Grapevine Four
Winter Edition 2010
by Martin Jeffes
Introduction by Barry and Margaret Williamson
Martin founded, built and managed the Sakar Hills campsite in SE Bulgaria, before recently handing it over to his son Matt and retiring to the south coast of England. Near to the campsite Bulgaria meets Greece and Turkey, making a rare European triple point, which for forty-five years was the southern end of the Iron Curtain. It remains a place where cultures, languages, religions, histories and much else meet; a place where a bicycle takes you through the three countries on a magnificent circular ride. We should know!
What follows are just a few of the many words Martin has written over the years, words that create their own landscapes, populated by people whose activities are captured with a wry humour. Here we are at the interface of Bulgarians, English ex-pats and a heterogenous bunch of worldwide campers and tourists. Complementing this rich mix is Martin’s fascination with Bulgaria’s origins, using his trusty Land Rover to trace the remnants of Thracian and Roman occupation.
The following collection of Martin’s writings over the years is one of seven.
The other six collections are:
Martin in Bulgaria and the Balkans
Martin in England
Martin in Australia
Martin in his Land Rovers
Grapevines One and Two
Grapevine Three
As well as many Photographs
Martin founded, built and managed the Sakar Hills campsite in SE Bulgaria, before recently handing it over to his son Matt and retiring to the south coast of England. Near to the campsite Bulgaria meets Greece and Turkey, making a rare European triple point, which for forty-five years was the southern end of the Iron Curtain. It remains a place where cultures, languages, religions, histories and much else meet; a place where a bicycle takes you through the three countries on a magnificent circular ride. We should know!
What follows are just a few of the many words Martin has written over the years, words that create their own landscapes, populated by people whose activities are captured with a wry humour. Here we are at the interface of Bulgarians, English ex-pats and a heterogenous bunch of worldwide campers and tourists. Complementing this rich mix is Martin’s fascination with Bulgaria’s origins, using his trusty Land Rover to trace the remnants of Thracian and Roman occupation.
The following collection of Martin’s writings over the years is one of seven.
The other six collections are:
Martin in Bulgaria and the Balkans
Martin in England
Martin in Australia
Martin in his Land Rovers
Grapevines One and Two
Grapevine Three
As well as many Photographs
Wintry Weather
Winter always seems to be a bit of a surprise in this neck of the woods. The change from the normal sunny and mild weather, that we enjoy here for most of the year, starts to take place in November, when the mornings and evenings get cooler, leading you to regard the arrival of the first snow in mid-December as the depth of winter. When the weather improves the following week, and you can again have lunch outdoors, you begin to believe that you have survived the worst of the winter. On Christmas Eve and Boxing Day the midday temperature reached 25 degrees Celsius. This is marvellous.
Then along comes mid-January and it snows again, but this time it snows non-stop for two days, with strong icy winds. The temperatures start to drop and the grim reality sets in that winter, rather than being nearly finished, is just starting. At 8 am one morning it was minus 15 degrees, by lunch time it had risen to plus 4, the hottest it had been that week, and then, as it approaches 5.30 pm and sunset, it has dropped to minus 5. We get very picturesque coatings of snow, which, because there is little air pollution hereabouts, stay clean.
Three wood-burning stoves, two oil-filled electric radiators, one calor gas fire and an electric blanket all play a major role in keeping Grapevine HQ and its incumbents warm around the clock. The ten tonne pile of logs, that looked more than enough in November, begins to look inadequate.
Soon, though, the weather changes for the better, and after mid-February we are enjoying daytime temperatures of over 20 degrees again, and glorious sunshine, which stay with us into March. Then, just when we’re all thinking about getting out the garden furniture, it gets cold again and snows for three days. But it can’t stay cold for long now, the days are lengthening, the clocks change soon, April is only a couple of weeks away, and then it will be spring. Another winter survived.
Muppetry on a Grand Scale
On Monday, 14th December, a message was flashed to the orbiting space-station communication centre of International Rescue, which is in a geo-stationary orbit somewhere on the M25. Unfortunately, due to the current economic crisis, the station was, at the time, unmanned, and the message was beamed down to their terrestrial base, which is in an office next door to Grapevine’s newsroom. At the time the entire Tracy family were out fruit-picking, window-cleaning and busking, to earn a few bob, and so, hearing the phone ringing, Matt answered the call.
