European Day of Languages/Salad

Isn't Europe like a big bowl of salad - colorful and messy? That's why we love it!

 Sofia City Library invites you to celebrate the European Day of Languages together with us, volunteers from all of Europa - Greece, Spain, Denmark, Latvia, Poland, Austria, Slovakia are making a salad and the secret ingredient is you. That means you, my beloved language fan, should come on 26th September at 17:00 to Sofia City Library (American corner) It's going to be cosy, fun, international, friendly, with games, interesting presentations, language teaching and salad eating!

 Европейски ден на езиците На 26 септември Европа отбелязва деня на езиците. Целта на този празник е да се обърне внимание на деца, младежи и възрастни колко е важно изучаването на чужди езици, да подтикне към изграждане на положителни нагласи към всички говорени езици в Европа и да мотивира за учене на чужд език през целия живот. На 26.09.2014 / петък / от 16.00ч. започваме дискусия и четене на различни езици в Руския център и продължаваме от 17 до 19 часа в Американския център на Столична библиотека, където доброволците от ЕДС са подготвили програма, с която да отбележим празника. Ще научите коя е думата, която звучи еднакво на 24 –те официални езика в Европа.Ще има игри и презентации за най-лесния начин за научаване на чужд език, както и дегустация на национални ястия , типични за дадена страна. Ще си разменяме рецепти, ще слушаме музика, ще говорим на различни езици. Заповядайте да празнуваме заедно!

 За предложения и участие, моля пишете на мейл: dialog.21@abv.bg
За повече информация:
Боряна Янкова - 0887677089
Валентина Личева – 0897 300 943
Мариета Георгиева – 0888 087 147

Pictures:

Miro in the proper attire

Zanda's salad is the only one I didn't try. :'(

Etwas Kartoffelsalat, bitte!

Maria serving the hungry crowds

Salad and language make people happy.

Food and language makes the world go round

Spanish salad - what's left- by Vicente

Greek salad -what's left- by yours truly.

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PRESENTATION 1 - EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES (PREZI)

PRESENTATION 2 - WHY SALAD? (PREZI)

Beglika Fest 2014

Golyam Beglik is a lake in the Rodopi mountains that didn't exist before 1951.

Since 2008 it's also been a gathering place for people who believe in change and new possibilities and who want to have a good time surrounded by beautiful nature. Enter Beglika Fest, which has become one of Bulgaria's biggest and most important summer festivals.

We hitch-hiked to Beglika and back and camped there for a few days with Maria, Zanda, Miro and Daphne. Apart from a couple of stormy nights we (and our 20lv tents with the water resistance of my towel) had to endure, and the fact all the interesting workshops they had going there were almost exclusively in Bulgarian, we had an unforgettable time. Plus, it felt like we were part of something important, something ground-breaking.

I mean, dry toilets, hammocks, seed exchange, Suggestopedia, sailing, astronomy, kung fu, yoga and tasty vegetarian/vegan food all in one place - I will never forget that chocolate pancake and the vegan kyuftechta, never! What more can a person ask or hope for?

We didn't get a chance to listen to all of the bands because of the bad weather during most of the nights, but also because the spacial and temporal layout of the stages made it difficult, at least for me, to follow everything. One band in particular, though, made an impression on me. Traditional Balkan sounds together with beatboxing and dubstep, you say?!



The following is a video I made out of all the videos I took from Beglika. It's small and humble, there mostly to give you a small taste of what the Beglika experience was for our small international group.




As you might've been able to tell from the video, however, I'm definitely happier with our selection of photographs. Credits go to Daphne, Zanda, Maria and yours truly - can't bother to do it for each one separately:

Hammocks over water.

Signs to where the find the good stuff.

I love this picture

Weird thing about Beglika: at night they had the "chill" music and during the day
they had all the pumping beats, especially at the chill station.

Miro introduced us to the concept of dendrophile and nothing was the same again...

Looks interesting doesn't it? Само на български!

BEGLIKARTA

At the MMUUZZAA tent.

...all kinds of crazy things...

Maria and Zanda got their henna tattoos.

Sharing is caring.

Занда и кончето

ВЕДЖИ КЮФТЕТААА

"At night it can get cold", they said...

Tent City

Foggy mornings.

Kung Fu for dummies at sunset.

Where we got most of out sunburns.

Ghetto water resistance!

Haide, next time in Beglika let us be volunteers with perfect knowledge of Bulgarian! Or we could be the ones with the game corner...

Moving Gallery

Snips of a moving photo gallery we did in July with our EVSer friends. Featuring Anna, Kuba, Florian, Gabi, Miro, Maria, Zanda, Vicente and myself.

 I'm not going to explain anything related to our performance, in order to more closely simulate our complete shut-off of communication with the outside world during the exhibition.

 Perhaps Zanda's assessment about the whole thing was correct: "more pictures, less video"!

Moving books from Portuguese to Spanish Reading Room

The Portuguese reading room is soon going to become the Korean reading room. For that reason, all of the books kept therein had to be moved to the Spanish reading room and section which from now on will likely be the Iberian section! Meanwhile, we got some videos from the procedure and we thought they looked fun and representative of the good time we have in the library even when doing "manual work" like this, so I decided to up them.

Green Library 2014 Promo and Bulgarian National Radio Interview

This video was an exercise in spontaneity: we came up with the idea for it, wrote the lyrics and the music, shot it, cut it and uploaded it within 6-7 hours. Extra footage is from our first Green Library event at Lyulin, which took place last Saturday, and, apart from the rain, which spoiled our plans a little bit, it was quite successful.

