The Balkan Express to Istanbul

You know, I was really looking forward to taking the overnight train to Istanbul. A sleeper car just seemed so romantic. The reality is that it is small, really small. The entire footprint of the room was as big as a twin bed. No joke. And into this space you cram all your luggage, selves and a sink, ladder and some shelves. So we were really happy to be in one. Especially after we waited on the platform for two hours in the freezing cold with one old man and some friendly Bulgarian skinheads to keep us company.

So the room feels like a submarine in the top of a swaying tree. Just as soon as you fall asleep there is a loud knock on your door. "Passport control!" You have to get up and show documents. Then about 15 minutes later you exit the train and show documents, pay visa fees and get your stamp. It was actually all worth it though because we got to Istanbul in the end.

Istanbul, Constantinople, Alexandria

This city is so old it defies your ability to picture it. Fortunately, it is jampacked with ancient sites so you don't have to.

We are staying in Taksim square, the heart of Istanbul. At any time of day or night there are hundreds of thousands of people walking around, maybe millions. It is an extremely accesible city, easy to walk, and plenty of reliable trams, buses and taxis.

We walked down the main boulevard of Taksim, through the sea of bobbing heads. Like Times Square on new years eve, squared. At the bottom of the hill we trammed to the Archeological museum, crowded tram.

The archeological museum was just, well huge, amazing, overwhelming... cuneiform, and every possible other artifact imaginable from all over the ancient world. Crazy.

We saw Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, walked over the sea of Marmara, climbed the Galata Tower, and went through the Spice Bazar. The Spice Bazar was intense, without a doubt the most crowded place I have ever been in. Like Chicago night club fire crowded. Man I love it here.

The place we are staying is called Planet Paprika, named after the musician Shantel's song of the same title. Give it a youtube.

Planet Paprika is great. Made even better by the terrific owner Serhat. What a great guy, another instant friend.

Anyway there is no real way to describe this city with words or pictures. It is just so huge and great. Tiny little streets packed with people and shops of all kinds. Lots of different kinds of people. Amazing buildings. Turkish delights and great food. Coffee!

I don't know, but I would have to say that along with cities like New York, and well Portland of course, Istanbul is not to be missed. [Editor's Note: It is the single most amazing city ever built... Paris included (gasp!)].

We have only a few days here and I am sure we will return someday.

Much love to all back home and abroad.

Moylanism, its happening.

Bulgarian Boar Blastin' and a Wedding to Boot

So okay,

I admit I'm really no hunter. Not morally opposed, just not yet in the bag of tricks. So when the men of the village invited me along on a boar hunt, I just couldn't say no. Literally, 'cause they had shotguns. So here's what you need to know about the fine art of the Bulgarian boar hunt. First, arm yourself with a powerful weapon. The preferred is a 12 gauge single or double barrel shotgun. Next, gather the troops. About 20 or so should do. Now explain the plan of action in a language so foreign to you it might as well be dolphin squeaks. Quickly check to make sure no one is wearing any bright colors... all camo all the time. Now split up into groups of about 3 or 4. Release the hounds!

Now as quietly as possible march through the woods for 10 or 12 miles. Your guide looks like John Turturo from "O brother where art thou?" A bit chilly? Nyama problem, burn plastic! Hungry? Spokoyno, eat a loaf of white bread. Tired of all this? March home... it's only a short 10 mile hike through unmarked forest. Well, had we caught the boar, the one and only in the entire vast wasteland of forest, it might have been fun.

We did not catch the boar. Still, it was an... experience.

Wedding time!

So here in Bulgaria the weddings all begin as soon as the weather turns. Too much work to be done in the summer you see. So come October, ding dong the bells are gonna ring. More like a drum and clarinet band is gonna blast insanely loud music for hours. Then a DJ and his assistant drummer will blast even louder music for many more hours. Hey get out of your seat and dance the whatever dance it is that they do. In a line, for hours. Wow! that really worked up an appetite. Well that's good because... go ahead tell him what he's won! A dish of cabbage salad and a few olives. Wait there's more: some kind of meat patty, with ketchup! Way.