On the line was the somewhat worried daughter of local entrepreneur Dodo. Now Dodo imports cars and caravans, both usual-ly past the first flush of youth, into Bulgaria. He and his trusted accomplice, Bobo, will fly to the UK, buy a couple of, usually, 4x4 vehicles and caravans, and drive them back to Bulgaria. This time, it seems Dodo was on his own in a vehicle, towing a caravan, when he broke down somewhere in Hungary. A call went out to his LSW, (long-suffering wife) to bring another vehi-cle from Hylabovo all the way to Hungary to rescue him. Probably much against her better judgement, she set off, accompanied by Dodo’s right-hand man, Bobo, and her young son, Sam.
She rendezvoused with Dodo successfully, and they all began the laborious process of trying to bring both the broken-down ve-hicle and the caravan back, towing each in turn a given distance. All went according to plan for a while, but then the towing vehicle also broke down, halfway between LSW, who was in Szeged, in Hungary, and Bobo, in Romania. LSW was left with the original vehicle which had broken down, and was parked near a shopping centre by the M5 motorway on the edge of Szeged, while Bobo, and LSW’s son, Sam, were in the caravan about twenty-five miles east of Dodo. Unfortunately, LSW had left her mobile phone in the vehicle she had driven up in, which was not the vehicle she now found herself in, so she had no way of com-municating with Dodo, or anyone else. And so she stayed for two days, sleeping in the car at night, loitering around the warm shops during the day.
Bobo and Sam, meanwhile were settling down in the caravan, which had no heating, but, it being just before Christmas, Dodo had filled the caravan with a large consignment of packets of mince pies and chocolate advent calendars, plus a quantity of old clothes destined for the orphanage in Bulgaria. Picture then, if you will, how it would have looked to any Romanian passers-by who happened to look in through the caravan windows, and seen the pair dressed in many layers of old woolly clothing, eating mince pies and chocolate advent calendars.
Dodo had rung Dereck, a neighbor of his on Sunday night, outlin-ing their collective plight, and, as Dereck thought, telling him that Bobo and Sam were in the border town of Silistra, on the Romanian side of the river Danube. Dereck set out that night to pick them up. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his passport, a fact that was brought to his attention when he reached the border. Back he went to his home, collected his passport, and returned to Silistra to cross into Romania. Imagine his surprise when he found out from Dodo that he hadn’t said Silistra, but Silistie, which was about two hundred and fifty miles away. By now it was mid-day Monday, and off he set in appalling weather to rescue Bobo and Sam.
We left Kolarovo at 1pm on that Monday, having stuffed the Land Rover full of spare fuel, tow-ropes, spades, food, water, etc. We had decided to go and find Dodo first near this place called Silistie, but in the night we had a call from Dereck, who said he was on his way towards Dodo, so we changed our plan, and set course for Szeged.
We ran into snow as soon as we entered Romania, and it got progressively worse. At times during the night we were forced to follow snow-ploughs to keep going. Soon after entering Romania we had got ourselves comprehensively lost, and ended up having to do a twenty mile, off-road, journey along a very muddy track across farmland, which was shown on our map as a road. This is not altogether unusual for Romania. Here we parted company with one of our mud-flaps, but gained a lot of mud, snow and ice in exchange.
We got to Szeged at 7 am on Tuesday, took LSW’s vehicle in tow on an A-frame, and started back. As we neared the town of Arad we learned that Dereck had picked up Dodo and was on his way back to the caravan, was a couple of hours ahead of us, and was going to take it in tow. It didn’t seem sensible for them to hang around for us, especially as the conditions were still very bad, so we said we would make our own way back, but would follow their route in case they had any problems.
Their route back was from Arad across to Sibiu, and then down to Pitestie, where they could access the motorway to Bucharest, and thence down to Giurgiu. Now, that route is not good on a nice, summer’s day, with a lot of traffic, and is somewhat worse in a blizzard. Suffice to say, we crawled along for mile after mile, and the prospect of an early return to the warmth of my hearth faded further and further as the day wore on. As we approached Bucharest we were a little surprised to learn from Dereck that they were now behind us, and had stopped to sort out a problem with the lights on the caravan. We wished them well and pressed on.
