Adata – sand, rice and kisses

The exoticism of the Maritsa River is perhaps in its plants. I remember a lot of people keeping nutrias (coypu) on the river bank, as well as more domestic animals, such as pigs. At the time, there were sand sources at the river around Adata. The river carried a lot of sand and most of it got deposited around the isle. The entire city was built with that sand. There were those huge boats with flat bottoms, barge-like, caiques they call them around here. The sand was loaded onto the boats, a bit like gondolas they were. Carts waited by the river to take on the cargo. This went well into the 1970s. Reputedly, Adata is the biggest isle on the Maritsa River. My grandmother, who was born in 1909, remembered stories of old, according to which people used to go out there for picnics, but that was no more in her day. At the beginning of 1900 one of the wealthiest people in town, Konstantin Hadzhikalchov, bought the isle to produce rice. In my childhood Adata was in the outskirts of town. This is where Matinchev’s gardens began and where visiting circuses built up their tents. We would cross the property boundaries to do mischief really, to destroy the greenhouses, to steal cucumbers, to play hide and seek… or to kiss the chicks…

From B.T.’s recollections, recorded by Maria Slavcheva