Then the beautiful bride comes over to you and you give her money. Yeah, quite an experience. To be honest though the dance was pretty easy.

Well we have shoved off from Kruschevo and said goodbye to our terrific hosts and all the great guys at the shop. Smiley and Smiley Jr., Cowman, Big Ears, Ahkmet, Ismail, Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy, wait...what? Anyhow a load of guys who had become my strictest confidantes. It's amazing how easy it is to tell someone all your troubles when they can't understand you and don't care. Really though, I'll miss 'em.

Plovdiv is cool, and rainy and wet. But our flat is sweet, almost so sweet that I added an extra e to make it sweeet. It is on the top floor, no elevator = not sweet, with 3 balconies! Now if we could just stop that rain. We are able to gaze upon old town with mosques and Roman amphitheatres and the good old golden arches of Mickey D's.

The bus depot tested out each of the 10 words I know in Bulgarian. Almost everyone was sort of nice. The information woman sounded exactly like Natasha from Bulwinkle. And one wretched ticket woman was just that, wretched and foul.

The cops were nice.

Anyway yeah, made it to Plovdiv. The home of Vivian the Plovdivian amphibian. Tomorrow we set out for Istanbul on a sleeper car at about 9 pm after we see some of the sights of this Balkan wonderland.

Naz drave', doz vidane, and audi 5000 G!

[Editor's note: thanks to all for their condolences and much love to Sarah, Torrey and mom who are holding down the fort. We are with you in spirit... as always, C]

Early Winter?

Well the locals here in Kruschevo said it would be an early, cold and hard winter.

So it didn't take long for them to be proven correct.

The fog and rain and cold has set in, complete with the earliest frost in many years here. Thankfully, it seems to be our luck that along with the cold weather we have been blessed with a gift of many bags of clothing donated to our hosts. Much of which is children's sweaters and hats, scarves, long sleeved shirts, and general winter clothes of all kinds. Wow, serendipitous.

We are still able to work a bit as the rain is very close to our hearts. It is often just like a good old Portland drizzle, with bits of hard rain thrown in for fun. One glaring difference is the lack of paved roads here, which makes the foot travel about town a combination of mudhole and nugget stomp. We have affectionately named it, "crappy poo mud" and there seems to be no shortage of it here.

As we work or "raboti" here, the peaceful drip drip of the rain is mixed with the occasional clucks and mutters from the chickens and ducks. Somewhere off in the distance, a donkey will bray his annoyance at the cold. The constant buzz of chainsaws mixes with the thock thock of the men chopping wood. At a frenzied pace now as winter seems to have arrived.

The few days last week of nice weather were spent chopping wood for next winter. A huge truck was supposed to deliver about 3 cords of wood, precut into convenient 4 foot lengths to the house. Too bad for us it got stuck 600 yards from its final destination. Some men were hired with chainsaws to cut the heavy lengths into managable blocks, which we then had the pleasure of chopping into cordwood. We all worked hard to make the bigger pieces smaller. This we accomplished with a splitting maul and a handy Bulgarian axe and about 50 man hours of chopping. Hello Ibuprofen.

Over the last few thousand years of chopping wood, the Bulgarians have developed a really clever way of chopping wood. Brut force. No really, they do have a clever trick that I had never seen before. They seat the axe firmly in a round of wood. Usually a 12" long by 12 to 18" diameter piece. Then the axe with block attached is lifted clear above shoulder height. At the very top of the swing when the block and axe become weightless for a split second, the whole assembly is turned upside down. Now the axe should be under the round. Gravity then takes over and the whole bunch comes down upon the chopping block. If done correctly, this usually splits the round right in half.

