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The City of Sofia
This is my home!
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Sofia's a funny old place - quite attractive really, especially in spring when it becomes so green, the streets lined with trees and the grass, growing long and filling up with dandylions and daisies! The many little shops lining the streets bustle with action, and in summer the evening stroll is almost an event in itself. The mountain of Vitosha is always a place to look up to, white in winter, the green moving rapidly up its slopes as summer approaches. Buses, trolleybuses and trams, ladas, imported second-hand cars and top of the range Mercedes compete for space on Sofia's crowded roads, oblivious to the huge crowds of people at the bus stops, gypsies begging at traffic lights and pot holes that are occasionally filled in - only to reappear several months later. I never cease to be amazed by the "living complexes" around the city - huge estates filled with tower blocks and rubble-filled empty spaces, small hut-like kiosks selling snacks, flowers, cheap clothes, newspapers and fruit. Tourists are not noticeably evident - the real gems of the country being found elsewhere. The little "Roman Wall" market is literally on our doorstep, from which you can walk down to the green fronted shop selling freshly roasted nuts, as well as dried fruit and in season, baked pumpkins, which sit outside on the pavement in a huge cart! And then it's only two minutes back home, up to our little flat in the roof, overlooking the mountain, red in the evening light.
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Village Welcome
A weekend in Ginjovtsi
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At the beginning of April, we travelled off to the west of Sofia, to spend the weekend with Sashka's parents in Ginjovtsi, a tiny village on the border with Yugoslavia. We passed through a little town called Trun, which you might find in your Atlas, and found ourselves in another world. Sashka's parents produce all the food they eat, it seems. Even the rakia was home-made. The pig had been slaughtered, it only remained for us to eat it. Breakfast? Home cultured yogurt and freshly laid eggs... jam... bread... fruit juice... The weekend activites involved chopping wood in the forest, walking to a deserted monastery, visiting the shrine of Saint Petya and snoozing in the sunfilled barn. The locals are quiet, peaceful - and old. The younger generation visit at weekends. The old women still do heavy work, healthy faces looking keenly at you from under their headscarves, all wearing jumper, skirt and apron. What will happen to this village when they are gone?
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A Mountain Monastery
Rila - the jewel in the crown?
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South of Sofia lie the Rila mountains, and in a valley, like in the cup of your hand, lies the Rila Monastery. Defender of faith and the written word over centuries of Ottoman rule, the monastery today retains some sense of its roots as a hermit colony, with mysterious, black-robed Orthodox priests hurrying through the courtyard, and the many locked doors shouting out for attention behind the layers of black and white arched verandahs. In the centre of the yard is the church, its outside walls festooned with icons depicting earthly, heavenly and hellish scenes in vivid colour. It's incredibly interesting, and the interior of the church is as impressive in candlelight as the outside is in the mountain sun. It's a place to go back to, there is pulling power there, wherever it comes from - you can tell I like this place, can't you?
See it
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Sozopol
A special place for me
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It's strange how first impressions really can be wrong. On the southern Black Sea coast, Sozopol sits on a peninsular, its orange rooftops and white walls imprinting themselves on my memory, along with the sea, tideless and on some days absolutely still. My first visit to Sozopol was on a rainy day one October. The cobbled streets were practically deserted, and I found it grey and depressing, and wondered why everyone had told me to go. Now I know that in summer it's packed with Russian and Ukranian tourists, a big street crafts market, fresh fish and the whole population of Sofia. There's a white beach where we don't go, instead heading off south to little bays and low rocks, or even the island where Ivan my husband dives in and collects mussels, and we cook them on a piece of metal over a fire. In winter we have gone down to the rocks by the schoolhouse and shivered next to the ice covered stones, watching the waves rip apart, whipped up by the northern wind. On another cloudy day in October I got married in Sozopol. It's strange isn't it, life?
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