Together with Rūta, I am in Veliki Preslav today, waiting for our board game to be printed. Not only have we been in a professional recording studio, we can now also check a photo studio of the list!

After our busy events, we had one more event on Friday morning. The museum we work for has many locations all over town, and they wanted to show us around one of the smaller ones, the former house of Nikola Simov. He was a relatively unknown guy until recently, but he was a revolutionary and the flag bearer for the Boteva regiment somewhere in the 1870’s. They remodelled his house in the way they think it used to be, since there is not much information about him and his life, they are not super sure, but they know about the time period he lived in, so that is how the house is decorated. Even though it was really warm, inside and out, it was fun and interesting to be there with the whole gang, and it gave Alissa and I more inspiration for our game that we are developing. The church was just around the corner, and also one of the places we wanted to include in our Scavenger History Hunt. Back in Sofia, we brainstormed about an interactive game, like a walking tour and escape room combined, and now we are making it into a pretty cool game. I’ll tell you more about it in a minute! After our little excursion, Ivanna and Rūta left for Veliki Preslav, to stay there and the next day, Rūta and Kate would leave for Bucharest for the weekend. Andrey, Kate and I were in the mood for pizza for dinner, so we went to this Greek place, where we ordered the biggest (53cm) pizza I’ve ever seen. With full stomachs, we went back home and watched the most amazing movie ever, Tenacious D’s – The Pick of Destiny. Epic classic.

Andrey and I had plans to go over to Veliki Preslav on Saturday, stay there for the night and join the other volunteers for a field trip on Sunday. Veliki Preslav is a small town 20km next to Targovishte, like a 25 minute taxi ride. But, thinking about saving a little money, Andrey suggested to go hitchhiking instead. Or, autostop as apparently every European calls it. So, we walked to the edge of town, and found our spot. Andrey was the one who was in charge, this was the first time hitchhiking for me, and he has done it many times. I guess we were really lucky, because after just a few minutes, after a few cars passed us by, there was a car that stopped for us. We explained where we wanted to go, and the guy told us he could drop us off like 5/6 kilometres further. Fine by us, we were willing to take any opportunity. We got in his car, and the guy asked us where we were from. No English of course, but Andrey managed quite well with his mix of Russian/Slavic knowledge. Turned out, our friend lives in Belgium, speaks a little bit of Dutch, but preferred French, since he lives in Brussels. The two of them had a whole conversation, and at one point I realised we had passed our 5km point. The guy liked us so much, he decided to instead of going straight home, to take us all the way to Veliki Preslav. Obviously we really appreciated it, and we just told him to drop us off at the edge of town. We texted Milo we had arrived, and she send us her address. It was just a 10 minute walk to their house, and we were welcomed by Milo and Maria, a Colombian girl, and they invited us to join them in painting some postcards. The other guys were hanging out at the swimming pool and would come back later. The four of us caught up, since a lot had happened of course. After everybody had returned and freshen up after the swimming pool, we went out for dinner. Just as we were about to leave the house, we noticed the most Dutch thing ever on one of the shelves, klompen! Also known as our wooden shoes of course, and I still don’t know how they ended up there. We walked around town to look for a restaurant which would have place for us, and afterwards some of us met up with some of the other volunteers for some drinks.

23 of us went on our field trip the next morning. It was quite a hassle to organise the trip, since we have this big group chat and information gets lost sometime. We make polls to vote who wants to come or not, and Wael, who came up with the idea in the first place, made a mistake. Earlier that week, we wanted to know for sure who was joining the trip, for we could order different size busses to take us, depending on the amount of people. The maximum amount was 24, and we had set a deadline for 21:00 on an evening for the votes. A little after 21:00, a few people hadn’t seen the messages and wanted to vote as well, so they could. Wael however, completely forget to vote, and then texted Andrey. Andrey did not open the message, but saw it in his notification feed and showed me. Wael kindly asked, if Andrey could tell me to cancel my vote and give my spot on the bus to him. Immediately after I read it, the text disappeared, deleted from the chat. We were so confused about the whole situation, but laughed our asses off anyways. It was just too random and such a Wael thing to do, but in the end it all turned out just fine and he got on the bus with us.

We met up around 08:00 to wait for the bus to take us on the 3 to 4 hour ride to the Buzludzha and Shipka monuments. It was quite a long drive, but there was plenty to see on the way. Once we arrived at the Buzludzha monument, we gathered to enjoy the view and to make some pictures. I didn’t know, but the bus driver could have taken us up the hill to the entrance of the monument. Instead, he just parked the bus in the shade, and we went on our way to climb the mountain towards the Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Granted, we have been climbing Missionis for a little while now, but this was still quite the climb. We were definitely rewarded with an amazing view of the valleys and mountains, and of course the monument. The inside is closed to the public, it is too dangerous to enter, so we just enjoyed the views on the outside.

