The Panini Diaries no. 10
All the way to the TOP (and the bottom) - A.K.A “The Poonini Diaries”, as named by Nick
As promised, another to follow the last. It has been made clear that I am to be playing catch-up, and I am listening.
The following post details the adventures that occurred in Bulgaria and Greece. The highest (physically) and lowest (spiritually) that took place as my European travels continued. Enjoy :)
I have made it to Bulgaria! Sofia to be exact. A land where the local language is as unfamiliar as the densely furnished mountains we flew over. At least in the mountains, a conversation where one party remains silent, their energy to be read and interpreted as you will, is completely normal. In this city, I am a tree, communicating mostly with a series of simple movements of the limbs and leaves - that ice cream please; the popcorn, but the bigger tub, bigger again. How do you mime: “I just dropped my large popcorn and mnms on the floor next to the mall McDonalds, so I would like another, please…”?
I took myself on the most chaotic and subjectively unsuccessful trip to the movies. I really wanted to see Inside Out 2, but unfortunately, and perhaps expectedly, they only show animations in Bulgarian (you know, so the kids can understand them… and the big, travelling, English speaking kids cannot). Now I am sitting in a park as the sun casts an ever-growing shadow of the mountains toward night, genuinely shocked that the day hasn’t gotten to me. If you had given me a box of chocolate and popcorn yesterday, only for me to drop it on the steps of Piazza Maggiore and proceed to sweep it up with my hands as I crawled around the grubby floor on all 4s with the help of no one but a small Bulgarian child with terror-sparked second-hand embarrassment in his eyes as I repeatedly told him it was fine - well I probably would’ve cracked it. But today I have the mountains on my mind, and there is nothing that could bring me down from that high!
Yoan, my Free Walking Tour guide, spoke of Sofia as a very liveable city, and I must agree. There is hardly a street to walk down that isn’t dusted with a light summer sprinkle of green leaves and pollen from above. Nor a flowerlessly decorated palace, theatre or museum in sight. Surely this a liveable city proves. I am beginning to believe, however naive it might be, that you can tell by how many blooms sit on windowsills, where people have the affordability to have their priorities lie. For a city with a history has troubled and tumoltuous as they come, there sure are a lot of green thumbs.
This city is pretty drastically different to home. I like when I meet people that have come through another side, stronger and happier, eventually. This city is no different.
Truth be told, I didn’t spend very much time in Sofia before I headed towards the Rila Mountains with my friend, Daisy (yes, I know it’s confusing. There is more than one of us around…) We spent 3 days tracking our treads across wildflower meadows, over rocky peaks and through “mystical pine forests”1. It really was magical.
After the second day, I found myself sat down, buttcheeks melting on the sizzling hot balcony (with absolutely no energy to seek a new perch), justifiably defeated. After yesterday’s practice 19-turned-22km hike up to the 7 Rila Lakes, we felt pretty confident that our lack of directional abilities and incompetence at map reading would be cured by the morning. With a can-do attitude that births miracles, Daisy and I committed to the “Challenging Option” of the Day 2 hikes from Malyovitsa Hut up to the Green Ridge. We had 8 ours to complete a hike of 24km up 2200m and back down again, with the prewarning that it would take 8 hours at a good pace with no breaks. No room for error.
7 3/4 hours and a lunch break later, we had completed the loop. I guess you could call us Turbo Hikers - never to be underestimated on the trails.
Although the comforts of our shared hotel room are many - the unevenly-sized beds of the “twin” room, the water pressure that could clean even the most muddy of feet and massage your soul in the process, a place to leave all our excess as we ventured to discover new heights - it could be heard at many a point of today, “I could stay up here forever”. “I would hibernate in that little wild-flower cranny”, “I don’t need a bed or meals, I’d survive on soft grass and soul food just fine up here”. These were the sentiments that were sent down into deep valleys, across high ridges, to the next traveller to pass through the same wind. For the bottom of the lakes to keep like secrets as they watched us carry on, up and over.
