WAITING FOR THE GOATS, an excerpt

When we said we might open a guest house, everyone thought it was crazy. The property oozed golden charm but Podgoritsa was in none of the guidebooks. There were no mountains or seaside resorts anywhere near, so we had to persuade the foreign tourists to make a special trip, to see for themselves. And come they did.

The day always began with the goats. There were over a hundred beasts in the herd and watching them come down the hill from the Dolna Polyana along Gagarin street, with their bells tinkling was something very special. To share it with the visiting families reminded me how lucky I was to be witnessing the scene every day. Monny and Denny knew exactly what to do. Just at the right moment they peeled away from us and walked slowly into the mass of hooves, fleeces and horns. One of the visitors might make a joke about dropping the kids off at school and that would be the cue to head back to the house for breakfast.

All the produce came from the garden. There was goatmilk, yoghurt, cheese, bread, jam, eggs and bacon so the food miles were close to zero. We made everything ourselves and we did not sell any surplus so I think the guests appreciated the small scale of our operation because even for just a few days, it was all for them. That is what we did for six years. Was it only that long? Looking back, it seems more like 15. All those yoga retreats, airport runs, herb workshops, cheese-making sessions and historical tours.

For 20 years, I had been an archaeologist in Yorkshire and part of me missed the discovery of new places so I jumped at the chance to explore local sites and learn their secrets. The most obvious, like the old capitals at Pliska, Veliki Preslav and Veliko Tarnovo had their own gift shops and car parks but I preferred to take the guests to lesser-known ruins. They tended to have more mystery.

In former times this area had been filled with people from all over the ancient world because they passed through on trading routes between Europe and the Near East. They had come from Anatolia, Persia, the Mediterranean, North Africa, central Europe and every corner of the Balkans. The Arab geographer Muhammed Al-Idrisi was commissioned by the Norman crusader King Roger in the twelfth century to produce an atlas, the Tabula Rogerina, a series of maps of Europe and the Muslim world. The Idrisi map was compiled through interviews he had with merchants and it depicts some of the Bulgarian cities growing rich from trade. One of the places was called Missionis. It had markets and churches and its remains were only half an hour from Podgoritsa.

One morning in May, I showed them the Idrisi map and proposed a trip to Missionis as we sat around the breakfast table finishing off the yoghurt and honey. The couple from Australia and the young family from Leipzig all wanted to come so, as soon as the washing up was done, we set off in two cars. From the main road the signs led towards the hotel Rai, Paradise but we marched on instead to the small roadside restaurant with its neglected ecotrail that headed up into the hills. At first, we could hear the roar of trucks down below but once the trees grew back and the track dipped down, there was no sound at all. When the kids sang or shouted, their voices came back from the wooded hillsides, peppered with white plum blossom. They took photographs of the blooms but nothing could capture the smell which was so like perfume that the two German siblings looked around for something spilled.

There had been three churches in the original Byzantine city and they were marked by foundation walls but the gate towers stood to over 3 m in height. The footings of the former buildings were covered in plastic sheets and we had our tea in the archaeologists’ wooden shelter, littered with broken walnut shells, sunflower seeds and cigarette butts like some midden. On the way back down, the path took us through pine trees and stands of coppiced hornbeam. We stopped under an oak to shelter from the rain and to swap stories. The German family told us about an old tortoise which their grandfather had smuggled back to the DDR following a 1970s holiday in Varna. Grandfather named the tortoise Krassio after a waiter in the hotel and he painted the name Красю in white Cyrillic letters on the shell. They told us that Krassio the tortoise had lived for many years in the family apartment in Leipzig, even outliving the grandfather himself who died in 1988. The tortoise had been an everyday connection to Bulgaria for them all and because of it, they had come to see the country for themselves.

We could see across the main road to the hotel and the swimming complex and the bright green façade of the spa which must have had 100 rooms in its heyday. At the archaeological site, there were fading signposts but no people at all and it felt like we had just discovered this place and wrestled it from the jungle ourselves. Missionis has never been claimed for any nationalist version of history. The narrative here, stretching back centuries, seems to suggest open borders, international trade and the mixing of people from all over the world.

After lunch we headed north past Targovishte and Razgrad to Isperih and the Thracian city of Helis, at least a thousand years older than Missionis. Its name is often mentioned in Greek sources but before the 1980s nobody knew the actual location. When Bulgarian archaeologists opened one of the huge mounds by the river Krapinets at Sboryanovo they found the finest stone Thracian tomb of all, Sveshtari. When they explored nearby ruins the archaeologists uncovered a walled city and most historians now regard this as the site of Helis. For 200 years in the third and fourth centuries BC it was a trade city bringing in goods over land from Greek colonies on the Black Sea and sending them on to the Danube for shipment to central Europe and the north. They abandoned the city after an earthquake but the river gorge lived on for centuries as a sacred spot, mysterious and holy to many different religions. The Romans called it Dausdava the ‘City of the Wolves’ and centuries later, in the sixteenth century a Muslim teacher and mystic known as Demir Baba chose it for his home. When he died, his followers buried him in a fine stone tomb which they built on top of Thracian sacrificial altars. His mausoleum survives intact to this day.

Demir Baba Tekke is a place of harmony and ancient faith where both Christians and Muslims come as pilgrims. The most magical surprises are the ribbons and offerings that they tie to trees all the way down the steps to the seven-sided tomb. The deep significance of this place is tangible and the mystery, felt by anyone who visits, is kept alive by the local population of Alevi who live in the surrounding villages. They are the guardians of the patron saint whom their ancestors buried 400 years ago and still today they keep his secrets. On the day of our visit, we finished off our sandwiches and cakes and joined local families who were camped out for the weekend to celebrate St. George’s Day. They had come from the closest village and there was even a donkey tethered to one of the trees. One of the women had set up a fire and hot plate to make flat breads while her brother cooked lamb shish kebabs on the barbecue. The German kids wanted to stay the night. It reminded me of the free festivals we used to go to in Wales and made me wonder if there might be something missing from my new life, not religious belief so much as the social gatherings outdoors. The coming together of like minds in a field.

