Drove past some big lakes on the way to Plovdiv. At Plovdiv we decided to park somewhere and walk or taxi into the city. Somehow we fluked parking just a few block from the centre without actually having any idea where we were.
The main pedestrian street didn't look as nice as when I was there before. And the old town wasn't exactly run over with tourists but there were t-shirt shops every where and the ancient amphitheatre is now roped off with a fee to enter, cafe in front, American pop music blaring, music school now has a bar - no seats for non-drinkers. Whereas before we sat among the students drinking outside, beautifully peaceful; the only sound being the sound of a clarinetist practising wafting down from the music school - but now even in the student coffee shop there is nothing but doof doof music. Commercialism gone crazy. Horrible! I think they think that this is what being westernised means. And having been repressed for so long they now want to do what they couldn't do before. But they don't realise that by commercialising like this (or certainly westernising a basically eastern/ancient tourist attraction), they just turn westerners off (or they should be turned off).
Certainly it's getting to the stage that if you put someone down in any of the more well-known old cities of the world it might take a while to work out which country you are in as backpacker signs in English and Irish pubs aren't much of an indication of where you are.
This is the Bulgarian style of house of the rivivalist period. Looks like a lot or merchants got rich and they decided to build themselves some nice houses. And even back then they realised that this style of house looks pretty good. The entire old city is like this.
There's no doubt that the old town does look pretty good. But I had been there before so wasn't so surprised as when I went there the first time. Back then it was just a random stop by train so I was pretty amazed to find all this.
I suppose I should have taken a photo of the amphitheatre but I probably didn't want to give them the impression that it was worth photographing any more.
Certainly there are travelers like me who like to find new places with character that are untouched by commercialism. But what it means is - they are able to travel so these travelers must have a certain amount of wealth, yet they object to someone else making use of the resources available (something that will attract tourists) to make money for themselves. Seems mean... but what I object to is how these things lose their flavour. It needs to be planned commercialism to stop a few people making a quick buck but destroying things for the future. And this has certainly happened at the amphitheatre.
GPS got us back to the car via another street and direction completely than the one we'd left in. I think we were all rather surprised to see it.
In Kazanlak no answer from my Esperantist. Went in search of the house of the other.
Some woman in the street asked what we were looking for and the next thing you know she started knocking on doors for us and wandering into people's living rooms.
Still no luck but we did eventually find his house. Bit hard to get close with the dog in the front yard. And it was getting pretty late. Might have to go in search of the Esperantist priest in the morning.
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