The snow petered out as we neared the Danube, which raised our spirits a bit, and we finally crossed into Bulgaria at about mid-night at Ruse, only to find that it was raining there, and that the rain was freezing onto anything it made contact with. In no time at all the whole exterior of the car was coated with a thick layer of ice. Luckily most of the road had been salted, so we were able to make fair progress, except for one time when we took a wrong turn, and having realized our mistake, attempted to turn round on a filling-station forecourt, which had not been salted, resulting in the towed car trying to overtake the towing vehicle.
When we got within about 50 miles of home at about 4 am, we ran into thick fog, which prevailed for the rest of the journey. We arrived back at Kolarovo at 5 am, having covered 1300 miles in 39 hours, nearly all of it in dreadful weather, half of it with a vehicle in tow, tired, cold and hungry, but with a promise from LSW that she would not attempt or undertake any future rescue missions, if asked.
Business News
Sakar Hills Camping closed its doors at the end of November and does not re-open until the beginning of April, mainly because the weather is still cold and the ground very wet.
This did not, however, deter a very determined lady from Germany, who decided we wanted her to stay, so parked on the grass verge outside the campsite and promptly got her campervan stuck.
Christine Steil was her name, and such a nice person was she that we felt obliged to offer to let her park her vehicle, called Rosi, on the drive at Grapevine HQ. She stayed from Monday to Friday in the first week of March and then moved on, first to Sofia, then to tour around Bulgaria.
Ivanprom, producers of the Chateau Kolarovo range of fine wines, with headquarters and operating facility in the old yoghurt-dairy opposite Grapevine HQ, have taken delivery of just over twenty thousand empty wine bottles, which the highly-skilled and dedicated staff are busy filling, day by day. Sales so far amount to one hundred and eighty bottles to a restaurant in Sofia, and four bottles to the editor of a certain small occasional newsletter. Nineteen thousand eight hundred and sixteen to go. Hey-ho.
Storks, the First Sign of Spring
By the end of February most people have had enough of winter and are looking forward to the arrival of spring, and, in this part of the world, there is nothing that confirms the return of the warm weather better than the return of the storks. These huge birds live on the tops of power pylons and in church towers, and it is considered lucky if a pair set up home in your village.
So, on the first of March it is the custom to give and receive red and white plaited cotton bracelets, which the recipient must wear on their wrist, only removing them when they first sight a stork. The words ’Chestit Baba Marta’ which roughly translates as ’Happy March, Granny’, accompany this little ceremony. The storks usually arrive before the end of March and spend a week or two looking for suitable nest-sites.
The little bracelet must then be tied to a fruit tree in one’s garden to guarantee a good crop from the tree. As the weather in the first half of March can be pretty bad, this little custom helps to remind one that spring is only a few days away.
AND on the subject of storks and grannies, one of these beautiful birds is going to be making a long-haul flight to the UK, arriving in Crowborough in mid-June, to bring a baby sister for our granddaughter, Sophie. The editor-in-chief has redoubled her knitting efforts and booked her flight to the UK.
Making Bulgarian Brandy
Every Autumn you will encounter, on the byways of Bulgaria, old family saloon cars pulling trailers loaded with blue plastic barrels and firewood. These are on their way to their local distillery: nearly every village has one. Rakia is the name for this local product and, last December, Grapevine went with Mayor Stefka to the local distillery in the neighbouring village of Balgarin.
In November we had, thanks to Hayden, the New Zealander advising one of the vineries in Kolarovo on the finer points of winemaking, been able to make about forty litres of red wine with some crushed grapes that were surplus to requirements; all we had to do was buy some sugar. Stefka had a similar amount, made from the rubbish left over after making one hundred litres of merlot. This rubbish, stalks and grapeskins, is the normal basis of rakia production. Water and sugar are added and then fermented for about twenty days. The whole lot, wine and rubbish, are then used in the distilling process.
We arrived at the distillery at about 9.30 on the first Sunday in December, and had to set about unloading the wine and wood. The still itself consists of a four-foot cubic concrete structure, into which is set a container for heating the liquid, with a wood-fired furnace underneath and a steel door on the front. Rising from the back of the concrete structure is a copper pipe of about ten inches in diameter, acting as a funnel for the steam. From this funnel the steam passes, via a smaller diameter pipe, through a cooling coil inside a large circular tank of cold water. From the bottom of this tank the finished product emerges from a small diameter copper pipe.
