kept repeating “600 denari, 600 denari”. I had given him one thousand and was wondering what the problem was… 600 more? Oh no… I’d have to go back into the city and get more money… I’d probably miss the bus. Then he put 400 on the counter and started writing my ticket. These people love to fuss about not paying in the exact amount. No more worries, paid the taxi, got in the bus, didn’t sleep in the bus… Ended up being awake for about 40 hours by the time I took my one hour nap. Back at the Art Hostel in Sofia. Back where I began.

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  • Strumica – Stop… Roma time!

    That evening we celebrated a birthday at a bar in town. Isabelle turned 20 and as Leni and her boyfriend Vlado joined us, they surprised her (and us) with cake and chocolate. We had a drink, chilled out and called it a night at an unridiculous hour for a change.

    The next day I could sleep in a little, because Mite and Isabelle had some stuff to do at the NGOā€™s centre. At around 12 I was picked up by Mite and we were going to have some coffee before our afternoon activity. This afternoon activity was something Iā€™d been waiting for since the moment I decided to go to Bulgaria last year, so naturally I was very excited. In the afternoon, weā€™d be heading over to the Roma neighbourhood to visit the host family of one of the American girls, Alex. In this neighbourhood however, you are never left alone (thatā€™s a positive thing), so I knew Iā€™d see a lot of stuff I normally wouldnā€™t, or never haveā€¦ and that there would probably be some great photo opportunities too. šŸ˜‰

    Mite and I headed outside and saw a guy sitting behind a car. It was the crazy man weā€™d seen the day before as we were sitting outside a bar. The guy seemed to be completely in his own world, or even dimension, and today was no different. Mite asked for my camera and he managed to inspire me quite a bit. He knows no shyness and thatā€™s the reason why he gets great shots. Definitely a motivation to get out of my own comfort zone. The crazy guy hardly noticed the camera and I wonder whether he had any idea of what a camera is and what was going on around him.

    Later that afternoon we visited the Roma neighbourhood. It was quite the experience. Iā€™ve often heard Bulgarians complain about the Roma, saying theyā€™re dirty and their neighbourhoods are like landfills and though they might be right, I wonder if they cannot see the beauty thatā€™s right there. A speck of mud on a flower does not destroy the flowerā€™s beauty, the obsessive and judgemental mind does.

    Iā€™ll try to explain whatā€™s not captured in the pictures, but then Iā€™ll let the pictures do the talking. Entering the neighbourhood, as a group that clearly was not from around there, we drew quite the attention. Children loved the cameras and came to pose for us. We walked around and immersed ourselves in the noise and continuous chaos of the neighbourhood. It was great to have people from Alexā€™ host family as our guides, this made the neighbourhood and the people so much more accessible. Also, Mite and his colleague Leni have been working with some of these kids for years, so they too knew quite a few people there. Itā€™s hard to put into words what the neighbourhood is like though, so without further ado, the pictures.

    Click here for moreā€¦

    As said we visited the host of Alex who had a huge house. They lived in Germany for decades, working there to earn money and went back and built a house the size of a villa. After having some coffee, we were offered to come up to see the view from the top balcony of the house.

    Following the Roma hospitality, we headed back to the city so we could all go to dinner. On our way back we visited a mosque which was still under construction. An interesting fact about the Roma people here is that a lot of them see themselves as Turkish and even speak Turkish. Some donā€™t even speak Macedonian. A fair share of them is also Islamic (evidently). Turkey wonā€™t recognize their claims for Turkish nationality however.

    As the sun went down and the evening stole the dayā€™s presence, more new experiences awaited me.

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  • Strumica – Roma’s and Sandwiches

    The second day in Strumica I woke up with a bit of a hangover. We all got up and I went along with Mite to bring Isabella to the centre of his NGO where she would go to work with other American volunteers and then the plan for Mite and I was to go for coffee. Once there, Mite was put to work, so plans changed. I was standing around a bit and a guy was hooking up computers, so I figured Iā€™d help out a bit. After hooking up some computers, I went to find Mite who was in another room with the American girls doing some activities to teach English to Roma children.

    They were busy with an exercise to write down three things about the first impression you had about a particular person in the room. The children stated some pretty sweet and funny things. After that we were put to work to make badges for ourselves with our name on it, but we had to draw something on it too. After that we did ā€˜Simon Saysā€¦ā€™ to teach the kids some more English.

    See the pictures of the children in my Picasa albumā€¦

    After this Mite and I went for lunch and got some of the biggest sandwiches Iā€™ve ever seen.

    We then met the girls in the centre who were done with work by now and Mite and Leni (who also works for the NGO) showed them the ways home. This was very interesting, because one of them was staying in a Roma neighbourhood. You enter quite a different place when you walk into the Roma neighbourhood; itā€™s like a village of its own and a very busy and noisy one at that. One of the girls was picked up by the family where she was staying and we were all invited to come around for coffee some time. This planā€™s definitely on the table and Iā€™m very excited about it.

    We then went home, had dinner, chilled out a while and Mite and I went out again to meet some more of his friends.

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  • Pictures up now!

    The bird from our hotel (read here)

    The lizard on the mountain (read here)

    See the Bulgarian photos so far here and the ones from Strumica here.

