Варна nu-i Каварна

Note to the reader: we are not going to talk about Варна, nor (technically speaking) about Каварна. In fact, we're not gonna talk about Варна at all, we're gonna keep her out of it!

So in short, this September began with a trip to the Bulgarian seaside, where I plunged into the salty waters belonging to ye olde Black Sea and let myself taken away by the waves for a while there. One living in southern Romania usually chooses Bulgaria for such trips because, for one, the golden sands or whatever are close enough to the Bukreșian shithole; and for the other, because the Bulgarian littoral is much cheaper than the Romanian one, despite the difficulty in finding sand to lie on, most of Bulgaria's sea opening consisting of tall rocky cliffs.

Thus most of this post will consist of sea shots, like this one:

or this one:

or these other ones:

Well, there's also a castle tower in this last one, so as to not bore the reader. Also to keep the reader scrolling -- I heard that's the new cool business nowadays, bringing tons of those benjies in the purse, keeping folks swipin' on their smartpnojes -- I present to you some sky shots, now also with birds!

Above: a nighttime shot of the sea and the sky, because I can. Below: a map of Dobrogea, including its southern part -- known among Romanian-speaking folks as the Cadrilater, nowadays part of northern Bulgaria -- lying on the ceiling of a restaurant in Balchik. The map's likely pre-1900, judging by the script denoting Bucharest and other towns; then there's other weirds, such as a "Giurgiz" at the north of Bucharest; and a "Csernavoda" at the south of Russe¹; and then Mangalia, Murfatlar, Cobadin and Tuzla all seem to be correctly depicted; heck, even that old one is on the map, yet nobody seemed to give a fuck about Constanța at the time? Well!

I was joking back on the road to Kavarna that I'ma retake the Cadrilater back, but joke or no joke, it seems that everyone in Balchik already speaks Romanian -- owing, no doubt, to the main attraction there, the royal castle belonging to Ferdinand and his Maria. As far as I can tell, the woman had taste: just look at that tower in the photo above, and, say:

Above: a tortoise, after being disturbed by yours truly, had the good manners (or perhaps it was only the curiosity?) to take its head out and pose for a photo. Below: an old man with a gray hair in the shape of a(n even older) lion, opens its mossy mouth and, similarly, poses.

The statuette above is just amazed of something. Below, I'm going to further bore you with a set of flower shots. What would be a Tarpitian photopost without a set of flower shots? It wouldn't be a proper Tarpitian photopost, I tells ya.

... in which I discover that my stock camera lens can take decent macro shots if properly whipped. Below, a garden:

Above: a plaque with some dude's name on it. Y'know, it occurs to me from the mediocre hotel service that the main difference between Bulgarians and Romanians is that the former are at least trying to be helpful, while the latter are just fucked in the hea... wait, haven't we heard that before? Numerous times, I've stopped counting.

Anyway, no other difference between the two peoples other than the language. Thus I've used this trip as yet another occasion to expose myself to Kiril's writing, which means that by now I should at least be able to read Stan's Russian quotes a tad faster. No one said anything about understanding them, though.

Below: Dobrogea, be it the Romanian or the Bulgarian one, is full of these.

This is where I stop and ask the dear reader to switch their attention back to photos "-03" and "-05", y'know, "these other ones" in the beach photosession. The beach isn't the star of our photos there, you see, it's Cap Caliacra -- also shown in the map at "-10"; you are keeping track of this, are you not? So here's a bunch of pieces from the other side:

So since we were at the cape, we went at the famous Dalboka mussel farm, where I initially said I'd have some pork and ended up having some decent and quite cheap mussels. Definitely worth trying, though if you're going to go there during the colder seasons, I'm warning you that the road to the farm turns into a steep slope at some point, so you might want to go there with a proper car.

We conclude this story with a very neat photo of Dalbokian shores, taken with the girl's phone. From what I see, they manage to pack pretty good cameras on these pnojes nowadays, yes-yes, with Sony sensors, I expect. What's surprising is that they manage to fit decent lenses in that small space, which... well, still no match for a DSLR yet, but who knows.