Once everything is underway, you leave it all in the hands of what passes for the on-site expert, who adjusts valves, taps and the fire as he sees fit. There is then an interlude of some four hours, where one just hangs around trying to look interested. Luckily for us this interlude ended when another customer, using a different still (there are four on the premises), began to barbecue some pork spare ribs. Logs were pressed into service as stools, a small table materialized, as did some red wine and paper cups, and suddenly everything looked much better.
By keeping the temperature of the still below the boiling point of water, what comes out is nearly pure alcohol; when our rakia began to trickle out of a small copper pipe soon after lunch, it was found to be just over eighty per cent proof, by hydrometer test. We ended up with eight litres each, which, when later watered down to forty per cent proof, gave me sixteen litres, into which I added some wood chips called ‘chips of Madeira’, which turned the clear liquid to the colour of whisky and gave it a vaguely similar taste. When taken with yet more water and some ice, it makes a passable substitute, which at about one pound sterling per litre has provided the writer with more than one warm glow most evenings this winter.
A Book for Winter
Anyone who is feeling fed up with winter, or is just feeling a bit down in the dumps, could do worse than read ‘Endurance’ by Alfred Lansing, which vividly portrays the setbacks and misfortunes that beset the expedition to the Antartic, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, in 1914.
When the wind is rattling the windows and the snow is piling up outside, you really feel that you are there with them, but you do get to appreciate how comfortable your own existence is compared to that of the twenty-eight men who spent one polar winter trapped in their ship, and a second stuck on a small, rocky island, living under an upturned lifeboat. Suddenly life will seem better.
Rolling Home
Towards the end of last year a couple of Dutch campervans got stuck on an area of newly seeded grass at Sakar Hills Camping. We decided not to try to clear up the mess they made until the spring, to avoid making even more mess. It also became apparent that what we needed, not only to help the clear up but also for normal ground maintenance, was a roller.
Now, because not too many Bulgarians have taken to the idea of creating pretty gardens, rollers are something you don’t come across too often out here. Imagine our excitement then, when, out for a walk one day in the snow in January, we found an old stone roller sitting on a concrete plinth by a well in a field. It was about five feet long and about two foot in diameter, and had steel shafts set in with lead at each end.
Having decided it was as close to what we needed as we were likely to get, the mayor of the village, Stefka, was asked if there would be any problem in giving it a new home: she didn’t seem to think there would, especially if she didn’t see it being moved.
So, once the decision had been made to move it came the problem of how. Clearly, it was a job that would have to be carried out by Land Rover, but should we try to pull it or lift it. In the end it was decided to lift it, mainly because it was in the middle of a field, which was at the bottom of a sloping, grassy track of some two hundred yards from the road.
Scaffold poles extending out of the back of the ex-military trailer, with lorry ratchet-straps on their ends, acted as two cranes, and were just able to lift the thing. All went well until we tried to go up the grassy lane, when the green Land Rover got stuck and refused to go further, so Matt was dispatched to get the black one and, with one tied to the other, we managed to get the roller back to Grapevine HQ.
On inspection, it would seem quite likely that our roller started out life as a Greek or Roman column from maybe two thousand years ago. There are very few remains from those times in Bulgaria, and perhaps one of the reasons is that the components have been pressed into service for building walls for houses and making agricultural equipment.
Click: GrapeVine One and Two
Click: GrapeVine Three
Winter always seems to be a bit of a surprise in this neck of the woods. The change from the normal sunny and mild weather, that we enjoy here for most of the year, starts to take place in November, when the mornings and evenings get cooler, leading you to regard the arrival of the first snow in mid-December as the depth of winter. When the weather improves the following week, and you can again have lunch outdoors, you begin to believe that you have survived the worst of the winter. On Christmas Eve and Boxing Day the midday temperature reached 25 degrees Celsius. This is marvellous.
Then along comes mid-January and it snows again, but this time it snows non-stop for two days, with strong icy winds. The temperatures start to drop and the grim reality sets in that winter, rather than being nearly finished, is just starting. At 8 am one morning it was minus 15 degrees, by lunch time it had risen to plus 4, the hottest it had been that week, and then, as it approaches 5.30 pm and sunset, it has dropped to minus 5. We get very picturesque coatings of snow, which, because there is little air pollution hereabouts, stay clean.