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  • Hello Strumica, Macedonia!

    On Tuesday I spent some more time in Blagoevgrad and saw a little more of the town. All I really did was wander around a bit and occasionally sit down, have some juice and read Carlos Castanedaā€™s Teachings of Don Juan. Perfect.

    I didnā€™t feel like walking around with my backpack in the sun (at the risk of melting!), so around three oā€™ clock I took a taxi to the bus station so I could catch a bus to Strumica. I walked into an office of the station and asked about tickets. They sent me to an office across the street from the station. This office sent me to a bus station next to the one where I was. It took quite a while to figure out where I had to take the bus exactly and I wasnā€™t really sure until I was actually on it. At ten past five, I was on my way to Strumica in a bus full of Bulgarians and Macedonians.

    As we came closer to Sandanski, I recognized a particular road and I remembered it so clearly that I was a bit startled. It immediately recalled some more memories of the last time I travelled down that road ā€“ on my way to and from the Balkan Youth Festival last year.

    After spending about 1.5 hour at the border, I arrived in Strumica at 9 oā€™ clock and was picked up by my friend Mite (also referred to as Mitko). He took me to his home and explained that he was going to be having another guest for the next 10 days due to his work for a local NGO. So one or two hours later an American girl named Issabella arrived whoā€™d been in the Balkan region for a few weeks. We chatted for a while and after midnight Issabella went to bed and Mite and I went into the city. I was very curious to see what the town was like.

    The town was swarming with young people. Apparently young people go outside every evening in the summer and hang out in one of the many bars, in the park, on the street in the center or at squares. I wish people in Holland would live a little bit more ā€˜outsideā€™, but I guess itā€™s not in our culture.

    We had a drink with some of Miteā€™s friends and I was introduced to a Macedonian drink called ā€œmastikaā€. Itā€™s a lot like the Greek ouzo, but thereā€™s a clear difference. The taste of mastika is not as sweet and a lot more subtle. I heard a lot of stories about Macedonian history, Macedonia and the EU, Bulgaria, etc. Rather popular topics among intelligent young people in the Balkans. Iā€™ve rarely discussed Dutch history or the EU with friends in Holland, only recently, because of my studies related to the EU.

    Later Mite and I got some beers and sat at the central square in Strumica and chilled out a bit. Talked about everything. Around 4 in the morning we planted our asses in our respective beds and dozed off for a 4 hour nap.

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  • Blagoevgrad – Bas the Nature Boy

    The next day I took the bus to Blagoevgrad. I wanted to visit a friend in Strumica, Macedonia, but because I couldnā€™t get a hold of him, I figured Iā€™d play it safe and postpone the trip there, but at least move closer to Strumica instead.

    The busride was amazing. Listening to Shpongle and my own psychedelic ambient/chillout set, I gazed out of the windows at the most fantastic scenes of nature. I sat in meditative position and I felt so at ease and ecstatic at the same time, that I was sad when the busride was over after two hours. I wanted more, but it was not to be.

    I walked around Blagoevgrad for a while, because the hotels in the Lonely Planet guide were a bit expensive and I figured Iā€™d find something cheaper. After a while I submitted to the fact that it was either going to be calling a hotel from the Lonely Planet guide, or walking around with my backpack in sunny and hot Blagoevgrad and eventually melting to death. I chose the former.

    So I paid the 20 euros, but I had a great room and an awesome laundry service for what turned out to be E2.50. After a shower, I went out of the hotel and walked around a bit again. I decided to take a road up a hill somewhere and then I saw a muddy/sandy mountain road. I told myself to take it. I had been so happy listening to music and watching the nature from the bus, now it was time to go into it!

    I started walking up. Started taking small paths, the smallest I could findā€¦ I went uphill, far away from the busy town. At some point I came across a deserted playground. There was a construction for kids to climb on which was submerged in plants. Then there was also the slide without stairs. Very spooky. My trip continued upwards.

    I walked up and up, started sweating heavily, figured I didnā€™t want to waste another clean shirt again, so I took it off. Then at some point the slope was quite steep and I found it helped if I ran up at those parts, because of the momentum. Soon I was running happily around the hill while shirtless. Back to nature! Then I realized I knew nothing about nature, hills, or mountains, and I should be a bit more careful. This is when I stopped to consider if I wanted to go up further or not. As I was standing still I suddenly noticed a lizard on the ground next to me. I took some pictures from quite close, but then got too greedy with my space and it ran off.

    I headed back down. At some point I decided to put my shirt on again, since I was getting closer to the foot of the hill and I was no longer sweaty. I put my shirt on and suddenly a bunch of goats come by, followed by a dog and half a minute later another dog and a goat herder. Awesome.

    I went back into town. Went to the fancy place with the pretty people I saw earlier and had a great freshly squeezed melon juice. Then I got a message from Mite, my friend in Macedonia. Tomorrow at 5 oā€™ clock, Iā€™d be taking the bus out of Blagoevgrad to Macedonia.

    I took it easy that night and went to bed early; one hour after midnight.

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    Pictures soon, I promise. Within the next 2 or 3 days!

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