I don’t think we were too far off base. Up at the top of the mountains, higher than all the rest of the world, there are views that must extend all the way to North Macedonia and huge boulders that glow green and stones that glitter as if made of pure silver. Mountain jewels that catch the light, like a disco ball exploded and spread its energy; the collected energy of all the souls that danced beneath it, over the entire range. It makes you want to dance, too, with a feeling of freedom; a knowledge that no one, nothing, can get you up there2. Just let the melodies of the birdsong and the river-flow move you body. Dance because no one is watching you. Arms spread, collecting the Big Beauty that surrounds you, it makes all the uphill slopes in the world seem easy. The rocky paths, the huge boulders, the slippery sliding upwards; the slow3 journey to the top - it is all worth it!4
Mount Musala, the highest mountain in the Balkan Range, was conquered5 on our final morning in Bulgaria, before we boarded an excessively long bus to Greece. A ferry and another bus, and we made it to our very Greek apartment in Andros, but all I had on my mind was a full body immersion…
Unfortunately, Greece wasn’t exactly the carefree beach adventure I had imagined. I will save you the gory details and say instead that the sun taught me her lesson. There I was, believing our love affair to be unwavering and endless, only to be burned, blindsided, betrayed worse than I have ever been before. I played her game of chicken and I got burned, Kentucky style.
As Mia (who I suppose can always find a silver lining) said: “At least you have a funny poo story now!” Maybe I’ll laugh about it one day, too.
I was only thanking my stars that I had my dear friend, The Ocean, nearby, to soothe my soaring temperature and wash me clean with each wave.
Salt rusting my joints solid and crusting my hair in crinkle-cut, I finally felt relaxed. While the wind blew a gale through blue window shutters and ruffled purple flowers that line cobbled steps etched with numberless hopscotch, I found solace up on the roof. Even up here, where very few would know otherwise, the white glows under the afternoon sun. Broken only by blue - the blue sky, and all the embellishments that have caught its glory like a flu. The railing, the domes of the church next door and the lone chair that cohabitates this space with me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can fill it with whomever I desire; a soul to match the song in my ears. ‘Sun Always in my Eyes’ plays and there is Mads, smiling down at me. I sit and listen to ‘Shark Smile’ with Estee and ‘Alesis’ with Emma.6
The blue paint of the chair peels away, revealing underneath a deeper blue, stained with brown. Tinged rusty. Memories of a life that has seen more salt and sun than I. The same salt and sun that will wear away at the newer layer for another lifetime, while I sit with the people I miss. Let them collect the specks of paint before I hide them away in the film canisters lining the shelves of my brain, trapping the memories away from the light. Protect them from the inevitable fade of time, the peeling that comes with a lifetime of sun and sea; a lifetime for the fun and the free; oh lifetimes, don’t run from me.
And if you must, dust me with little bits of sky, cracked and fallen from above. Let them wedge themselves in the weaves of my nicest white skirts, my neighbours silver hair, the pages of a decades old journal, revisited. Blues to remind me of the memories you can only make out when you old them up, one last time, to the light.
As always, with more highest of highs and more “it doesn’t get much lower than this” and more sunscreen and water! and more missing new friendships and more rediscovering old ones and more healing oceans and perhaps no more gyros for a little while… and of course many more panini, there will be much more to come…7
This is how our map described it. Despite the fact that it lacked some key directions every now and again, the map makers had made great use of a thesaurus in their translations.
This didn’t age well… the sun can get you up there.
Turbo*
I know this part is a bit off base. Just roll with it, I was genuinely delirious from exhaustion when I wrote it. I think it’s kinda cute how hard I committed to the metaphor…
I genuinely dragged myself to the top at some points. So. Steep. So. Pooped.
Upon reflection, this may well have been dehydration-triggered-hallucination. It was lovely all the same.
This is officially the first Diary written by phone - you’ll have to forgive over the summer any typos, as well as the caption-less photos. I know, I’m very sad about this too. I had some really good ones for these pics, too.