Bulgaria Trip Part II: Rila Monastery

Rila Monastery and Plovdiv

Leaving Sapareva Banya, we heading further south into the Rila Mountains to the mind-blowing UNESCO World Heritage site Rila Monastery. Some form of religious practice has persisted on this site since 976, when St Rilski showed up and established it in the mountain valley away from the temptations of the world. Other Bulgarian Orthodox monasteries were also cited in mountainous locations for this reason.

Later on when the Ottomans took over Bulgaria, the inaccessibility of the monasteries enabled Bulgarian nationalist ideas to survive. After 400 years when the Turks were expelled from Bulgaria (in 1880) the Bulgarian national revival was greatly assisted by these links to the history of the original Bulgarian kingdoms from the early periods before 1200 AD.

We arrived and filled out an application as Religious Pilgrims in order to spend the night in the Monastery quarters reserved for those on a pilgrimage. We were not actually on a religious pilgrimage, but this did not come up when I was filling the form out. The Orthodox monk had a big scraggly beard and was sufficiently mysterious about everything.

Frescoes on the ceiling of the main portico of Rila Monastery. Buildings in background are the monk's quarters, rooms for the religious pilgrims and operations offices.

Our first day we hiked down along the river to a small church and Ossuary near the main monastery. Cool paintings on a building from 1700's. It may not surprise that generations of monks are buried here. 

Lots of hiking around the monastery, but we had some problems lining up destination words with the trail names.

Five km up the valley is a short hike to the cave where St Rilski spent his first years in the area while getting ready to found the monastery. 

There's no food served at Rila Monastery, so a couple restaurants have jumped in to fill the gap. This is a bacon wrapped fish. With lemon!

Staying overnight at a monastery lets you have the place to yourself, which for Rila is really quite something. The place sees around a million visitors a year. At night, the only thing you hear is the river.

Little fountains spaced around the central courtyard all have ladles hanging next to them by little chains for those needing to quench their spiritual and physical thirst.

Central passage in front of the chapel.

Landslide on the main road.

From Rila we drove down out of the mountains to the main highway across the country and a few hours later pitched up in Plovdiv, one of Europe's oldest cities. Greek/Roman and earlier civilizations have foundations all over town.

Steps of the original colesseum discovered in 1972. Active mosque (from Turkish period) in background.

Central Post Office, a hulking Soviet-built structure whose roof is sagging inside. Most of the building is unused and fenced off, takes too much money to do anything with it.

Say what you will about the Soviets, but they ensured lots of gigantic and beautiful public parks for their citizens.

Then there is this aspect of Bulgaria, which in certain places still is rough around the edges.

The obligatory walk through the Old Town. The kids are starting to hate this term, since it means lots of stopping to read things and no possibility of playing soccer.

Good examples of Bulgarian Revivalist architecture from the late 1800's. After they pushed out the Turks, the country went on a building spree. The construction features outside wooden buttressing and overhangs.