We are at Zdravka's work now. She works in a tall building at the central square in Plovdiv and her office has a great view.

We'll go into the city now -- back to the cold...

I'm in an internet cafe in Plovdiv now. It's a local "internet club", which is mainly visited by kids playing games. The price for internet access in this cafe is about 35 euro cents per hour, probably the cheapest of the places I've visited
so far.

Yesterday we visited Zdravka and her family, and we're still in Plovdiv now. We'll meat Rangel and Nasko in a little while, to look at some computer stuff. We have a relatively busy schedule today, with a couple of things to be done and arranged before we see Milena and David tonight. I'm really looking forward to that.

It looks like it has snowed here more than in Perushtitsa -- in fact, it's snowing right now.

In the late afternoon we went to Zdravka and her parents, Gesho and Grozde. They live in an apartment in Plovdiv, the big city near Perushtista.

We had dinner together: Grozde cooked pursholi with a great sauce made of smoked white cheese, and fried peppers (chuski burek). We drank home-made rakia, and home-made white wine... where else but in Bulgaria.

In the evening we went out, the three of us, to a fancy bar nearby. I didn't really feel like alcohol after the big dinner, so I tried a non-alcoholic cocktail and banana juice. I wasn't sure what to expect of the latter but it when I tried it it was actually delicious, only a bit heavy.

We were home around 02:00 o'clock.

Second Christmas day is a holiday in Bulgaria, just like in the Netherlands. We visited Sasha's uncle and aunt, Rangel and Danche, in the afternoon. The welcomed us with a traditional masa, rougly translated "table". A lot of eating and drinking, and a lot of talking and fun. Really nice. Rangel had cooked a small pig for Christmas.

Later in the evening we went out: Nasko, Reina, Sasha and me. It was the first time I went to a bar in Perushtitsa, which was quite interesting. Perushtitsa is a small city, where everybody knows each other so there were a lot of familiar people coming into the bar (familiar to my Bulgarian friends, that is).

A white Christmas!

It started snowing on the day before Christmas, and in the morning whole Perushtitsa was white. Too bad I can't put some pictures online now, it's a really pretty sight. It's a serious amount of snow, and big trucks were cleaning the roads in the morning.

Milan had bought a whole turkey (about 20 kilo!), and we brought it to a friend who has an oven that's big enough for it. This friend lives a bit up the hill in the city, and some roads there weren't cleaned so we walked quite a bit with the turkey through the snow. An interesting journey ;).

The turkey was really delicious (with cabbage and fresh garlic). And shopska salad of course.

Yesterday we had the last evening in Velingrad.

Last Saturday we had great night in Tavern Omar so we decided to go there again.

Of course, on a Monday evening there wouldn't be live music or dancers, we were sure. Anyway, we were just planning to eat something and go home.

Well... wrong! We stayed again hours in the restaurant.

Some pictures.

Reading the menu.

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Sasha.

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Music.

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Dancer.

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A lot of guests started dancing the xoro.

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We were back at the hotel around 1:00 o'clock.

Somehow I feel I've been in Bulgaria for a very long time... but it has only been a week. Аnd the good news: there are another two weeks to go! I'm really having a great time here, and it's wonderful to be together.

We're still in Velingrad; yesterday we had an easy day (after the long night in Omar). The hotel is very quiet now, many guest left yesterday. I think no more than ten rooms are occupied. So the sauna and swimmingpool are all ours!

Back to the hotel now, I've spent more than enough time on internet.

I am the happy owner of a digital camera, a HP Photosmart 735. It was a present of my grandmother Groen and my parents for my graduation and it's very nice to have it here in Bulgaria.

I've been able to connect the camera to various computers: at Joana, at Svetla and Radoslav, and even in some internet cafe's. The nice thing is that Windows XP has the drivers for this camera pre-installed, so it's really a matter of plug-and-play.

Before I left to Bulgaria I bought a card with extra memory for the camera. Now I can take over 120 high-quality pictures. I thought I would be able to just make pictures and bring everything home on the camera, but the other day I had a problem. The camera's batteries were empty, and the camera shut down too fast. The result: an unusable memory card, with about 25 pictures that I haven't been able to recover.

Unfortunate, but at least it didn't happen after 100 pictures.

I took the lesson, and I copy the pictures I made till now to various computers in Holland as soon as I can.

Yesterday night we went out for dinner near the hotel, in a place called Taverne Omar.

We had lunch there Friday with Milan and Nadia. Then it was empty -- there were no other guests, but yesterday night it was completely full.

It's a real Bulgarian restaurant, and the waiters where dressed in traditional costumes. Joana had also recommended the place, and she was absolutely right to be enthousiastic about it. We had a wonderful evening!

We arrived at 20:15 o'clock, and we were at a table right at the center, near the stage. At 20:30 live music started. There were a man and women singing, and a band playing many types of songs: mostly Bulgarian, but also Serbian, Turkish, Gypsy etc. After a while a group women started dancing (xoro) on the Bulgarian music.

Later there was what's called in Bulgarian a "programm". This meant much more singing, more musicians and the best of all: a lot of dancers.

We really loved the Bulgarian dancers (they were from Plovdiv). Тhey performed Bulgarian, Turkish and Spanish dances, and they were very impressive; real professionals. And all this was right in front of us, while we were having rakia, shopska, more rakia and later a delicious meal with great Mavrud wine (Bulgarian, of course). Prosto chudesno!

We were back in the hotel after 01:00 o'clock.