Travel: Forest Utopia in Bulgarian mountain-village.
Forest Utopia
A place where all that matters in our daily life do not matter. A place where your living off-grid skills are worth than your skill writing a blog. It's a place where you create your own time, where you think of how to stash and collect, protect, save and have, and keep enough food and water.
In my life I have been to several places where my eyes couldn't believe that they see, my heart was overwhelmed and my mind exploded and lost my breath or my inner child wanted to jump, scream from joy and smile and be so happy! Why? Because those are those places where you feel like you are in unreal paradise on Earth, a place you only thought exists in a movie or a dream, or in another galaxy on planet 2 or 25, but not here, in this reality.
Just the whole journey to get to and find this place was an adventure. One of the most beautiful rides I have experienced, or I might say about every travel I have been to, even going from Stockholm to Umeå I thought everything was beautiful. Anyway. Bulgarian mountains seriously surprised me. I have been so clueless how beautiful is this country. The countryside... I could see myself living there, except... Not sure if I could handle the lack of sea horizon for long in mountains.
On Airbnb, it is called FOREST UTOPIA. The owner himself is utopic (in my language it means AMAZING) and high intellectual individualist. A lot to talk about learning new and discussing topics we share an interest in the world. I won't go in details telling his story, but one fact is that he has spent enormous time, energy and support to build this place as it is now. "There you saw a yellow car on the turning, and down the road is the town centre", when he said it, we both and his friend looked at each other with a smile not knowing can we just make a joke on how TINY is this "TOWN"? Then his friend said it, and we blasted out into laughter... The host knew it too, he realized what he said, but he used the right English description, which was supposed to be funny describe for 3 house town :)
As a host he reminded myself, either I spend time with my guests/visitors or give them space to enjoy...He asked if we are on a romantic adventure and want to be alone, we both looked at each other and a bit laughed that no, we enjoy meeting people in places like this if we were then maybe would have gone somewhere else. Of course, could come here and have a romantic escape, but not for one night trip. We really clicked with both guys living here that I even wasn't sure if it's okay if WE get into their lives and have all meals together.
OH, the cooking! We did get to try some typical Bulgarian cooked meals (pardon me, I'm not gonna name). I loved the paprica with feta cheese inside it and ajvar on a slice of bread. Homemade not bought in a shop. I am another lover of cheese, but keeping my diet off milk&eggs was really difficult in Bulgaria, so, I was more vegetarian than vegan. (Sorry, judges) But as I knew all these un-vegan products will kick my system later, I did try to have less as much as I could. (Yes, as we returned I spent one extra week on low energy. My milk&egg allergy kicked me badly). But, oh, that ajvar was so, so, so, so... AMAZING!
In this place I felt time really didn't exist, yet the last minutes before leaving were just coming so fast... and we were thinking what if we could stay another night and try to go to airport all the way next day not half way... (we were making another stop in a different place, few hours closer to airport so that we would drive half way from where we were). Bad idea! No, we left, because this mountain drive can be unpredictable. And we were right. On the way back we slightly got lost or off the track, or I don't know what happened but we couldn't find the way out, and when we realized we were on the right way but somehow it didn't feel... we thought, ok, the mountain spirits are playing with us and wants us to stay here! Typical Latvian thinking.
How can one leave a place like this? It's difficult. I hope I will return to there and stay a bit longer than 2 days! That feeling you are in a dream and in memories of childhood is attracting me a lot! It's a nice emotion to put in my baggage.