It was just a small drive back through the mountains towards our second stop, the Shipka monument. Before we got back on the bus though, some of us had to do some personal business. Since there were not any toilets in sight at all, we went back to my scout roots and connected with nature. Which was a good thing, because when we arrived, once again, we were up for a long and exhausting climb. This time, it was this long set of staircases, so we could train some different muscles. Accompanied by some inspirational music, we made our way to the top, and some of us even climbed the monument itself as well. The ones who stayed behind, were just chilling in the sunny but windy weather, and when Milo came down, I held her to her promise of teaching us the most American thing out there, the line dance to Cotton Eyed Joe. All of the visitors were looking funny at us, naturally, but hey, we are a group of international volunteers, we’re just sharing our cultures!

When it was time to go down again, back to the bus, a few of the guys made it into a (dangerous) competition to see who would be fastest. Without any mayor injuries, we made it back safely to the bus and back home.

We more or less had the Monday off, or at least we could work remotely from anywhere we wanted to, since half of the Targovishte people were visiting Romania. I spend most of the day working on our Scavenger Hunt, and the next day I met with Alissa in the museum’s office, to continue. We had searched for our stops last week, and now we just needed to put them in the right order and finalise the questions. Alissa worked on the google document, and I put them in this app, Actionbound, so we could test it out for real. We would need to go on the walk to see what needs to be adjusted or improved, but it was too warm to outside.

Andrey and Kate would leave in the next morning, to continue the project in a different part of Bulgaria with some of the guys from Preslav, so the five of us went out for dinner as a little goodbye party. We said a see you later on Wednesday morning, and then it was just Ivanna, Rūta and me. It’s weird to have them out of the house, but we will see them again when we are back in Sofia at the end of this week! We wanted to meet up together this week before Sofia, but unfortunately it didn’t work out in the end.

The rest of the week, I helped Rūta out with designing the board for her board game. It is called Dig It, and is basically a history/archeologic board game. It turned out amazing, and what I find so funny, it is super ironic that I helped out/created not just one, but two games whilst in this project, because you know I actually hate playing games, like any in general. But, I did enjoy working on them, so maybe this is my new calling instead of playing them. They just finished the first ever round of Dig It, and are now evaluating it, they seem enthusiastic!

During the weekend, the three of us went back to Preslav, just to have a chill weekend with the guys who stayed behind. We had barbecues on Friday with the guys at the big house, and on Saturday, the mentor of the Spanish people invited us to come over to his house for another one. We had so much food, but we were in good company and a good time in general. On Sunday, as I was watching the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix, and saw all the jackets, sweaters and raincoats, I was longing to be there as well. Not only for the race, but actually mostly because of the wether. After 8 weeks of 30 plus degrees, I cannot wait for the cold and rain. Just a few days more, then I will be back!

When we returned on Sunday, we all needed do some work on the game design, but we also had Monday to work on it. But first, we had a small event Monday morning. We gathered at the museum, the people who were left in town, where we met with the museums staff and the mayor of Targovishte. He knew we had been here for the past few weeks, and wanted to meet us and say a few words. Some of the local girls were there as well to not just translate for us, but also to test out our Scavenger History Hunt! So when all the official ceremonies had finished, I explained the game to them. Alissa had already left, so it was up to me to receive the feedback and to adjust it later. It took the girls around 1,5 hours to complete the tour, and when they were back at the museum, they shared their thoughts and experiences. Overall, they were really enthusiastic, but of course had some feedback to give. Monika and Pepa also really liked the concept and how we achieved our final product. They didn’t really expect to have fully developed games at the end of our project, they thought to have ideas that they would develop in the coming year. Even better, we definitely made some progress! The local girls organised a small goodbye party, since some of are leaving in the coming days instead of joining us in Sofia. We went out for dinner at a traditional Bulgarian restaurant, and it was such a lovely gesture, even though we were not all there, it was a great way to end our time with everyone here.

Whilst we were waiting for the materials to be printed just a few hours ago, Pepa made me an offer to come back in December to Sofia as a long term volunteer. I don’t have all the information yet, but it is definitely something and at the same time a lot to think about, in my already fully packed and overthinking mind. It is nice to be feel appreciated and that they want me to return though. I have not made any decisions or promises yet, but we will see!