After practicing this move, I could only admire its efficiency. Then I slightly altered the move by golf swinging the axe directly into the immense wood heap, plucking directly with the axe a chosen piece. Then came the flip, which we have named the "Bulgarian Backswing." And then the slam down on the chopping block to split the wood. This proved extremely effective, and I John Henryed through quite a heap in record time.

The caravan buildings roof is our next pressing priority because the rain threatens the humidity of the interior. The roof framing is complete and about 1/2 is covered in lampier. Lampier is our equivalent of sheathing, or 1x. This comes rough cut directly from the mill in varying widths. Lengths are 12' standard for lampier and 2x, however longer lengths are available. Unfortunately, most are pond dried [editor's note: wet] and deceptively heavy.

It is hard to believe our hour is almost up here in Bulgaria... almost to us is about 2 weeks as time seems to have a distorted quality to it. The days blend continuously with no apparent weekend. I was actually surprised when I said it was Friday, only to be corrected by my young son who proudly stated that it was in fact Tuesday. So I lost 4 days... did it really matter what day it was? No. Not really.

However, that rule only applies once you are settled in. During the travel times you need eyes like a hawk and reflexes like a cat. Not to mention a vocabulary like C-3PO. Travel mode is intense ready for action mode. Like a front line soldier... well that's a bit much, but you do need to be on your toes.

We have cemented our travel plans, at least the getting to Turkey and then Morocco portions. Leaving here on the 27th of October for Plovdiv and then onward east to the ancient city of Istanbul, sprawling across two continents. A village near the southern Turkey town of Bodrum for a month by the sea, another few days in Istanbul and then Marrakech [via London!] by December 6th.

I am sure the next few weeks will bring more lovely company, food, and satisfying work.

And yes, I will tell you all about it.

Thanks for sticking with us!

Bulgarian Birthday

Well I know how they say, "Happy Birthday" in Katroo...

Here in Bulgaria it's a bit different. Listen up Portland kiddos, you have to give presents to everyone! And you don't really get presents. Well, we decided on a compromise. We handed out some sweet wafers to anyone who was around the shop and also got Isaiah a couple cool things.

We spent the morning working, which is coming along nicely. The roof framing has been a good exercise of my carpentry: hips and valleys, dormer and trying to match different pitch roofs. Using a really nice hand saw.

Later in the afternoon, we took a trip to the Thracian Sanctuary, a short drive from Kruschevo. This is a very old area worshiped for thousands of years. The rock that looks like an old man scowling out into space is here. We also found hundreds of shards of pottery. Most likely from old jars and containers holding offerings to the various gods and goddesses worshiped in this part of the world over the centuries. The view from high up on the rocks was great: big valleys and mountains, forests, wait... sound familiar. Still the redundant beauty never gets boring.

There were many giant boulderlike formations... great for scrambling, (yo dad!) With a surrounding forest of lodgepole pines, or the Bulgarian equivalent.

We left here and changed clothes for an evening in Gotse Delchev. That's him with the boys there in the square. Really communist looking statue huh? He's tryin' to hail a taxi. We bopped around for a few hours in the old part of the city before taking Iz out for a nice birthday dinner at Uva Nestum, new grape, I think. They brought out a cake with a candle and we all sang happy birthday with the aid of guitarist guy Nicolai Udremoff. He is a friend of our hosts and a recording artist here in Gotse. He played a few tunes, Elvis, and some American rock: The Beatles.

Anyway Iz-man had a great birthday, phew 9!

The weather out here took a cooler attitude about the last day of September and has been threatening coolness at night quite regularly now. The days are still beautiful, seemingly an endless stream of mountainy summer. However it does not take a meteorologist to tell fall is here as it is cooler daily. Sorry Matt Zafino.

The cooler weather has brought incredibly clear skies at night, and the stars are really bright. Not a lot of light pollution out here.