There was no escaping the fact that we were far from home. Miles from anywhere, we could feel the separation from the organic celebrations we used to attend; events like gigs, protests, film screenings and festivals. After four years learning to be a farmer it felt like it might be time to re-connect with the wider world. At least that is, the one we used to inhabit. Our initial plan was to screen a few films but once we got together with our friends, it soon developed into a music festival. For that we needed generators, sound systems, food stalls, bars, DJs and bands and a bit more time to prepare. The land was owned by someone we knew, but still we thought it best to inform the authorities. When we asked the police chief in Popovo he agreed with a shrug,

'Do what you like. It doesn't matter to me. It’s not like you’re criminals or something.’

On hot summer days in Bulgaria, I close the curtains to hide from the fierce blue sky. My summer diet is melancholy music and folk horror films. To escape the relentless heat, I bathe in nostalgia for northern Europe, walking down the wet streets in Autumn, spending the whole day in a library and long train journeys to nowhere. During one hot summer, a group of us planned the festival vibes. To the rebel guitar bands and bass DJs we added craft workshops, yoga, a book stall, nice food and some Bulgarian folk. We made it free. That way the good people would come. The free people.

We used a piece of land in the forest outside of Voditsa, where the mood was relaxed. That was the village where the other organisers lived. When the trucks of hippies and ravers trundled in from Germany and Romania, the people of Voditsa did not object, they just pointed the way up the lane. Some of the locals wanted to see the show for themselves and they came along and stood in front of the make shift stage to hear the acid jazz of the Purple Elephant or the teenage punks from Shumen, the Lefties. The Lefties were only 17 back in 2013 but have since become one of Bulgaria's biggest rock bands. Hip hop kids from Popovo had their own pancake stall. There was even a guy who had escaped from the 1990s rave scene, an English bloke called Acid Mick. He told us that he had left the UK with Spiral Tribe in 1993 spreading the culture of free parties and techno to the world. One night he dressed like an eagle with a huge feathered head dress and I remember him coming over and shouting in my ear in the middle of the dance floor,

‘Where’s your fiddle man? Give us a tune later yeah, nice one.’

I had stopped playing in the band by then, but I asked Dimo if he would bring the orkestar to the festival and they all came down in two cars. The band members walked through the mud carrying instruments, the five of them still in their stage clothes; red and white embroidered shirts and clean black shoes. Dimo noticed how hard everyone was working. Some were carrying wood and lighting fires, some cooking, others feeding the horses or filling generators. It was a busy place and everyone was pulling together, for no profit except the party.

Dimo and the musicians played in a tent to about 20 people and the whole crowd were dancing by the end. The Bulgarians knew the steps and everyone else just followed along. Then we went outside to get some home made vodka and spinach kyufteta from Tomas and Lara's Polish stall and the musicians all said how it was like Bulgarian food but just a little different.

‘A bit like the festival then?’ I said,

‘No, not like the festival at all. That is nothing at all like Bulgaria. It’s like another world. It’s more like an Ottoman Caravanserai,’ said Pesho and the rest of them laughed.

Dimo came over and shook my hand in front of the crowd and I knew what that meant from a friend like him. He loved a party but he was still a conservative at heart and he knew that in all those concerts and tours with the village orkestar, I had been a fish out of water. Here, in this festival, I was closer to my own cultural home. The musicians stayed for the evening and while they watched the 1970s Bulgarian films like Gospodin za edin den, they left their instruments in a line along the inside of the tent and we covered them in plastic to protect them from the evening dew. For a few days the festival brought people together from all over Europe and the world, ignoring the formality of borders and blurring the grubby distinction between cultures. Was this a glimpse of the future or a flash back to the past? I was too busy filling generators with petrol to even think about it.

In those first five years we learned some lessons about how to be ourselves in a conservative place. We had to tread carefully, getting to know the people, respecting their values but never taking on those values ourselves.

I had often explained to people how we had found ourselves in rural Bulgaria but the question of why we had chosen somewhere so far away from the places we knew, had never really come up. It was my grand daughter Lily who asked first. She had come to the festival with her dad. On the last evening, Lily wanted to make sure the goats were okay and to say goodnight to Monny, her favourite and to read her a bedtime story. We left the festival behind for an hour and drove to Podgoritsa. She sat on the hay feeder on a soft bed of straw and read from a story book as I shone the light from my phone. I remember being struck by something she said, that it was best to have a little light on, as they would not settle down with the big one. As we walked quietly out of the shed the goats watched us, munching indifferently. She said,

‘Why do you live so far away Grampops?’

‘It’s not that far.’

‘It is,’ she said.

‘Think about how long it takes to go and see your nanny in Scotland.’ I tried without much conviction, knowing she was right.

She was still thinking as I fastened the gate.

‘Or daddy’s friend in Spain,’ I said.

‘Yeah. That took ages. But Barcelona is kind of normal.’

‘And here’s not…,’ I said.

I struggled to answer. Why here? After all, we could easily have stayed in France or even Portugal. Maybe there was more to this choice than simply leaving home to go to anywhere else but England. I did not know what to say. I hoped that next time she asked, I would have some kind of answer, even if it were not the true one. For that was still buried deep.

Christopher Fenton is an archaeologist who moved to rural Bulgaria, in 2010, and, inspired by his experience there began to write non-fiction and poetry. Waiting for the Goats is his first memoir. You can order it here