I'm ready---------

Florence

It is fun reading and very interesting. Our friends who own the Russian River Rose Company have rose harvest tours where people come and pick baskets of roses which are then distilled for rose water. They went to Bulgaria to learn about the process.

Here is, one of the most appealing of the sight-seeings:

"The rose fields can be seen when you pass near Kazanluk, but there are no roses grown there  there are only fields, where nothing is seeded."

I think it's odd that although the roses are only grown in private fields today, that there should be fields that are completely fallow. Doesn't anyone own these? Maybe it's an investment opportunity :)

Still, it sounds like there's plenty to see and do if you participate in the festival. There must be people who open their operations to the public at that time of year. Transylvania is just a hop, skip and a jump away... roses and vampires, what could be more romantic?!

Possibly the rose-oil business was a state enterprise or the main rose fields were a collective farm, and nobody has managed to reorganize it. It is odd that what sounds like good land is going unused in what is probably a very poor country. It sounds like the area may have been depopulated and there isn't much of an economy. They have hired a Japanese consulting firm to create a tourist industry!