Wednesday 27 August 2014

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...

Monday 18 August 2014

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"!

Tuesday 5 August 2014

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.


Sunday 3 August 2014

Green Library 2014



We made this video with all our love for the event that was made of love. Library's a giving tree. Enjoy!

We were also on Bulgarian National TV. Unfortunately, I can't embed the video, so you'll have to click on the link and watch it there. Here's another reportage done by TV Evropa - I speak Bulgarian on that one! :D

The theme song:

Download .mp3


Again, many thanks to Zanda, Maria, Valya and Boryana. You should write something about it too, girls! Post it on the comments and I'll make it part of the post.