Trip to Bulgarian museums in March 2010
Valeska's and Matthias' travel journal
Since we are both currently involved in the reevalutiation of the excavations in Drama - Valeska writing a book about the Copper Age figurines and Matthias working on a monograph about the south-east slope of the tell of Merdžumekja (late Copper Age - early Bronze Age) - and since the both of us know only the material from museums in the vicinity of Drama, we decided to tour Bulgarian and Romanian museums from March 14 to March 31st, 2010. We concentrated mainly on the large Historical Museums in the district capitals.
Although we had to skip three museums from the 25 we had planned on seeing originally (we visited some smaller ones in return) and although there was no time to see some big excavation sites due to our tight schedule, it was probably the coolest tour you can take as an archaeologist and enthusiastic south-east Europe tourist. We wrote down our impressions in a journal:
March 14: Welcome to Winter Wonderland
March 15: Hind, 12 o´clock, 50
March 16: Many finds, not so much time
March 17: Dupki in the darkness
March 22: Across the Dupki pass
March 24: Mankind's oldest gold
March 25: Across the Danube and back
March 26: Involuntary vacation
March 27: Through the Balkan gorges
March 28: Pli-Pla-Pleven in the ri-ra-rain
March 30: What goes around comes around
March 31st: After the trip is before the trip
With this we want to say hello to all people we met on our journey. We met many old friends and made many new ones. Thanks first and foremost to Krum Băčvarov. Without his help we would not have been able to make this trip.
Special thanks for their help also to Aneta Bakămska (IM Pernik), Veselina Vandova (IM Kjustendil), Malgorzata Grębska-Kulova (IM Blagoevgrad), Velika Macanova (IM Pazardžik), Rosica Mitkova (IM Plovidv), Milen Kamarev (IM Kărdžali), Stanislav Iliev (IM Haskovo), Ilija Iliev (IM Jambol), Rosica Hristova (IM Karnobat), Svetlana Venelinova Kavrakova (IM Šumen), Todor Dimov (IM Dobrič), Dragomira Boeva Kančeva und Valentin Parnic (Muzeul Călăraşi), Raluca Kogalniceanu (Muzeul Giurgiu), Dimităr Černakov (IM Ruse), Maja Valentinova (IM Loveč), Denica Petrova (IM Orjahovo), Georgi Ganecovski (IM Vraca) and Vasil Nikolov (NAIM-BAN).
We will be back in the summer :)