April 26, 2004
The Meadow and the Road
A bit more about our trip to Bulgaria.
We stopped for a picnic in a meadow by the Danube. By "meadow", I mean a lovely field of green grass, sloping gently down to the river. On our right was a cliff full of swallows nests, with a forest at the top. On our left, a grove of poplars and a little pond. And it was a beautiful day, warm but breezy, with a few fluffy white clouds wandering slowly across a perfectly blue sky, their shadows pacing them across the surface of the great river. A stork skimmed over the shallows and then, a few minutes later, back again, probably looking for frogs. An absolutely perfect setting...
... except for the sheep crap. Wow, was there a lot of sheep crap. We basically had to dance our way down to the water's edge and back. We never did unpack the picnic lunch.
But it was pretty.
There's a (surprisingly good) two-lane road from Ruse to Silistra, but it stays away from the river. So after a while, we turned left onto a smaller road that the map said would bring us right along the water's edge. Which it did; but the map didn't mention that it was mostly unpaved. It had been a dry week, so we were okay, but I wouldn't care to try it after rain.
Still, it was a very pleasant drive. A lovely day. The Romanian side of the Danube is flat and marshy, but the Bulgarian side has hills coming right down to the river, so the road wound gently up and down, presenting interesting new vistas at every turn. It passed through what I'd call second-growth forest -- I'm not sure if that term is meaningful here in Europe -- broken by pastures, vineyards and the occasional sleepy village. There was no other traffic at all, except for the occasional horse- or donkey-drawn farm wagon.
Here and there, at particularly scenic spots, there were remnants of old scenic overlooks. But they'd obviously been abandoned for decades; the benches had rotted away and the forest had grown back up around them.
We did indeed see a cuckoo, perched high atop a pine tree. Heard him first. Wow, they sound just like the clocks ! KOO koo, KOO koo. I never knew.
We were driving so slowly, and the road was so empty, that I took Alan out of the child seat and put him in my lap so he could look around. Man, that was one happy two-year-old.
We could have gone on like that for a long time, but we didn't know what the ferry schedule to Calarasi was like. So after an hour or so, we headed back for the main road.
But it was very nice, and we'd love to go back.