Premier Luxury Mountain Resort Bansko

... kann ich natuerlich ich auch kaum, die Bulgaren haben kyrillisch erfunden). Habe aber den Bus nach Rila in die Berge gefunden und war dort dann am Spaetnachmittag (erneut 60km fuer 2,50 Euro). Habe mich im Kloster einquartiert (10 Euro fuer die Nacht, Duschen gibt es keine), wenn die Tagestouristen weg sind ist es ganz nett. Touristen gibt es naemlich sehr viele ...

... late and missed the gondola ride that would take me up to the mountain, so I was stuck in a city where half of it was empty (its major industry is skiing in the winter), having nothing to do. I walked the streets, used the hotel’s wifi to go to internets and relaxed. I ate a simple dinner and tried their "draft wine", I guess it means homemade wine without filtering, and it was cheap and nice.

... back and continued on to Rila Monastery. We arrived early afternoon and found that a room was available so decided to stay overnight at the Monastery. The Monastery is in a forested valley and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was first built in 927 and has 300 monk's cells in buildings surrounding the Nativity Church. It continues to be a working ...

So today we were venturing further afield and heading out to Rila a little village in the mountains about 2hrs drive SW from Sofia and to the famous monastery that was in the mountains a bit above the village. First though we had to find a taxi to get us to the bus station to catch the bus out there. Luckily the taxi was the easy bit and the lovely woman at the bus station spoke English and directed us to the correct bus even ...

... cup of tea from their cafe. It's funny here, everyone in Bulgaria thinks that tea should always be flavoured, not normal flavour, and that it should be drunk black. I ask for milk and they don't seem to understand. When I finally get my message accross, (Bulgarian is very similar to Russian) they give me my milk but still proceed to put lemon in my tea. Yuck, they obviously don't know what happens when you mix lemon and milk together.

... the upper floors of the monastery. All in all the scene is still pretty good and late in the day or early in the morning it's probably still pretty peaceful And the setting is still amazing. It's almost a pity to include a photo of the monastery as it's impossible to capture how impressive it is in a picture. But it is worth including it to save me having to type an extra thousand words on the ...

... in Bansko, I went for dinner with two of the others. Tried the cold yogurt and cucumber soup that is on every menu, it wasn't bad but wasn't near as good as the cold soup that was in Latvia! Also had a shish or shish kebab to the rest of us, yummy stuff. Came back to the hotel and chilled on the patio for a couple beers again before heading in for an early night before the dreaded 6am start tomorrow.

... Two more hours on the bus and we were in Bansko. Got ready and then we went out for a big group dinner. The restaurant was a traditional place and had a gypsy band playing some music. Had some cured ham type of meat and then and amazing (!!!) rice, sauerkraut and shredded pork dish. Blew the one earlier out of the water! On the way back a couple of us grabbed some 2L bottles of beer (for $1.50!) and sat on the balcony for a couple of hours having some drinks.

Late on Saturday night I was hanging out with 2 of my friends here, Pishev and Gosho, and one of my future students Musi (the line between teacher and student is blurred here, it makes me a bit uncomfortable but i just make sure not to do anything inappropriate when the students are around, meaning pretty much never.) Musi invited me to go the next day to Pirin sings, a major folk festival about 30 minutes drive from Belitsa. It was pretty cool because this ...

... is Teadora (Dora.) We didn't talk much at first, she was a bit shy talking in English. We went out to dinner in Dupnitsa with 2 other volunteers and their counterparts. Dora spoke mostly to one of the other counterparts and seemed really nervous about talking in English. Also, she told me she taught primary school, and I'm a highschool teacher. So, I was feeling a little nervous about these things but still optimistic. HUB 4, the next day, was the counterpart ...