Three wood-burning stoves, two oil-filled electric radiators, one calor gas fire and an electric blanket all play a major role in keeping Grapevine HQ and its incumbents warm around the clock. The ten tonne pile of logs, that looked more than enough in November, begins to look inadequate.
Soon, though, the weather changes for the better, and after mid-February we are enjoying daytime temperatures of over 20 degrees again, and glorious sunshine, which stay with us into March. Then, just when we’re all thinking about getting out the garden furniture, it gets cold again and snows for three days. But it can’t stay cold for long now, the days are lengthening, the clocks change soon, April is only a couple of weeks away, and then it will be spring. Another winter survived.
Muppetry on a Grand Scale
On Monday, 14th December, a message was flashed to the orbiting space-station communication centre of International Rescue, which is in a geo-stationary orbit somewhere on the M25. Unfortunately, due to the current economic crisis, the station was, at the time, unmanned, and the message was beamed down to their terrestrial base, which is in an office next door to Grapevine’s newsroom. At the time the entire Tracy family were out fruit-picking, window-cleaning and busking, to earn a few bob, and so, hearing the phone ringing, Matt answered the call.
On the line was the somewhat worried daughter of local entrepreneur Dodo. Now Dodo imports cars and caravans, both usual-ly past the first flush of youth, into Bulgaria. He and his trusted accomplice, Bobo, will fly to the UK, buy a couple of, usually, 4x4 vehicles and caravans, and drive them back to Bulgaria. This time, it seems Dodo was on his own in a vehicle, towing a caravan, when he broke down somewhere in Hungary. A call went out to his LSW, (long-suffering wife) to bring another vehi-cle from Hylabovo all the way to Hungary to rescue him. Probably much against her better judgement, she set off, accompanied by Dodo’s right-hand man, Bobo, and her young son, Sam.
She rendezvoused with Dodo successfully, and they all began the laborious process of trying to bring both the broken-down ve-hicle and the caravan back, towing each in turn a given distance. All went according to plan for a while, but then the towing vehicle also broke down, halfway between LSW, who was in Szeged, in Hungary, and Bobo, in Romania. LSW was left with the original vehicle which had broken down, and was parked near a shopping centre by the M5 motorway on the edge of Szeged, while Bobo, and LSW’s son, Sam, were in the caravan about twenty-five miles east of Dodo. Unfortunately, LSW had left her mobile phone in the vehicle she had driven up in, which was not the vehicle she now found herself in, so she had no way of com-municating with Dodo, or anyone else. And so she stayed for two days, sleeping in the car at night, loitering around the warm shops during the day.
Bobo and Sam, meanwhile were settling down in the caravan, which had no heating, but, it being just before Christmas, Dodo had filled the caravan with a large consignment of packets of mince pies and chocolate advent calendars, plus a quantity of old clothes destined for the orphanage in Bulgaria. Picture then, if you will, how it would have looked to any Romanian passers-by who happened to look in through the caravan windows, and seen the pair dressed in many layers of old woolly clothing, eating mince pies and chocolate advent calendars.
Dodo had rung Dereck, a neighbor of his on Sunday night, outlin-ing their collective plight, and, as Dereck thought, telling him that Bobo and Sam were in the border town of Silistra, on the Romanian side of the river Danube. Dereck set out that night to pick them up. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his passport, a fact that was brought to his attention when he reached the border. Back he went to his home, collected his passport, and returned to Silistra to cross into Romania. Imagine his surprise when he found out from Dodo that he hadn’t said Silistra, but Silistie, which was about two hundred and fifty miles away. By now it was mid-day Monday, and off he set in appalling weather to rescue Bobo and Sam.
We left Kolarovo at 1pm on that Monday, having stuffed the Land Rover full of spare fuel, tow-ropes, spades, food, water, etc. We had decided to go and find Dodo first near this place called Silistie, but in the night we had a call from Dereck, who said he was on his way towards Dodo, so we changed our plan, and set course for Szeged.
We ran into snow as soon as we entered Romania, and it got progressively worse. At times during the night we were forced to follow snow-ploughs to keep going. Soon after entering Romania we had got ourselves comprehensively lost, and ended up having to do a twenty mile, off-road, journey along a very muddy track across farmland, which was shown on our map as a road. This is not altogether unusual for Romania. Here we parted company with one of our mud-flaps, but gained a lot of mud, snow and ice in exchange.
