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We have some friends in Bulgaria (Ina and Marty) so we went there a couple of times and we spent a wonderful time. Though Bulgaria is a beautiful country to visit,
Bulgaria 2000
Trucoto2004-02-28 16:14:11
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than any beach in Argentina, naturally. The water is green and blue, but the sand is crowded. Probably this is the most touristic place in Bulgaria, and that tourism is business is something notorious. For the first time in our journey I heard people speaking in several languages, and local people knowing how to speak in English to please the tourists. The hotels are up there, and the prices too. There is seafood, and McDonalds. Totally different from the rest of the country. One thing that surprised me is that topless is something common there. While we hot Latins are supposed to be liberal about these things, we were amazed see all those naked bodies in the beach. We were prepared, somehow, by the fact that the regular Bulgarian girl is very uninhibited to dress, but this was a delicious surprise, I must admit. In any case, we swam in a place with rocks in the sea (and therefore less crowded), and we verified that the water was warm. Another perfect day. Near Varna there is another monastery, this time carved in the rock. There is a big wall of rock almost in front of the sea, and the "monastery" is a horizontal hole drilled in the side of it, of about one meter deep. The monks lived there, and went down only to find some food. A really wild life, bereft of symbols to distract the life of the religious man. I stood there and thought that those monks should necessary be closer to God than their brothers in the regular churches. An ascetic life in the rock, you and the wind and the sea below, that must be something closer to a religious experience, even if you are not a monk. Now there are ladders and banisters there, but when the monks lived there nothing prevented them to fall, and to climb that high using just the hands, mmhh... By the way, the place is called Aladja (Аладжа манастир). Also not far from Varna is the Rider of Madara, a carved horseman in a tall cliff, about a hundred meters high, from 800 AD. We could not see much, because the inscriptions were surrounded by a special construction to keep the rocks from the erosion. And the beautiful journey ended in Varna, and we took the plane to Sofia again, to flight to Hungary. Bulgaria is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever seen, it is just a pity that is a bit closed for tourism. Or not: perhaps the best secrets are to be kept forever...
See photographs from:
Bulgaria Gallery
