A Tour of Bulgaria

My Tour of this country, where I had already been years before visiting Sofia (see "raid on Sofia") is part of a transfer from Greece to Romania. Having entered Bulgaria from the Greek border, I made my first stop shortly after to visit the Rila Monastery, very beautiful and set in a foothill environment. The monastery is surrounded by alpine peaks, brushed by a mountain stream and wrapped in the silence of prayer and meditation. Architecturally it is also very interesting with its arches, its polychrome decorations and a large inner courtyard, but it is above all the surrounding environment that makes it a place unique of its kind. Satisfied by this visit, I continued north in my Fiat Tipo and gave a lift to two young female hitchhikers heading in my same direction.

With them I stopped at Veliko Tarnovo, an ancient city of medieval layout with walls, cobbled streets, old houses and a fortress. The streets of the historic centre are all ups and downs because much of the city is built on a hill. The city is pleasant but I turn slightly south to take the hitchhikers to Gabrovo where, having left the girls, I meet a young man with whom I manage to converse. It's very hard to make yourself understood in Bulgaria, where a Slavic language is spoken and Cyrillic is written, but this guy knows a little Spanish and that gives us the chance to talk. The guy takes me to his house, a wooden dwelling surrounded by a vegetable garden, where I sleep. The next morning he offers to be my guide and takes me to see, on a nearby hill, an open-air ethnographic museum where houses dismantled from every part of the country have been reassembled.

We return to Gabrovo and, after saying goodbye to my very kind chance friend, I continue north. Shortly after I leave Bulgaria, crossing the "Bridge of Friendship" that spans the Danube and enters Romania.