2010 Trip: Rila Monastery And Onwards To Bucharest
12th May 2010
As we speak, I am lying in the middle bunk of a couchette, on the night train that is about to depart for Bucharesti… Its now an hour and a half later and darkness has fallen over Bulgaria. Above me is an older Israeli chap and below is a snoozing Bulgarian from Sofia going to a conference near Bucharest. Amusingly, the key speaker is a New Zealander.
I have had my head stuck out of the window looking at the scenery, from the back blocks of Sofia, to flat plains, to mountainous river valleys. All very pretty! It was actually hailing when we left Sofia, but it seems to have calmed down a bit now. It’s all part of a large front moving slowly across Europe from the NW.
In particular, the river valleys we have just been passing through have been amazing, little towns, a raging river, steep wooded hillsides, exposed rock faces, bridges and tunnels. Every few minutes we pass a small station and the station master is out in full uniform to see us through; either an old woman or a man who looks not entirely like John Cleese.
How did I happen to get here, on my way to a new country completely? Its a good question. I never intended to stay in Bulgaria that long, so I booked the sleeper this morning and then headed off to catch a glipse of the world-famous-in-Bulgaria Rila Monastery. When I say headed off, I mean I have only had 3hrs since this morning not on some form of transport. So, after getting a ticket, I took a slightly hair raising trip, by taxi, to a bus terminal on the far side of the city. Lanes and speed limits are apparently irrelevant here!
I grabbed some lunch from the next door supermarket and jumped on the daily bus to Rila. It actually left at quite a reasonable hour - 10:30. Our bus was a bright pink-purple colour all over, the kind of bus one might deck out with banners for an LGBT parade. Or so I imagined at the time.
Three hours later, the morning rain had cleared and we found ourselves in a high wooded valley. In front of us were the imposing stone walls of Rila Monastery. A stunning set of buildings, founded in the 10th century and the largest Bulgarian monastery. By the 19th century, it had over 50 chapter houses across Bulgaria. The current structure, built in the early 19th century (as many previous versions had been gutted by fire, pillaged, etc) is a four story stone quadrangle surrounding an ornately decorated church. Basically, find a picture and look at it, because it is pretty.
The monks here are from the Orthodox tradition and therefore wear black robes, have long hair, and the tradition round flat-topped black hat to top it off - not your traditional Friar Tuck. There are only forty monks living here, but there are a host of support staff (that used to include a battalion of guards). Every year they receive 800,000+ visitors, and have beds for 980 every night. I suppose I was lucky, I saw less than 70 people while I was there.
Apart from pretty woodland, swollen streams, and stalls selling all the postcards and icons one could ever want, there was also a museum with some rather cool relics from the monastery’s past. These included icons, shrouds, gowns, ornate crosses (one 50cm high that featured over 600 finely carved minature figures depicting biblical stories), gifts from the Ottomans (they had a cordial relationship, apparently), and guns (one needs something to defend a monastery from “Turkish and Albanian highwaymen”).
After two hours, we hopped aboard the big pink bus (that sounds dirty, right?), and headed back towards Sofia. There is quite a lot of EU funded construction work on the highways, though they still have a lot of work to do. Many stretches of road are still really rough and existing sections of highway look like they were once in good nick but noone bothered to organise a maintenance schedule. It’s actually quite possible to mistake the countryside here for parts of Austria, as long as one doesn’t look too closely.
Upon returning to town (early for once!), I jumped aboard a public tram and headed back to the centre. I bought a ticket, but I did not realise one had to use a special hole-punching machine on the tram to validate the ticket. I was pulled up and had to pay a 10 leva fine, despite protesting my innocence and lack of knowledge. No matter, it was still a lot cheaper than taking a taxi! And so I made my way to the train station.
Before I leave Bulgaria, I have a couple of observations. Firstly, many attractions particularly museums and churches forbid taking pictures inside. I suspect this will be a trend throughout Europe. Secondly, as expected, the Bulgarian women are more attractive than Turkish women. There must be a sweet spot, somewhere in Europe, where the women are at their hottest. I have it on good authority that the opposite occurs with men. As the women get hotter, the men get less so. So, I better try and grab a wink before being rudely awakened at the Bulgaria-Romania border in a few hours.