Rila Monastery

The weekend of Sept. 10 -11 (yes I’m a bit behind on my blog), was our trip to the Rila Monastery. Now, we were to meet at 8:15am in front of the courthouse on Saturday morning. Although none of us were happy with the 8:15am departure time, we were quite happy to be in Sofia Friday night so we could stay out late and drink (obviously in anticipation of being able to catch a few Zzzz’s on the 3 hour bus ride to the monastery). Friday night started with another party at the Marine House at the embassy. Over the last couple weeks I have been seeing Kat, a diplomat at the embassy, and a fairly regular basis. Regular enough that I suppose I should say we are dating. Anyway, despite getting into the last party without knowing anyone (which I’m not sure was suppose to happen), this time we (all the MBA EC members) had an official invite to the event from Kat. This was probably a good thing since on walk to the embassy Paris asks if it is bad that he forgot his passport, Bulgarian ID card and, in fact, any form of photo identification whatsoever. He was quick to state; however, that he did have a business card which he felt confident was more than enough ID to get him into the embassy (reminds me of my friend Bill). As it turned out, since Kat could vouch for Paris, we were all able to attend the party. We stayed there for a while – I got a tour of the (not secret areas) of the embassy. It’s less than a year old so is very nice inside. After the party we, along with Kat and several of her embassy friends went for drinks at Flannigans. Friday night is ladies night at Flannigans so ladies drink free. The waiter would literally bring out 10 glasses of wine at a time and just stack them on our table. The guys stuck to the beer, at least to begin with. As the night drew on and the alcohol caused us to forget that all the wine was only for the ladies, we ended up drinking some of the wine as well. I think the waiter scolded us on several occasions. Paris was particularly bold by putting the glass of wine right in front of him, much to the waiter’s chagrin. I’m not sure if it was the beer/wine mix or just the sheer quantity of alcohol, but my body wasn’t terribly happy with me that night. I dropped Kat off at her place and ended up spending most of the night on her bathroom floor. At one point during the night I decided I would go home to sleep on my own bathroom floor, but the front door of her building is deadlocked at night (note: severe fire hazard) so I couldn’t get out. Then, I obviously don’t have a key to Kat’s apartment so I had to wake her up to let me back into her place. Apparently I looked very sad and confused as to why I couldn’t get out. Well, I guess there are always a few of those nights.

Regardless of where I slept the night before, at 8:15am I was standing (although perhaps not completely straight) in front of the courthouse. Despite a conversation the previous day as to the location of the courthouse, Paris got lost. Joel and I went with Svelta (our cultural guide from previous trips) on the tram to the bus station while Paris was directed to take a cab there to get there on time. We still had no idea what happened to Julia and tried calling her several times. Anyway, we still ended up missing our bus which was ok since it gave us an hour to eat and drink something (non-alcoholic) before the next bus left an hour later.

After switching busses in the town of Rila we continued on the Rila Monastery, only 22 km up the road. The Rila Monastery was founded in 927 AD by Ivan Rilski. The current monastery is made up of several buildings dating from the 14th century (for the oldest castle tower in the middle) to the 19th century for most of the remaining structure. The church in the middle is painted with about 1200 murals – all very impressive. Guests are allowed to stay in the monastery, but we ended up staying at a campsite 2km up the road (although I think I would have preferred staying in the monastery). We spend a few hours in the monastery. While there we happened to run into one of Kat’s friends who we met the night before who happened to be there that day (luckily didn’t seem to remember any abnormal intoxication on my part). We also ran into a group from New York City – although one was Bulgarian, one South African and 3 Russians (although 2 of the Russians had US passports). Anyway, there were good fun so we ended up having dinner and talking with them for several hours that night. They were staying in the monastery, which has a curfew of 9pm so they had to get back inside. The rest of our group had driven with another guy they knew up the road to have dinner somewhere else. The night was a new moon and it was DARK. We started walking back to the campsite and a few meters into the darkness and we decided maybe we’ll wait by the well lit monastery for our group to pass by again. Well, we got bored waiting since nothing was open so we used the picture viewer on Paris’ camera as a flashlight and ventured through the darkness back to the campsite. We were making jokes about using the flash and trying to remember the next 10m before using the another flash. We figured we could do that until one of the flashes would show some huge bear. We made it back to the campsite safe and sound and were in bed and asleep before 11pm. On Sunday we walked up to a small chapel another 2km up the road. Near the chapel is a cave where it is said that St. John (one of them, anyway) lived as a hermit. You can go in the cave through a relatively large opening in the bottom. Inside there is a tiny hole where you can climb out through the top. The story is that if you can make it through the whole who are absolved of your sins for the next year. I’m a thin person and I thought it was pretty small, yet I saw plenty of not-so-small 80 year old ladied squeeze though that hole. I guess if the choice is live in sin or squeeze through the whole, you get some extra motivation.

We took a direct bus from the Monastery back to Sofia which was pretty much a bus ride from hell. It was hot, crowded (some people were standing because there were no extra seats), the bus could barely make it up the hills and it took 3 hours. We were all very happy to be off that bus. Next week we take the bus to Assenovgrad and Plovdiv. I can’t wait….

Share on Facebook