We’re a week in, and Targovishte does not disappoint. The 5 of us are living together in a rather big flat, and after hearing stories of the others, we are quite lucky with our living conditions!

Our first day started at the museum, with the 11 volunteers here in Targovishte. It was a 10 minute walk for us, since we live in the city center and thus close by. We were introduced to the director of the museum and a few archeologists. Of course, everything needed to be translated, as the people here don’t or barely speak English. This was the job of our guide Rad, a 14 year old local boy, whose English, and apparently that of his friends, is incredible. He wasn’t really sure what he signed up for, but he did an amazing job. After all the introductions were done, they showed us around the small building. We would be working in the office part of the museum, and we had our own space upstairs. Not too big, and quite warm, we also got the option, if we wanted to, to work from home. Afterwards, we walked across the street to see the permanent and temporary exhibitions in the former school. In every classroom is a different exhibition of Bulgaria’s history, from a authentic classroom to the military.

When our tour was finished, Monika, one of our trainers in Sofia and our contact person here in Targovishte, gave us an assignment to go on a treasure hunt. We were divided in three teams, and had until dinner at 20:30 to finish our tasks. All the teams had different tasks, so that we could not cheat or follow each other. I was in a team with Kate and Wael, a guy from Tunisia, and we had decided to go home first for some lunch and some rest, to explore the city when the heat would turn down a little. So, we agreed to meet at 16:00 in the center. Since Kate and I share the flat, it was easy for us to communicate, but Wael lived quite a bit outside of the center, but close by the train station, where one of our tasks took place. We had to make a picture of the time table of the train to Varna. So in our minds, it was easiest for Wael to there, take said picture, and meet us in the center, since it would take us 30 minutes by foot to get there. But when Wael was on his way, Monika texted him to meet her at the police station to get him registered. Which meant we lost our teammate. But, with one man down, we were determined to get our assignment done the best we could. We went outside and headed in the direction of the city center, when I noticed a car with a Dutch license plate. I had seen some before here, and was actually surprised by it. But not letting this opportunity slip away, we quickly walked after the car, and luckily it stopped just outside our flat. I walked up to the people who were getting out of the car, and kinda awkwardly asked them if they were Dutch and if they could help us. The guy didn’t speak that much Dutch, his wife did a bit more, but was getting her kids, since they were fluent. Yay for us. We explained to the daughter what we were doing and if she could give us directions of where to go, when the dad offered to take us with his car. Not wanting to decline this, we stepped in the car, together with a random dude, and a 6 year old girl between us in the back seat. With the slightly different driving style than either of us was used to, they drove us, in hindsight, the completely wrong way. We passed by all our stops, which we noticed and told the guy to drop us off where we wanted, but instead he dropped us of on the other side of the center. Thanking him kindly, we started making our way back, and after asking some local teenagers (they do speak English) where to go, we found our first stop, the dolphins in the fountain in the middle of the center. Looking for some more teenagers to help us out, we found two girls, and asked them to take us to the next one, a big flower/grass monument with the motto of Targovishte. Expecting to just get the directions from them, they offered to lead us there instead. So, the four of us, again awkwardly, walked there and took a picture with all of us as prove. Not really knowing our next step, Kate and I opted for a cold drink and a new plan. Another one of our tasks was to get information about an local Olympian who won a silver medal in 10m woman air shooting. So we asked the girls in the cafe about it and they provided us with the right answer. We were not allowed to use our phone for anything, not for a map or to use the internet, but had to connect with the locals instead. And it obviously worked, they were really helpful and curious! Waiting for Wael in this little cafe, Kate took the challenge to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, and when Wael arrived, but without the picture of the time table, I saw Rad walking by and ran outside to grab him so he could help us out. He was meeting with his friends, but they were so kind to help us with the rest of our tasks. So without the time table, we had finished our assignment and could show all the pictures we made to our fellow volunteers at dinner.

Thursday was our first official day at work. We arrived at 10:00 at our office, but it was a bit of a chaos. They were not really prepared for the arrival of a few more volunteers, and there was not enough space upstairs, there was just one fan and the internet was not really working. After we had downloaded our file of the audiotour we are supposed to translate, Alissa and I decided to go back to my flat, since we are both Dutch and working together on this translation, it was easier to work from home for now. After we will finish the translation, we will record it in Dutch as well, so when some random Dutch tourists will visit Targovishte and the museum, you will hear our voices on your audio tour!

