Andy emerging from a cave in the Rila mountains, now he is free of sins

Rila Monastery

Church in Sofia

Concrete paradise of Plovdiv

Typical Bulgarian architecture

View of Plovdiv

Murals at Rila Monastery

Hike in the Rila mountains

Streets of Plovdiv

Rila Monastery – only 9 monks live here and there are 300 rooms total

Plovdiv park

Hagia Sophia Istanbul

Bahçeşehir University lawn Istanbul

Rila Monastery

Hagia Sophia Istanbul

We thought we should give a quick recap on Turkey, a few things that the guide books don’t mention or don’t stress enough.  First of all, one of the biggest surprises to me was the excessive grooming options available for both men and women in Turkey.  On EVERY block (and sometimes more) there is a kuafor, a hairdresser/beauty shop. The kuafors are sometimes unisex, or solely cater to one gender.  Most of the male Kuafors focus on haircuts, straight shaves and head shaves. The female kuafors cut hair, perform a lot of waxing and nails.  It seems to be a common trend that the Turks do not like hair (let alone window drafts).  The males often shave their armpits, legs and arms and the women prefer to wax nearly their entire body. Also, the cost of the services is minimal compared to the US, for example $2.50 for a male straight shave and $5 for a wax.

As we mentioned earlier, Turkish hospitality has been some of the finest we have received to date.  A few more examples of Turks going above and beyond to make us feel welcome:  1) Andy and I were walking down the side of the road and a taxi driver put his hand out of his window and handed us strawberries to eat.  2) As we were waiting for a bus and realized we were at the wrong stop, a 19 year old college student walked us nearly a mile to the correct stop and waited with us for almost an hour to make sure we got on the correct bus.  3) We met a woman at the bus stop who didn’t speak any English but somehow we ended up eating strawberries and nuts with her on the side of a river bank.

Lastly and definitely not least, the Turkish cuisine… The cuisine here is amazing.  Maybe not the healthiest foods we have come across but for sure some of the tastiest.  The simple manti pasta dish of just pouring yogurt on hot raviolis and letting the yogurt melt with a little garlic and tomato paste is heaven in your mouth.  The abundance of kebab stands on every street corner doling out delicious sandwiches while drinking a creamy yet smooth Ayran (drinkable yogurt) to wash it down isn’t so bad either.

We just finished visiting Bulgaria, the 27^th poorest country out of the 27 total EU countries.  From reading the guidebooks we were expecting to be surrounded by communist era architecture and concrete jungles at every turn.  While these drab and undesirable remnants of Soviet occupation are present, we were pleasantly surprised by both the interesting modern and charming historical architecture.

In an effort to boost tourism in the country, a NGO we stumbled upon provides free two hour walking tours in Bulgaria’s two largest cities, Plovdiv and Sofia, every day of the week.  In Plovdiv, an attractive city known as the cultural capital of Bulgaria, we took the walking tour in the afternoon and learned not only about city’s history as the oldest continually habituated city in Europe but maybe more importantly, the “colorful” fashion IQ of its young citizens.

We arrived in Sofia early enough to spend a couple of hours independently walking the city before our organized evening walking tour. Our first impressions were quite grim as the city lacks the allure of Plovdiv; however, after completing the tour and conversing with the guide, we felt a new found respect for the capital city.  In the center of downtown you’ll find a functioning Islamic mosque, Jewish synagogue and a Catholic orthodox church within a few blocks of each other along with their respective worshipers living rather harmoniously among each other. Our guide was hopeful that if people from different religions could live together in Sofia, they should be able to do so anywhere.

Some other highlights of Bulgaria … they love their salads!  Almost all of the restaurants here offer a very large array of salads and all of them come with some sort of cheese on top. Check out http://www.3mealsout.wordpress.com for pictures.  Although most menus are in Cyrillic and are nearly impossible to decipher, you can most often find a salad and soup on the menu.  The fashion here is great as well and when I say great, I really mean great if you were still in the 90’s.  There are a lot of bright neon colors, crazy patterns and animal prints. Our tour guide said the English word in Bulgaria for women’s fashion translates to “bread roll”, whatever that means.  Another thing we should mention which is more of a low light is the widespread chain smoking phenomena, an apparent national pastime of all Balkan states.

A couple hour drive from Sofia is Bulgaria’s most famous monastery, the Rila Monastery, located in the Rila Mountains.  We hitched a ride on a shuttle bus to the monastery with Traventuria Tours (www.traventuria.bg), a company that also offers other tours around the area.  The shuttle bus provided us with a driver, not a guide; however our driver Orlin was amazing and offered up a ton of great information about Bulgaria, the Monastery, dining options and anything and everything else we wanted to know (ie the Communist party’s mandate for building many hiking trails). The monastery is truly not to be missed. Its design is incredibly unique and has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it. Not to mention the location of the monastery high in the Rila Mountains makes the approach all the more enchanting. Orlin also took us on a great hike into the incredibly lush mountains that we would have never found ourselves and  to a local restaurant that served tasty fresh trout.  If you find yourself in Sofia and need a quick day trip out of the city to breathe some fresh mountain air, we recommend you to go to the Rila Monastery with Traventuria.

While we left Bulgaria too soon and can certainly see us spending more time in the surprisingly beautiful mountain ranges in the future, our Balkan adventure continues as we head to Macedonia.