My apologies for the very long delay in writing a new post. It has been a very fun, but stressful couple of weeks since my last post, and to be honest, my mind has been far from updating this blog.

We left Bulgaria for Budapest very early on the morning of June 13th with Marta’s brother Lubo and his wife Petia. Upon arriving, we almost immediately began four pretty long days of hard touring, trying to show them as much of the city as we could manage to see before they left on the 17th. In between the touring, we managed to squeeze in a couple of great dinners and a few long nights of drinking with my brother. Marta and I returned to the States on June 19 and had just two days to recover before getting in the car and driving to Greensboro for the Eastern Music Festival.

Budapest is a great city and one that has undergone a remarkable transformation since the first time I visited in 1996. Though Hungary was never a hard-line Communist satellite like Bulgaria, it still suffered under Socialism and just a decade ago there was still a sense of dilapidation that I’ve experienced on numerous occasions during my travels throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe. Now, the city is almost completely rebuilt and polished to the point that it compares favorably with Vienna and other “Western” European capitals.

Our stay in Bulgaria is almost over and we are starting the preparations for our return to Budapest on Tuesday. Compared to past trips, this has been a rather uneventful visit as we made a conscious effort to stay close to home in Burgas and maximize our time with Marta’s family and friends.

One thing we did have a chance to do was travel to the village of Bulgari in the Strandzha Mountains of Southeastern Bulgaria. This village is famous for its nestinars, or fire-walkers, who fall into a religious trance and walk across hot coals accompanied by bagpipes and drums. This typically occurs during the celebration of St. Elena and Konstantin right around June 4th and draws huge crowds in the village. We didn’t actually go to the big celebration, but instead were fortunate to join the villagers deep in the forest at a sacred spring to bless the village icons and gather with other small towns in a relatively intimate preparatory celebration during the final weekend of May. This was all possible because our friend Plamena, who is completing her masters degree in ethnomusicology, is writing her thesis on the fire-walkers and set up our entire trip including accommodations and transportation. It was a very cool experience and our thanks go to Plamena for inviting us!

I’m submitting this entry from the apartment of Marta’s brother Lubomir and his wife Petya, who have a lovely, if slightly hair-raising view of the Bay of Burgas from their 16th floor apartment. They were married in October after a very long relationship and our gift to them was the fare for airplane tickets to accompany us for five days in Budapest. They are excited about the trip and we are very pleased to have them join us.

After our week in Budapest, Marta and I will be returning to St. Louis for two days before driving back to North Carolina for the Eastern Music Festival. Marta has once again been invited to be on the faculty for the Festival so I’ll have a chance to relax, compose, and be surrounded by exceptional musicians and concerts. I will have plenty of internet access and extra time to update this blog, so this will likely be my last post until we return to the States.

There is one final detail to take care of before my next entry, and that is the issue of Brian “tagging” me on his blog several weeks ago. The challenge was to answer four questions in four categories about the things I know, the things I used to know, the things I want to know, and the things that I don’t know. I think I’ve procrastinated long enough, so below I am presenting the “European Edition” of my answers, long overdue:

Four Things I Know:

• I know that the rapper “50 Cent” is coming to play a concert in Bulgaria in July.
• I (finally) know how to read the Cyrillic alphabet well enough to insist on a menu in Bulgarian, rather than a poorly translated English version. This cuts down on confusion, as I recognize the food by its Bulgarian name rather than some bizarre description that doesn’t even come close to a true representation.
• I know that even though Bulgaria didn’t qualify for the World Cup, every bar and restaurant in this country that has a TV is drawing interest and every game is shown on television.
• I know that in the States, even though the national team has qualified for the World Cup, most sports bars have probably relegated whatever meager coverage ESPN has devoted to the world’s most popular sporting event to a tiny TV at the back of the bar.

Four Things I Used to Know:

• I used to know how to conjugate verbs in German, now all I remember are a few naughty phrases. Now I’m learning the naughty phrases in Bulgarian!
• I used to know how to deal with heights, but now every time I go on the balcony of this apartment, I get a nasty case of vertigo.
• I used to know that as an American, I was perfectly welcome in Europe. Now I’m not so sure.
• I used to know so many things that I’ve since forgotten that I’ve become paralyzed by this topic. (Yes, this is a cop-out!)

Four Things I Want to Know:

• I want to know if and where I’ll be teaching next year.
• I want to know how to speak more Bulgarian so that I can better communicate with Marta’s family.
• I want to know the best way to quit smoking, for the sake of any future children I might have.
• I want to know much, much more about the incredibly rich tradition of Bulgarian folk music. Even though I’ve been actively listening and collecting literature for the past several years, each time I come here I am startled by something new that I learn about the music of this country.

Four Things I Don’t Know and Don’t Care About:

• I don’t know how to speak Hungarian, and the language is so strange and complex that the investment in time to learn would be way out of proportion to its usefulness.
• I don’t know the first thing about advanced calculus or differential equations.
• I don’t know how anyone can truly like mayonnaise, much less on French fries.
• I don’t know a single tour date of “50 Cent” other than the concert in Bulgaria in July.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks here in Bulgaria but internet time is precious so I will limit this entry to mention that I’ve finally realized that I had the comments feature of this blog turned off. (Well, either that or no one is actually reading it!

I will try to make an update at some point later in this week, otherwise it might have to wait until next week when I return to Kevin’s house in Budapest.