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Category: photography

  • PhotoHunt: Colourful

    I took this picture during my trip to Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. I was having dinner on a terrace and this stray dog kept begging people for food, shoving its head through the fence and putting it on people’s tables. First time I really saw a stray dog like that, but during my five month stay in Bulgaria I saw many. It was also featured as photo of the day on the website of Radio Bulgaria (the international service of the Bulgarian National Radio).

    To see the whole album of the pictures I took in Veliko Turnovo, click here.

    Got a story to share about stray dogs? Your experiences in Bulgaria or Eastern Europe?

    If you have a colourful picture of your own to share and you’re a PhotoHunter, be sure to leave your name and link below! All PhotoHunt posts get Stumbled!

    Technorati: PhotoHunt

    Previous PhotoHunts.

  • PhotoHunt: Dark


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    This is the first instalment of , so let me just explain to you what it is. Every Saturday a theme is announced and on Sunday you post a picture from your personal collection that goes with that theme. Without further ado… here is my photo for this week’s theme: dark.


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    I took this picture in November last year when I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria. As I was walking home from work one evening, the city was very dark and extremely foggy. This created a rather eerie atmosphere and I decided to capture it. Check out the entire collection.

    Have a look at the other entries at http://tnchick.com/archives/1166.

  • 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 😉 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 NGO’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 I’d been waiting for since the moment I decided to go to Bulgaria last year, so naturally I was very excited. In the afternoon, we’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 (that’s a positive thing), so I knew I’d see a lot of stuff I normally wouldn’t, or never have… and that there would probably be some great photo opportunities too. 😉

    Mite and I headed outside and saw a guy sitting behind a car. It was the crazy man we’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 that’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. I’ve often heard Bulgarians complain about the Roma, saying they’re dirty and their neighbourhoods are like landfills and though they might be right, I wonder if they cannot see the beauty that’s right there. A speck of mud on a flower does not destroy the flower’s beauty, the obsessive and judgemental mind does.

    I’ll try to explain what’s not captured in the pictures, but then I’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 Alex’ 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. It’s hard to put into words what the neighbourhood is like though, so without further ado, the pictures.

    Click here for more…

    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 don’t even speak Macedonian. A fair share of them is also Islamic (evidently). Turkey won’t recognize their claims for Turkish nationality however.

    As the sun went down and the evening stole the day’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 I’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 ‘Simon Says…’ to teach the kids some more English.

    See the pictures of the children in my Picasa album…

    After this Mite and I went for lunch and got some of the biggest sandwiches I’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; it’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 plan’s definitely on the table and I’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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  • I made a commitment…

    After reading an article which I found while using StumbleUpon, I decided to start taking at least one picture per day and putting it online. This way, in a year time, I can look back at the year day by day and get a rather vivid picture of my life. However, the longer I keep doing this, the more interesting it will get.

    The best thing however, is this…. You get to see it too! 😉

    Click here to visit my Photoblog! Also, check out the Project 365 article and join in!

  • A busy week and a trip to Plovdiv

    It’s been a long week. Last Saturday night I was waiting for my parents to arrive at Sofia airport. On my way to find a bus or a taxi to the airport I find out it’s snowing! So I go to the airport, stand between a crowd of Bulgarians waiting for people to arrive. After about half an hour they come out and after another half an hour we manage to get ourselves into a taxi. It was kinda strange to see them walking into Bulgaria, into my life here. It had the same type of ‘shock’ effect as when I took a taxi into Sofia upon my arrival here in Bulgaria. The first night they crash at my place, the next day we try to find somewhere to have breakfast/lunch, which turned out to be a bit tougher than I thought. It didn’t suck as bad as the long walk to their hotel though 😉 From there I went straight up to the airport to pick up Janneke. The crowd that was there now was about 3 times as big as the day before. We went to my place and later that day met up with my parents to have dinner.

    Monday was rainy, very rainy. Almost Holland-rainy. No, just like Holland-rainy. Rain, rain, rain all day long. We managed to see a lot, but it cost a lot of energy to control my mood. When it rains like this, people here don’t go outside unless they don’t have a choice.

    Rainy Sofia

    On Tuesday it was back to work for me. More work on a presentation I’m giving this Wednesday. Lunch with Janneke. A few more hours of work and it was time to errr.. I kinda forgot what happened on Tuesday.

    Wednesday it was basically the same thing, minus the lunch with Janneke.. plus I remember what happened that day. At some point Janneke and I met up with my parents, because they would be traveling through Bulgaria and I might not see them before they left the country, so I had to say goodbye. Janneke and I were planning to eat with my friends in Studentski Grad, but because the buses were so full and the taxi drivers did not want to go to Studentski Grad, we decided not to go. We ended up walking around, going back home, going ’round the corner to eat. I had some rakiya, which is powerful of itself, but this time I could feel it through my throat and throughout my body. Bad experience. Could not enjoy the drink. Ended up looking like a pussy who can’t even drink hard liquor. 😉

    The next day I worked until around 1pm and then headed home. As I got home we grabbed our stuff and headed for the busstation. We were going on a trip to Plovdiv! Actually managed to book a private room in a hostel (Hikers Hostel), which was good. Hotels are expensive and don’t offer half the value a good hostel does. Met some Australians, Frenchman, Chilean, Canadians, Americans (one of which was a Lonely Planet writer (with an attitude)), Belgians.. That evening we walked around and saw some of what Plovdiv had to offer. Below are some pictures which you can click to enlarge. You can also go to the picture gallery.

    Cat in Plovdiv Ancient theatre in Plovdiv Purple shoe sunset I’ve been framed!

    Actually, I decided to let the pictures speak for themselves. Here are some more.

    Plovdiv fresco Abandoned building in Plovdiv Plovdiv amphitheate

    We stayed there Thursday and Friday night. On Saturday we went to the second biggest monastery in Bulgaria, called Bachkovo. Quite an interesting place to visit, although it was obviously the end of the tourist season and they didn’t really feel like having everything open the whole time (I guess we came around lunchtime). The up-side of it was that it wasn’t swarming with tourists, yet there were still too many for my taste.

    Another update later, I have to get working on my presentation.

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