My parents' village and more

Two weeks in, starting to get used to the sunshine! If you know me, you know that my plants at home have always been at a survival camp with scarce water supplies and no unnecessary nursing. My mom has been at my place in Sweden, and, I suspect, this experience has made her a bit less willing to accept my help with her precious flowers and vegetables :) Speaking seriously, it is a very special feeling to pick figs directly from the tree and smell fresh eucalyptus leaves! Here are some pictures: figue, oregano, jujube (Chinese dates), rosmarin and lavendel.

Apart from gardening, my mom and I do sports at the local stadium. Locals think we are crazy to do sports when you can either have a rest or go and do real work, but we enjoy being there a lot. To me, the stadium symbolizes many of the things I've seen in Bulgaria - an amazing nature in combination with both modern and badly maintained post-soviet constructions. I must say, it has its charm :)
One of my other favourite things in the village has been the stork nest that mom and I pass by in the mornings on the way to the local stadium. The nest is on a pole just by someone's house, has been there for years. According to the villagers, the same stork couple lives in the nest each year. One of them (the male?) arrives aroung 15 March and fixes and repairs the nest. The other one (the female?) arrives one or two weeks later. They always leave around 15 August. My parents say they've seen it themselves for the past three years! During the remaining time, the nest is rented out to the messy sparrows (see the result on the picture...).

Actually I see a lot of wild (and not so wild) life everywhere here, quite unusual after the city life. Unfortunately, many of the anymals are homeless cats and dogs. At the local hot springs they are plenty. We, as many other visitors, always take some food with us to give to the animals when we go there. Lately we saw a little kitten, always meowing. He seemed to be starving since he was beaten by all other cats and they never let him come near the food. Now he is our new family member, less terrified and more playful every day.

Apart from storks, sparrows, cats and dogs you can also see, or hear, donkeys, pigs, goats and horses in the village. They all are kept for some purpose, so the horses here are used for dragging carts. Fortunately, moving around by car is much more popular, even though with some peculiarities. I was contemplating to take driving lessons here since they are way cheaper than back home... until I saw the way they park (on a pavement, in a second row blocking everyone else from getting out or just in wrong direction...) I decided to let it be and continue biking. In Sweden. Because the only biking lane in Sandanski has recently been banned. They even had to cross the bike signs out. This is because the bike lane was on a busy pedestrian street where the pedestrians were constantly walking on the lane and getting hit by the (still very few) bikers. So the solution was to abolish the bike lane. I personally think educating pedestrians and setting up very visible signs would be a better long-term solution, but probably I'm wrong.