All-Bulgaria Trip Part III

 As predicted, the last week in Bulgaria was a quiet one, mostly spent in Perushtitsa. Here is another view of the town from near Veronica's house: 

We visited the Red Church, ruins of an early (5th century) church nearby:

There was a nearby winery in the village of Ustina (less than a kilometer away) 

The wine we bought has Mavrut grapes, a local variety. At the end of the week I gave a talk at the University of Plovdiv Department of Mathematical Analysis. I was looking to see if there was some connection I could make since I may be spending more time in the area, especially when Veronica retires. The department members were a pleasant bunch and I got a nice lunch afterwards. I am not sure how big a scientific connection I got, but the Head of Department's sister lives in Victoria and went to the same high school and medical school as Veronica, so that was a connection. It is a small world. My final picture from the trip is from the local "Bulgarian" gin. As my gin group discovered, any London dry gin passed a certain quality does not make a difference. I saved a few lev drinking this perfectly acceptable product. 

We are back home now, working through jet lag. I can leave you with some additional details of the trip:

• I discovered the phone app game Eternium. It is a diablo-type game. There is a PC port through Steam now, which kind of ruins the point. Why not just play a diablo type computer game? The phone version has some innovative controls. 
• YouTube Music has a playlist called "undiscovered 70s progressive rock albums". I could not sign up in Bulgaria but I did as soon as I got back to Canada. I am currently listening to "Arachnoid" by Carlos Enrique Rodriguez Vera. Some of the albums on the list are so obscure that you cannot find reference on the internet. It's been a while since that happened. I should say that not all the music is good, but it's all stuff I have never heard in my favorite genre. 
• I became passable at reading Cyrillic. Not words but just sounding them out. Like the word that sounds like "supermarket" turned out to be exactly that. I did take Russian language in high school for two (?) years in the 70's so maybe that is in my brain somewhere. Bulgarian has one letter different that Russian, which I learned, and two they don't have (don't ask me which). 
• In Bulgaria you can buy melatonin pills with "Bulgarian herbs". These are ace for helping with jetlag. Unless you are related to me, I won't share.