Cadence has proved to be a hell of an assistant here, always ready with a pencil, tape measure, level, sunglasses, whatever, as I suffer from that age old carpenter's syndrome of spending the whole day looking for my pencil. "Hey anybody seen my level?", "Where's mah coffee?" So sad but so true. A good assistant is invaluable to a forgetful woodsmith. And she really is a great helper, even if she is now addicted to Betty Neels romance novels. No joke. She's read like 20 at least and going strong. Seriously. [Editor's note: read one before you pass judgment. They are excellent!]

The boys have made Roman shields and swords, with a little help, and stage imaginary battles set in Thermopylae or Marathon or here. They are busy learning history, geometry, language, art, and the fine art of defending yourself against dreaded Bulgarian vampires, which is really not that hard.

We finally went for a trip to the natural hot springs here. They were naturally hot. A big pool and two smaller ones. It was relaxing to be able to swim around in the mineral water and we stayed for a few hours.

The quad bike photos are from a little fair that came to Gotse Delchev in late September. I am sure the boys had fun racing around but I know for a fact that I loved it! Man I could totally go for one of those. Even though it was like 2 miles an hour it was still fun.

As we crank out our final month in Bulgaria, our thoughts are begining to turn to Plovdiv, the Orient Express and Istanbul. By the way, a big thank you to my friend Cheri for putting me in contact with so many great people in Istanbul and Turkey. What a help!

We plan ahead a bit but not so much as to miss our time here.

We have still four weeks or so here and look forward to it. Such a beautiful place.

Much love to our families and friends, we have not forgotten you...yet!

Autumn in Ottoman paradise

Well here we are two weeks into our Bulgarian experience. Here are a few things I have learned so far:
1. They make their own moonshine here, a distilled form of wine, called rakya. This is immensely powerful, enough to blind.

2. If you have too much rakya, more than two glasses, they will carry you home.

3. It is impossible to refuse something offered to you, (especially rakya)- really it seems to be the only thing that angers them.

You see where this is going.

The forest is sacred to Bulgarians, and of the forest, one tree in particular is most sacred. I don't know the name of this tree but it is beautiful and used in fine carpentry. Near to us is a valley famous for hot springs. Resort spas have built huge swimming/soaking pools here and charge a modest price, 6 lev I think, for a day use. We have not been yet but it is on the menu.

I have been able to work as a carpenter out here, and although masonry was real fun, it is nice to work with wood again. Hey Jerry, real 2x4's! We did a bit of work in a town called Leshten on a British family's getaway home. And hoo boy, you're really getting away from it out here, all of it, everything. Leshten is a bit different from Kruschevo in that it is mostly getaway homes. It is very beautiful and also high up in a mountain valley. However it lacks the true grit lived-in feel of our little rocky rutted gem. A bit too much plastic and chrome feeling.

The house we were fixing up had been taken over by a seriously aggressive fungus. Like a Star Trek episode, or Doctor Who for you Brits. It was our job to insulate the subfloor and install in-floor heating under a slab to be poured, and finally finished off with natural stone or tile. Both boys got to help do this and were very good, adept natural foremen. At one point, I caught them leaning on shovels and drinking sodas quite importantly. I was so proud.

On the road to Leshten you pass a gypsy camp, oops that's a bad word out here, instead they prefer to be called Romas. This camp has no name outside of the Roma and is not on any map. The Bulgarians don't really like them I think. Anyway, they have improved the camp and it is starting to look like a little town, pretty run down, but a few brick buildings. The road through here leads up to a tourist attraction past the town of Leshten. We haven't seen it but it is supposed to be a traditional old Bulgarian village, and I hear its nice. So the government decided that they would build a new road so the tourists would not see the Roma town. This road is yet to be finished, so you drive through the Roma town and wave and smile. And sometimes if you're lucky they throw rocks at you, which is Roma for "Hello and Welcome". Most times though, you just drive through and realize how incredibly lucky (and wealthy) you are.

