Balkans & Munich

6-6-2006

Last weekend I went on an excursion with my co-workers. It was a municipality retreat planned by our athletic director. We traveled to many different towns and villages in the beautiful Balkan Mountains. We stayed Saturday night in Teteven and enjoyed a nice dinner, plenty of rakia and way too much dancing. It took a while but I ended up drinking enough rakia to participate in the dancing as well. It felt great to be included on this trip; I am truly part of the crew now, and am included in most municipal events.

The soccer tournament is still in full swing, last night my team got slaughtered by a much younger and talented team 7-1. Today I have another game after work; I am thinking this will be the last game of the tournament we will be playing.

Today I woke up a bit groggy and exhausted, due to my lack of sleep. My allergies are pretty bad, and it makes it a bit challenging to get a good night sleep. I spoke with the director of the kindergarten this morning, I guess the kids are done learning English for the summer. I am definitely going to miss those kids; they really split up the routine here, and brightened my day. I taught an anti-trafficking in person’s class today at the Roma school. It actually went better than the ones I have taught at the Bulgarian school. The kids were very attentive and really listened. I will go back next Monday for another ATIP class and hopefully will make an impact, and increase awareness of these problems. I stuck around the school for a while after the class and spoke with the kids outside of the school. They asked me a bunch of questions, and we talked about sports mostly. I told them that I will come back to the school on Wednesday and team them how to play rugby. They were excited about that idea, and expressed a lot of interest. I have wanted to interact more with the Roma, but have not really known how. I am very excited to have the opportunity to spend time with these kids and treat them the way they deserve to be treated. It’s sad to see how these kids are shoved aside by society, and predisposed for a life of poverty and prejudice. Most of the Roma I know are very kind and genuine; it’s a bit appalling for me to see how they are treated at times. A major issue is all of the resentment that Bulgarians have toward Roma. And to be completely honest some of it is almost justified. Most Bulgarians are very poor, and have to work hard to have enough money to get by. And when they see a society of people that take advantage of the government programs comparable to welfare, they get angry. My Roma Slum (mahala) only gets running water for an hour a day. This sounds bad, but they don’t pay for water and would get it 24 hours a day if they in fact paid for it. They are also rumored to not pay for electricity. Another thing that Roma do to get government financial support is to get married and have children, but not register the marriage with the government. There for on paper it looks like a single mother of 4, rather than a family of 5. This does not justify the way the Roma are treated by other Bulgarians but it does help explain where some of the stereotypes and prejudices come from. .

6-12-06

Only a few more days until I take a 24 hour bus ride to Munich for the world cup. I am stoked about the trip; it should be an amazing experience. I took it relatively easy this last weekend, just stuck around town and hung out with a couple friends. I have been getting along with the old woman who lives beneath me quite well. She made my friends and I lunch the other day and was excited to speak with us about for over an hour. She is not always the easiest lady to understand because the words she uses are usually quite difficult. But I understand most of what she says so our communication though full of holes is fairly good.

6-21-2006

Well it’s Wednesday afternoon in Chirpan, and I am sweating buckets in my office which must be around 90 degrees. I came back from Munich yesterday afternoon; it was a horribly long bus ride both ways, but definitely worth the trip. I feel a bit exhausted right now and I am having a hard time concentrating on work.

Alex and I arrived Friday morning in Munich and decided to kick a soccer ball around with a German kid in a local park. After we stretched out a bit we walked around the city and ended up at the train station to meet Kanji (Alex’s German friend he met doing study abroad). We spent the rest of the night talking, watching the world cup, and enjoying 1 liter beers in a local beer garden. Saturday morning we met my friend Johannes at the central train station at 11am. After that Alex and I bought a large American flag and had a German girl paint USA in red white and blue on our chests. There were fans from all over the world, and everyone was getting a bit crazy so we figured we would have fun with it as well. After we decorated our bodies for the big event, we spent the rest of the day walking around Munich, and enjoying the beautiful churches, and the central park (which happens to have a great beer garden). After dinner we were off to Olympia Park Stadium, to attend ‘fan fest’ and to watch the USA vs. Italy game on a 60 meter screen with thousands of crazy soccer fans. About 150 or so of the Americans ended up on the main stage under the screen, it was a great atmosphere and an equally entertaining game.

The score as most of you know was 1-1. And we played most of the game with 9 players against there 10. The reason for this is because we had a horrible referee. This referee gave out 3 red cards, 2 of them (US) were very questionable. Was he paid off?????? Well the history behind this guy definitely makes it a possibility. Most people don’t know this but this same red card happy referee was suspended from the World Cup in 2002 for inconsistent refereeing, which at the time led many to believe that he was in fact being paid money to influence the outcome of games. The bottom line is a mid field sloppy slide tackle does not deserve a red card, however a blatant elbow to the face does.

That being said, the game was a success, we played our hearts out, and the people at fan fest went crazy. After the game we walked around the city, and had a few beers at various bars. The atmosphere in Munich was unreal, everywhere you looked you would see a fan with a goofy hat, or wig, or a flag of there country worn as a cape. It was definitely worth the trip. And truly an experience I will always remember.

Questionable behavior: I did shave my chest all except large letters top to bottom U S A.

I also walked through a section of the central park(perfectly legal in the section I was in) wearing only an American flag.

Well it’s hard to put into words how great my Munich trip was, I must say that it is an incredible city, with plenty to see. And of course being a true ‘Lake’ I checked out the BMW museum. I hope everything is going well for all of you guys in America, I look forward to seeing you when I come back in September. It will be great to have a few days with family and friends, but coming back to America makes me a bit nervous. Alrighty that’s all for now,

Trevor Lake