We had to gather at the museum again on Friday morning, for a tour in the archeological building. It was actually pretty big, with a lot of local artefacts and stories. We didn’t had that much time after though to get work done, because we had a train to catch to go to Varna for the weekend! So we headed home, got some groceries and packed our bags for our trip. Not all of us would go the whole weekend, but we were also meeting some other volunteers who are staying in Veliki Preslav, a town 20 minutes away by car. And I’m saying by car, because there is no direct train connection from Targovishte. So our Targovishte volunteers took the 30 minute walk to the train station and waited for half an hour for our train, which took us first to Shuman, where the others got in as well. We had two cabins to ourselves, and the difference between the excavators and the translators was pretty big. We had still some energy left, but the other guys had been up since 05:00, so they took their well deserved rest on the 2+ hour train ride. When we arrived in Varna, six of us, our household and Milo booked an Airbnb while the rest booked rooms in a hostel. So we split our ways for a little bit, and in our hostel we took a shower, and quietly decorated the house, for it was Milo her birthday the day before, and we surprised her with some balloons and a small birthday present. When everyone was done changing into their bathing suits, we made our way to the beach for some dinner and a late night swim. Most of the guys went out to the city for a small party, me and the girls went home for some sleep.

We packed our backs again in the morning and headed to the archeological museum of Varna, where we met the other guys as well. All of us traveled together to our next sleeping spot, a campsite just outside of the city. It took us a while to get on the right bus, but once we got on, we could finally relax a bit. The organisation of the reservations for the campsite went a bit hectic, for the six of us rented a caravan with an empty spot for a tent, and the other guys rented two set up tents and also an empty spot. We didn’t bring our own tent, for we were planning on sharing one with the other guys, but we did bring some mats and sleeping bags. It worked out fine for us in the end, the big bed in the caravan was big enough for three people and there was a single bed inside, a bed outside on the porch, and with our brought mats, we could sleep on the porch and in a hammock. Camping adventure for real. Once again, we changed into our bathing suits and climbed down to the beach. The waves were pretty big and intense, but actually quite fun. We had to be careful though, and once you were in the sea, there would be sand everywhere. We just chilled there for a few hours, and when it was getting dark, we made our way back up for a freezing cold shower and some more hanging out before bed.

I had quite a good night’s sleep, and Milo and I woke up before the others, so a perfect moment to sneakily take some sleeping pictures. After a slow breakfast, we were about to leave the campsite, when I took a last look at the sea, and saw a dude supping away, but beside him somewhere, I spotted a dolphin! I yelled at the guys to come over, but they didn’t really believe me, since it was not visible anymore. Thankfully after a few minutes, there appeared not just one, but quite a few above the water! Feeling really lucky to have seen them, we headed back to the city, to catch our train home. During our train ride, a rainstorm appeared and the train had to stop. We were not sure at first of what the problem was, but after a few minutes they informed us that the electricity had gone down. So we had to wait for the rain to pass and only after that they could fix the problem. Our cabin was filled with locals, who luckily spoke English, so the time passed by quickly. We took a bus home from the station, made some ‘tired’ dinner, and went to bed.

This morning, with work, we had a new project. It is just for this week, and five of us, met up at the museum at 08:00, and took the mini van up to the mountains. We got dropped off at the base of the mountain, and walked 30 minutes up hill towards an already finished excavation site. Our job this week is to spend a few hours a day cleaning the site, so that one of the volunteers, Juanvi, can make a drone video of the site. It was not a bad climb, but it was still 30 minutes up. There were some basilica’s from the 6th and 7th centuries, and there used to be a whole city in the mountains, and our final site, Missionis, contained the biggest church, together with some living quarters, one of them we are cleaning. It was a small workout, and also figuring out how the equipment worked, since it was pretty old school. We made friends with a lot of grasshoppers and some praying mantis, and around 11:15, we gathered our stuff and climbed down the mountain, back to the museum.

Pepa was here for a small meeting, to see how we are doing and how the work and flats are. Tomorrow we will have our first cultural night, where we will organise and make food from our own countries to share with the volunteers and some local people who are involved in our project. Bulgaria and Greece are up first!