The house we are staying in at the top of the village is also a storehouse for 30,000 books. A bit of scavenging around turns up gem after gem. I have already read "Dilbert, Journey to Cubeville" and a Rolling Stones songbook, while Cade has busied herself with as much Danielle Steele as she can get her hands on. (Editor's note: Cade only read one Danielle Steele book and that was during a night of insomnia. Most other times she reads extremely intellectual tomes, like 'So You Want to Be a Shaman', etc.) (Writer's note: Mike also reads intellectual books, such as James Glieks 'Chaos').

Summer is passing into fall out here and the nights grow cooler each day. The days are still warm and sunny. We have a wood burning stove in our room so we stay toasty at night. There is plenty of work to do before the rains of winter begin towards the middle of November, so we will keep busy.

We did have a cold rainy day last week. Luckily we were outside at a fair in Dospat. Diego and I went on a swingy ride and we had hotdogs and kebabs. It was fun but everyone was a bit cold so we didn't stay too long.

Well that's it for now. You keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Naz'drave!

The mountains of Mordor

Well the photos got a bit jumbled, so just in case yer confused a bit, the beach ones are not Bulgaria. We spent a few terrific days and nights on the Kassandra penninsula at the beach town of Posidi. This is on the northern fingers of Greece. Totally sweet. Plus we had two Engish speaking Greeks, one from Fourka just up the road from Posidi, as our tour guides. Posidi is named for...anyone, anyone, that's right Posidon. There is an ancient ruin of a sanctuary of Posidon right near the beach. Honestly, there are ancient ruins everywhere in Greece. You could literally drop a shovel with your eyes closed and find some ruin.

We were introduced to an old family friend named Paraskevas, which means Friday, who is a sculptor. Not only did he build his own house from limestone but has a huge gallery in his basement filled with sculptures big and small. About 200 or so. He is also an expert on this particular areas ancient history and took us to the site of the very old town of Mendes. There was a old established olive grove growing here, and under this was the town of Mendes... dating back to the 8th century BC. Here we found pottery shards scattered all around and a few tombs that had been raided ages ago. There is no official archeological dig here so we got to play Indiana Jones a bit, totally cool.

Another highlight was swimming to sea caves. Our friends took us to a small beach surrounded on both sides by large cliffs. On this day, the sea was a bit large and wavy. I went with our two friends on about a 1/4 mile swim in deep water, about 10 meters, or 30 feet. After a bit of wave swimming we came to these small openings in the cliff. A bit of timing and good swimming skills were needed to navigate the openings in the crashing surf. Once inside the caves, the sun shone down from holes in the cliffs above and lit up the floor of the sea far below. So too much. We stayed here a short while before heading back to the little beach. At this point I realized not only was I up against the formidable surf but also a fair current, in the wrong direction. I am glad I had been swimming in the pool at the gym all last year. At one point about 1/2 way through I thought to myself, " Take it easy, breathe, and please, don't let me spot any sunken treasure right now." Obviously I made it, but I was spent. Swimming in the sea is not always easy. Needless to say the boys missed that one.

We had a nice campfire on the beach to say goodbye and it was all buses and trains the next day to Bulgaria.


We arrived in the early evening to Krushevo. This town is set at 3200 feet in the Bulgarian mountains just northwest of Gotse Delchev. It is also set in the year 1300. Horse drawn carts, donkeys, cows living in the house, chickens and dogs all over the place, and stone houses and roads. Our house is a 4 bedroom traditional home with a first floor that was historically reserved for livestock. This is set on the top of the town with a beautiful view of the mountains of Mordor. (Take a look at a map from the Lord of the Rings... England is the Shire and Bulgaria is Mordor.)

We also have a lovely view of the newly painted mosque as this is a muslim town. Not radical just normal... you know we drink beers, smoke and eat bacon. No raising pigs, but sausage? Hell yes.


Traditional Bulgarian costume is worn by the elder ladies and some younger ones too, especially on holidays. A sort of pantaloon and headscarf usually with a homemade sweater. There are many children ages 5-15 and also every age all the way up to 90 or so. There is not one sort of type to the look of everyone; there are blue eyed blondes as well as hazel eyes and brown and red hair. I guess when your country is invaded for 5000 years, people tend to leave their mark. Some of the men are short, round faced and as wide as they are tall, while others are almost gaunt. The locals are very kind and welcoming to us. Also they really like to stare and get right in your face. Not mean, just curious. And no English whatsoever, alhtough I have found a couple that speak Spanish.


