Shoestring Soul Searching #8: Bulgaria

Next stop on the “Trying Not to Sweat to Death in Summer” tour, Bulgaria! Specifically the lovely ski town of Bansko, nestled at the foot of the Pirin and Rila mountain ranges. I didn’t know much about Bulgaria before coming, so I didn’t realize how much of the country is crisscrossed by mountains. In fact, the Balkans are called the Balkans because they’re named after the Balkan Mountains…which are also in Bulgaria. Lots of mountains. I’m not complaining.

Tiff says I’m at a summer camp for adults. She’s making fun of me because I’ve been here living my best life while she was doing a hardcore 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand. I accept her calm, meditative ridicule and well, I didn’t go to camp as a kid so I’m making up for lost time. With that said, let me put anything important aside for a minute and regale you with what I’ve been doing at Camp Bansko.

#1: Physical recreation

This place is wilderness heaven. Naturally I had to go climb a mountain. At this point, I’ve been on so many it’s barely even worth talking about. But this one does deserve mention for an intense and fun ridge hike at the top. There’s a cliff to your left, a cliff to your right, and a rocky ledge half a meter wide to walk on with a steel cable to hold onto.

#2: Character building

Below the mountains, there’s a section of the stream dedicated for cold plunges. This particular one was ice cold and I lasted all of a minute before scrambling out.

Why do it? Cold plunging is alleged to have a range of health benefits, as any wellness influencer on TikTok for the last two years will tell you (or any Scandinavian for the last 3,000 years). For me, the benefit is mostly mental. Exposing your bare self to freezing water is suffering enough, everything else life throws at you feels less daunting by comparison. After a while one even learns to enjoy it. I went through a lot in that one minute:

• 00:00-00:03: I plunge in and feel like I’m going to die.

• 00:03-00:25: I didn’t die, but this is awful. I wonder aloud why the universe hates me. I decide to hate the universe in return.

• 00:25-00:35: I begin to understand the universe has no opinion of me. It does what it does. Fire burns. Water flows. That’s what they do and they continue to do them if I step in.

• 00:35-00:45: I no longer hate the universe. I accept what I’m feeling as the way things are.

• 00:45-01:00: This is the first time I’ve been completely present with my reality in a while. That’s a good thing!

#3: Arts & crafts hour

At a friend’s suggestion, I sought out an opportunity where I would be working with my hands. This took the form of a pottery wheel session.

My ceramic turned out better than I expected. The paint job on the outside got messed up and now it looks like an orange peel but whatever, I wasn’t coming into this aiming for perfection. More importantly, I enjoyed the process of making this and it’s something I’d like to do again. I just hope my mom is ready to accept all the bowls I’ll be sending her way. And no, I did not recreate that scene from Ghost. Why would you even ask me that, I’m a serious craftsman.

Thanks Camp Bansko for letting me explore and grow. Now back to reality, sort of.

The fly and the window

With the mild weather here, I’ve been keeping my balcony door wide open. Every day at least one fly wanders in, drawn in by my food or my fragrant musk, who knows. But I have a really big window and this presents a problem for the fly when it’s time to leave.

The door’s right there but the fly repeatedly bashes itself against the window, not understanding why it can’t get out. It buzzes around the room agonizing over what to do, then tries the window and is blocked again. I’ve even tried to help a few times but it turns out it’s hard to get a fly to go where you want it to. Usually I find it dead on my windowsill the next morning, the door only ten inches to the left.

This struck a chord with me. Many of us have felt stuck in some form or another. Like there’s a better life awaiting us around the corner but for some reason we can’t ever seem to get there. Maybe we didn’t try hard enough, and we just need to do better next time. But what if instead of bashing ourselves against the window our whole lives, we should be looking for the door ten inches to the left?

See you next time,

Bryan