We got to Szeged at 7 am on Tuesday, took LSW’s vehicle in tow on an A-frame, and started back. As we neared the town of Arad we learned that Dereck had picked up Dodo and was on his way back to the caravan, was a couple of hours ahead of us, and was going to take it in tow. It didn’t seem sensible for them to hang around for us, especially as the conditions were still very bad, so we said we would make our own way back, but would follow their route in case they had any problems.
Their route back was from Arad across to Sibiu, and then down to Pitestie, where they could access the motorway to Bucharest, and thence down to Giurgiu. Now, that route is not good on a nice, summer’s day, with a lot of traffic, and is somewhat worse in a blizzard. Suffice to say, we crawled along for mile after mile, and the prospect of an early return to the warmth of my hearth faded further and further as the day wore on. As we approached Bucharest we were a little surprised to learn from Dereck that they were now behind us, and had stopped to sort out a problem with the lights on the caravan. We wished them well and pressed on.
The snow petered out as we neared the Danube, which raised our spirits a bit, and we finally crossed into Bulgaria at about mid-night at Ruse, only to find that it was raining there, and that the rain was freezing onto anything it made contact with. In no time at all the whole exterior of the car was coated with a thick layer of ice. Luckily most of the road had been salted, so we were able to make fair progress, except for one time when we took a wrong turn, and having realized our mistake, attempted to turn round on a filling-station forecourt, which had not been salted, resulting in the towed car trying to overtake the towing vehicle.
When we got within about 50 miles of home at about 4 am, we ran into thick fog, which prevailed for the rest of the journey. We arrived back at Kolarovo at 5 am, having covered 1300 miles in 39 hours, nearly all of it in dreadful weather, half of it with a vehicle in tow, tired, cold and hungry, but with a promise from LSW that she would not attempt or undertake any future rescue missions, if asked.
Business News
Sakar Hills Camping closed its doors at the end of November and does not re-open until the beginning of April, mainly because the weather is still cold and the ground very wet.
This did not, however, deter a very determined lady from Germany, who decided we wanted her to stay, so parked on the grass verge outside the campsite and promptly got her campervan stuck.
Christine Steil was her name, and such a nice person was she that we felt obliged to offer to let her park her vehicle, called Rosi, on the drive at Grapevine HQ. She stayed from Monday to Friday in the first week of March and then moved on, first to Sofia, then to tour around Bulgaria.
Ivanprom, producers of the Chateau Kolarovo range of fine wines, with headquarters and operating facility in the old yoghurt-dairy opposite Grapevine HQ, have taken delivery of just over twenty thousand empty wine bottles, which the highly-skilled and dedicated staff are busy filling, day by day. Sales so far amount to one hundred and eighty bottles to a restaurant in Sofia, and four bottles to the editor of a certain small occasional newsletter. Nineteen thousand eight hundred and sixteen to go. Hey-ho.
Storks, the First Sign of Spring
By the end of February most people have had enough of winter and are looking forward to the arrival of spring, and, in this part of the world, there is nothing that confirms the return of the warm weather better than the return of the storks. These huge birds live on the tops of power pylons and in church towers, and it is considered lucky if a pair set up home in your village.
So, on the first of March it is the custom to give and receive red and white plaited cotton bracelets, which the recipient must wear on their wrist, only removing them when they first sight a stork. The words ’Chestit Baba Marta’ which roughly translates as ’Happy March, Granny’, accompany this little ceremony. The storks usually arrive before the end of March and spend a week or two looking for suitable nest-sites.
The little bracelet must then be tied to a fruit tree in one’s garden to guarantee a good crop from the tree. As the weather in the first half of March can be pretty bad, this little custom helps to remind one that spring is only a few days away.
AND on the subject of storks and grannies, one of these beautiful birds is going to be making a long-haul flight to the UK, arriving in Crowborough in mid-June, to bring a baby sister for our granddaughter, Sophie. The editor-in-chief has redoubled her knitting efforts and booked her flight to the UK.
Making Bulgarian Brandy
Every Autumn you will encounter, on the byways of Bulgaria, old family saloon cars pulling trailers loaded with blue plastic barrels and firewood. These are on their way to their local distillery: nearly every village has one. Rakia is the name for this local product and, last December, Grapevine went with Mayor Stefka to the local distillery in the neighbouring village of Balgarin.