The other day marked the end of Ramadan here and a large party was thrown in town. This involved a variation on trick-or-treating for the kids in the morning and then much greeting, singing, dancing and drinking later in the day. In the afternoon, I went from our house to the local water spout when five stern Bulgarian locals gestured me to sit near them. Refusal is not an option... made more difficult because the head shake for no here means yes. So I sat and smiled and said Barack Obama, to which they all began smiling and patting me on the back. Then they dragged me to a local bar and began to buy rounds of beers and local spirits. What I learned is that if they see you with a empty or near empty beer, there will be a near fight to see who can buy you another one. I barely made it out alive.

We know about 10 words in Bulgarian so far, although you can get by on 3. Molya=please, no, sure, whatever, yes. Naz'drave=cheers. And spek'oyno=everythings cool, take it easy.


The place we are working at has four buildings on it, all of green construction of some type. The main house is a straw bale round house. This is a completed living area. There is a caravan being built into a small house structure, a large barn under construction, and a completed chicken coop/tool shed/greenhouse.

There is plenty of work to keep us busy here for awhile. The weather is beautiful; the days are warm and the nights are cool, and our hosts are lovely. It really is a little piece of heaven out here.

So check in soon for more exciting forest adventures in Bulgaria, and thanks for tuning in!

Naz'drave!

Two Nights in Thessaloniki

Our gracious friends offered us a couple nights and some touring of one of Mediterranean Europe's oldest cities, and we said yes! Saturday we said goodbye to Mesohori and Peliti. We boarded a train to Thessaloniki, only to realize half way through we had mistakenly sat in first class. Oops! As no one checked our tickets or asked us to move, this did not prove to be problematic.

The boys and I enjoyed beverages in the dining car, and before too long we arrived at the train depot in central Thessaloniki. From here we took the number 3 bus to Aristotle Plaza, the old city center right on the Med. We stopped at a small bar to wait a short while and people watched. No shortage of that here.

Soon we arrived at the home of our friend Vasillis in the neighborhood of Kalamaria. This is some distance from the center of the city in what used to be an old fishing village 50 years ago. Now it is quite built up with all manner of shops and apartments everywhere. The first floor apartment is spacious and our hosts, native Greek speakers with no English, were more than hospitable.

We feasted our first evening on traditional moussaka and Greek meatballs. We then headed out to catch a late movie on the beach: Inception. Then on to gyros at a local late night spot. All this within walking distance.

The next day brought breakfast sweets, Greek coffee and a tour of Thessaloniki from a native resident. Starting at the archeological museum, which was incredible, we walked our way to the old Byzantine section of the city. Now alive with shops of all kinds, and still preserving the ancient ruins. We saw several churches old and new, and stopped in a very lively sidewalk cafe for refreshments.

After a bit of time resting, we continued down the waterfront to the White Tower. A relic of the Ottoman Empire. Further along we saw many statues, the most impressive was the one of Alexander the Great and Bucephalus. We continued walking on the waterfront quite a bit more before we threw in the white towel and rode the rest of the way in a bus.

We were treated to a delicious dinner of grilled sea bass and Greek salad back at home. We went to bed early because we were so tired after a long day of sightseeing.

A bit of a whirlwind trip.

Thessaloniki has much to see and offer. It is a busy city too, with always something going on. We liked it a lot. It is clean, well laid out and has frequent cheap buses. Good nightlife, shopping... basically everything you could ask for from a big city with the added bonus of the beautiful Med right there. Check it out sometime, and if you please, say hello to Katarina and Nicos! Efkharisto poli!

Up next: Possidi, Helkadiki beach, and off to Bulgaria!