I mean, we even went to the Bulgarian National Radio for an interview. Valya, Boryana and Zanda were the ones who spoke the most, presenting our activities and inviting the listeners to our event in Lyulin, but it's no small thing getting to speak in Bulgarian on the freakin' national radio, if only just for 15 seconds! The people were kind enough to share the interview with us. Valya starts speaking at 0:25, Boryana at 2:00, Zanda at 4:00, Maria at 4:20, Vicente at 6:55 and myself at 07:10. Here it is:

Many thanks to Maria and Zanda, who had the original idea, and everyone else who helped make this a reality. See you next Saturday!

Jāņi - Latvian Midsummer

On June 23rd we celebrated Jāņi together with our Latvian friends, which is their celebration of midsummer, complete with fires, homemade cheese, beer (very important) and attempting to stay up until sunrise - whoever fails to do so is cursed with sleepiness for a year, at least in Latvian tradition. What is important to note here is that of course the night of June 23rd in the high latitudes of Latvia isn't more than 3 or 4 hours long, which means that Jāņi doesn't translate so well for countries that aren't situated quite as close to polar bears and baby harp seals as the Baltics are - call me Bulgaria. Some of us made the brave attempt, but the idea of sleeping around the fire, or in custom hammocks, beat the spirits of all but the toughest.

The celebration took place in a summer house on Stara Planina close to Rebrovo, which is in a forested valley next to Sofia. It never ceases to surprise me with how many beautiful spots of nature, mountains, lakes, rivers and forests, exist no farther away than a single hour's trip from Bulgaria's beating heart.


A taste of the 40-minute train ride, together with Janis, Rian, Zanda and Vicente.

Latvian homemade "cheese"

What? ZANDA is evolving!

So much green... Jāni had his day

Wild strawberries! City boy was excited!

Picking flowers for the Jāņi crowns

After the sun set, the fireflies came out to play. Some of us, including myself, had never seen a firefly before, and that we were excited doesn't even begin to describe it. The attempt of a video above doesn't remotely do the experience justice, but at least you can catch part of the vibe, especially played by the sound of the chatter of the crickets and the song of other little creatures of the night.

I'll leave you with an interesting observation: Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, Latvia, Denmark and I'm sure further countries still, all share the same obviously pagan celebration on the same day - the summer solstice - but it's everywhere under the guise of the same obviously christian name: St. John's. Vicente's theory is that the pagan festival had existed everywhere in Europe since ancient times, and very early on in its history christianity decided to keep it intact in order to not not alienate the recently-converted pagans. It added, however, the "front" of the christian saint to more covertly incorporate the old celebration to its own traditions. Who knows?

Pettson and Findus Children's Painting Competition

On June 10th Sofia City Library's Children's Department hosted the award ceremony for the children's painting competition for Pettson and Findus, a children's book series written and illustrated by the Swede Sven Nordqvist.

The Swedish embassy was present, as well as the director of the library and children of all ages. 

The first and second prizes. The little boy
who painted the bottom picture and his mother.

The awards were goodies related to the books and - from what
I caught - for the first places it was money.

The cake's not a lie: it's the Swedish flag.

Swedish goodies and a roomful of eager children.
Hop! There's the Swedish flag again.

South Korean Embassy Presentation

Remember when we said that the Korean embassy is planning great things for their colaboration with our nice little library?

Last week they had a presentation about South Korean culture in the library. They showed a video on South Korean culture and nature and answered questions from the audience. We were all impressed by the presenter's admission that Koreans have only 3 days off per year, and that people often work as many as 14 hours per day! It was a bit shocking, really. South Korea and Bulgaria might be similar in total land area and in the fact that they share a long history, like the presenter mentioned in his presentation, but love for holidays and taking things easy is certainly not some of the things they have in common.

Apart from pamphlets, they gave out to us these cute little Korean fans that will definitely prove to be very useful on the hot Sofian summer days, which are drawing closer and closer...

We are expecting the remake and transformation of the Portuguse reading room into the Korean reading room to take place during August and September. Stay posted.

Pernik

Our EVS friends Anna & Kuba live in Pernik, a city less than an hour away from Sofia, famous in Bulgaria for its tough, hard-headed people - a reputation probably rooted in its traditionally industrial and mining economy. There are lots of jokes made about people who come from this region, but our experience was completely different from the stereotype, as you will soon discover.

We are preparing a little performance in the streets of Sofia in July with Anna, Kuba, Florian, Gabi and others, and our visit to Pernik last Sunday was mainly for brainstorming, discussing the ideas and planning the event. We even did a little workshop prepared by Anna & Kuba's supervisor on the top of a hill in a beautiful park in the centre of the city whose aim was helping us bond and work together as a single entity rather than a group of individuals.

Tai-chi-ho, tai-chi-ho!

The chain of command...

...one mistake can have the group collapse
like a house of cards.

Becoming one with the group

"Add caption", Blogger said.
I just sat there, motionless.

The brave Florian is about to fall in our arms.

The brave Florian is falling in our arms.

NOT footballs fans.

Definitely not football fans.

There was pizza, fruit salad, cherries, beer and wine. It rained after we left the park. It was a good day.

Our performance will be on the 12th of July. Catch it in a street of central Sofia near you.

 Props to Kuba and his friend whose name I don't remember for the pictures. Especially the last ones are very good, in true Kuba fashion.