Have you ever dawned in a field of wild peonies, gazing out to sea to see the sun. And to find it behind one of your shoulders.
We travel north. 12 km from Balchik and only 5 from Kavarna. To the east and west are endless green plains. To the north is the picturesque Valley of the Avligs – named after the sweet-tongued golden blackbirds – which ends with Cape Chirakman. And to the south is… the sea. We are in Bozhurets.
“In the evening we got stuck in this vicinity, 2 km down the road to Cape Chirakman. To this day, the jeepys shows that there is a road to Kavarna. Turns out there isn’t. It was dark. We stopped the nose of the vehicle overlooking the sea with the idea of waking up in the morning to see the sunrise.” “We opened the door. It was Easter. The peonies were blooming, it smelled of all kinds of herbs. The dog was running free. And to our surprise we saw that the sun was gone from the sea. It turns out that in Bozhurets the sea looks from… the south.
And like everything in life, so with Ivan, the best things happen when you least expect them. The empty fridge in the camper leads them to a grocery store in Kavarna, and in front of it – a board with ads for land for sale. And they all turn out to be from this area and Topola. Together with his wife, they don’t hesitate much. They choose the one closest to where the morning brews them.
Our idea was to come here in the summer with the camper, get electricity and water and stay for 2-3 months on holiday, says Ivan. It turns out that the procedure for running electricity and water runs in parallel with a building permit under a law passed just a few months earlier.
At the time, Ivan Nikolov owned a company building fair stands and bungalows and had a lot of second-hand materials from the business. He made an inventory of everything he did not need and created the conceptual design for the house where he still lives in Bojurets. He calls it a ‘sophisticated fairground bungalow made for living’. It may be the only Act 16 bungalow in Europe.
He built it so that it would have ‘minimal interference with nature’. The idea was to live as if we were in a caravan on the lawn, the man says.
The inside of the house also follows the natural landforms. It is built in levels, using the Eastern philosophy – the higher the level you climb, the higher the hygiene of the place. And in the dining room, instead of a glass roof, there is a glass floor.
Ozzie is also a permanent resident of the ‘fairground bungalow’. This is a Vizsla – a breed of Hungarian bird breeder. The sign on the turn to Ivan’s house is dedicated to him. Crossing at 220 km/h”. It is located on Captain Nemo Street. The signs here were made by Ivan Nikolov. Like this one from the lid of an old stove, warning of the fines you can incur if you pollute the environment.
The first job in the morning of the man with roots from the City under the hills is to load the bird feeders and waterers, which are located in his yard. He did them for educational purposes – for his grandson. Every summer they make one. And so it has been for 9 years.
A few hundred meters from the house – bungalow Ivan has built a real paradise for the birds and other animals of the area. This mini wetland actually became the occasion to meet him.
3 years ago for health reasons he had to leave
company in Plovdiv. At that very moment a plot of land nearby came up for auction. On it he builds an artificial pond and feeders. ‘Even if they start building here, this place will remain a nature park,’ Ivan says.
The land in the area is included in the European Natura 2000 network and is full of valuable plant species, such as the wild peony, as well as many animals, such as foxes, rabbits, birds, reptiles… But there is no natural water source on the entire plateau. In the summer there is a drought and the animals migrate for watering.
“My former colleagues kept loading me with unnecessary materials. They gave me a round plastic foundation, which I made into a miniature pond. I ran water through and put in cameras. I am now using the camper as a power station because the cameras, router, server require electricity”.
Soon, the cameras will be live-streamed on YouTube for anyone who wants to observe the animals in the area.
Apart from the mini wetland, Ivan Nikolov is probably the only person in Bozhurets who has built a mini forest. He plants an average of about 50 trees each year.
The survivors are at least 200-250. Most are along the road to his house.
Ivan’s conservation work does not end here. You can meet him before or after the season on the vast beach of Ezerets with a trailer full of… waste. “I have a few hours to spare, I go down to the beaches. I find the one that’s the dirtiest and start cleaning it up. The plastic waste is the most worrying because it’s the most. I used to collect a trailer of plastic bottles in three hours,” says the Plovdiv resident.
He is especially pained when he looks at the garbage people leave behind. Like the one in the villa area of Bojurets. The territory that the garbage takes over is getting bigger. According to Ivan, it is ‘inhuman and very wrong to make a landfill 200 meters from the sea’.
From the courtyard of the house, a fairground bungalow, there is a view of another remarkable house – that of the equinox. It has blended so much into the landscape that it is almost impossible to tell the 500 square metres of the amazing home from the green meadow and the cliffs. Built as an astronomical instrument, it is the other architectural landmark of this place. There is a narrow glazed slit in the roof that lets the midday sun into the living room. It is reflected on a linear scale on the floor and wall, turning them into a solar calendar. And the slope of the south elevation corresponds to the angle of the summer solstice.
From Bojurets we are sent rain – short, summer rain, washing away all the noise and greyness of the concrete city. Bathing our thoughts with joy. Here you can hear the silence. And happiness when it knocks on the door…