In November we had, thanks to Hayden, the New Zealander advising one of the vineries in Kolarovo on the finer points of winemaking, been able to make about forty litres of red wine with some crushed grapes that were surplus to requirements; all we had to do was buy some sugar. Stefka had a similar amount, made from the rubbish left over after making one hundred litres of merlot. This rubbish, stalks and grapeskins, is the normal basis of rakia production. Water and sugar are added and then fermented for about twenty days. The whole lot, wine and rubbish, are then used in the distilling process.
We arrived at the distillery at about 9.30 on the first Sunday in December, and had to set about unloading the wine and wood. The still itself consists of a four-foot cubic concrete structure, into which is set a container for heating the liquid, with a wood-fired furnace underneath and a steel door on the front. Rising from the back of the concrete structure is a copper pipe of about ten inches in diameter, acting as a funnel for the steam. From this funnel the steam passes, via a smaller diameter pipe, through a cooling coil inside a large circular tank of cold water. From the bottom of this tank the finished product emerges from a small diameter copper pipe.
Once everything is underway, you leave it all in the hands of what passes for the on-site expert, who adjusts valves, taps and the fire as he sees fit. There is then an interlude of some four hours, where one just hangs around trying to look interested. Luckily for us this interlude ended when another customer, using a different still (there are four on the premises), began to barbecue some pork spare ribs. Logs were pressed into service as stools, a small table materialized, as did some red wine and paper cups, and suddenly everything looked much better.
By keeping the temperature of the still below the boiling point of water, what comes out is nearly pure alcohol; when our rakia began to trickle out of a small copper pipe soon after lunch, it was found to be just over eighty per cent proof, by hydrometer test. We ended up with eight litres each, which, when later watered down to forty per cent proof, gave me sixteen litres, into which I added some wood chips called ‘chips of Madeira’, which turned the clear liquid to the colour of whisky and gave it a vaguely similar taste. When taken with yet more water and some ice, it makes a passable substitute, which at about one pound sterling per litre has provided the writer with more than one warm glow most evenings this winter.
A Book for Winter
Anyone who is feeling fed up with winter, or is just feeling a bit down in the dumps, could do worse than read ‘Endurance’ by Alfred Lansing, which vividly portrays the setbacks and misfortunes that beset the expedition to the Antartic, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, in 1914.
When the wind is rattling the windows and the snow is piling up outside, you really feel that you are there with them, but you do get to appreciate how comfortable your own existence is compared to that of the twenty-eight men who spent one polar winter trapped in their ship, and a second stuck on a small, rocky island, living under an upturned lifeboat. Suddenly life will seem better.
Rolling Home
Towards the end of last year a couple of Dutch campervans got stuck on an area of newly seeded grass at Sakar Hills Camping. We decided not to try to clear up the mess they made until the spring, to avoid making even more mess. It also became apparent that what we needed, not only to help the clear up but also for normal ground maintenance, was a roller.
Now, because not too many Bulgarians have taken to the idea of creating pretty gardens, rollers are something you don’t come across too often out here. Imagine our excitement then, when, out for a walk one day in the snow in January, we found an old stone roller sitting on a concrete plinth by a well in a field. It was about five feet long and about two foot in diameter, and had steel shafts set in with lead at each end.
Having decided it was as close to what we needed as we were likely to get, the mayor of the village, Stefka, was asked if there would be any problem in giving it a new home: she didn’t seem to think there would, especially if she didn’t see it being moved.
So, once the decision had been made to move it came the problem of how. Clearly, it was a job that would have to be carried out by Land Rover, but should we try to pull it or lift it. In the end it was decided to lift it, mainly because it was in the middle of a field, which was at the bottom of a sloping, grassy track of some two hundred yards from the road.
Scaffold poles extending out of the back of the ex-military trailer, with lorry ratchet-straps on their ends, acted as two cranes, and were just able to lift the thing. All went well until we tried to go up the grassy lane, when the green Land Rover got stuck and refused to go further, so Matt was dispatched to get the black one and, with one tied to the other, we managed to get the roller back to Grapevine HQ.
On inspection, it would seem quite likely that our roller started out life as a Greek or Roman column from maybe two thousand years ago. There are very few remains from those times in Bulgaria, and perhaps one of the reasons is that the components have been pressed into service for building walls for houses and making agricultural equipment.
Click: GrapeVine One and Two
Click: GrapeVine Three