Velikden

This weekend was a four-day break from school for the Easter holiday, and I spent it mostly with friends. On Friday I went for a long walk with some friends in Pleven, Saturday I visited Troyan monastery and stayed in Lovech, where I also spent Easter Sunday. The weather was great and it was a good, relaxing weekend.

Troyan is situated about 30 kilometers from Lovech and there's a train between the two that passes along a river, some rocky cliffs and an old Roman fortress. The town itself is very small but like every Bulgarian town has a large pedestrian area lined with cafes. There's also an Ethnographic museum featuring ceramic pottery and vessels used to make Troyan's famous grape brandy. About a ten minute drive from the town is Troyan monastery, which was one of many religious centers that preserved Bulgaria's cultural identity during Ottoman rule (and also hid some of the most famous revolutionaries during the resistance). 

Although smaller and not as lovingly restored as Rila monastery, Troyan has a certain charm to it and its frescoes are just as beautiful. Unfortunately, most of them are covered in centuries' worth of ash from all of the candles burning inside the church. Today visitors must light their candles outside, leaving the tiny interior open to view the icons and relics. One icon, as my friend Martin who grew up in Troyan explained, is a depiction of the Virgin Mary with three silver hands. Every year for the town's festival the priest carries this icon out of the church in a long procession, and people kiss the hands for good luck. 

I stayed in Lovech with Dena to attend a Bulgarian Orthodox service on Saturday night. The midnight vigil is the most important religious event around Easter, with a candlelit procession around the church ending when the priest announces "Christ is Risen!" This marks the end of Lent and the beginning of Easter, a special family holiday. Children paint eggs and knock them against each other to see whose is the strongest. Mostly it's a time to spend time with loved ones, eat and drink. I had the pleasure of meeting some new friends and enjoyed getting to know them. Hopefully we'll get together again soon, or even next year when I'll be teaching in Sofia!

Tsvetnitsa in Lovech

As I already mentioned, Sunday was Tsvetnitsa, or the Bulgarian celebration of flowers. It was also Palm Sunday, which is one week before Easter. If your name comes from any type of flower in Bulgarian, Sunday was your name day. Everyone has a name day, which usually falls on the feast day of a saint. It's kind of like having two birthdays. My students always bring chocolates for the class on their birthdays and name days (which is the opposite of what happens in the U.S.- where other people are supposed to bring you presents on your birthday). I like it, although some of the other teachers were joking that it's easy to overindulge with so many name days in the spring!

For Tsvetnitsa I decided to visit my friend Dena in Lovech, which is the next closest town to Pleven (it's much smaller). The town organizes a huge festival every year and it was full of crowds. There was a stage set up with Bulgarian folk dancing and singing, lots of craft vendors selling ceramics and Easter decorations, and of course, plenty of kebap stands. It was a gorgeous day and fun to see so many people turn up for the event. I bought a souvenir wooden egg painted green with flowers. Eggs are, of course, a symbol of Easter and families decorate them next weekend in preparation for the holiday. People crack the eggs against each other to see whose is the strongest and doesn't break. This is an Orthodox tradition and the winner is supposed to have the best health for the rest of the year. 

Another special Easter tradition is a sweet bread called kozunak- there are many different types- some are filled with marmalade, chocolate or raisins. I tried one made with lokum, or Turkish delight. The most traditional version of this bread is plain, and the bakeries run out of it almost as soon as they bake it around Easter weekend. The special thing about this bread is that it has a lot of eggs and the dough is much sweeter than normal bread. 

There's only one week left until Easter and we get a mini-break from school. Dena and I are planning to visit Troyan, a small mountain town not far from here that has a famous monastery and craft studio. I might even tag along to a midnight vigil at the Orthodox church with her on Saturday night. Now that we're back from spring break it seems like every week we have a day off or there's some holiday coming up. Hopefully that means I'll get to do some more traveling around Bulgaria!

Spring Holidays

This week I've been noticing a lot of preparation for some big holidays and traditions coming up in Bulgaria. In the town center, where there used to be stands selling martenitsi over a month ago, there are now tables covered in Easter baskets, toys and other decorations. This weekend there are two holidays: Lazarov Den on Saturday, after St. Lazarus, and Tsvetnitsa, or flower day, on Sunday. Both have religious and folkloric connections. Lazarov Den is celebrated by young girls wearing traditional folk costumes who go from house to house singing songs and dancing. Although this custom is now more of an event for children, in the past it was considered to be an important rite of passage for girls looking to get married. Tsvetnitsa is known as Palm Sunday throughout the Christian world, and has the same associations in Bulgaria but with a twist, including flower wreaths and willow branches. At our church back home my mother used to buy palms to bring to mass, after which we would fold them into crosses and take them home. The Biblical significance goes along with the story of Easter, which is why Palm Sunday is always the week before. In Bulgaria the willow branches replace the palms and they're put outside of doors to welcome good luck and health. I'm sure there are lots of other details I'm leaving out but that's why I'm determined to see both of these events for myself! I'll visit Lovech, a town about 30 kilometers from here, to visit another English teacher and check out their town carnival held in honor of Tsvetnitsa. Next Sunday, of course, is Easter (Velikden). This year is one of the few when the Orthodox and non-Orthodox calendars coincide. Easter is one of the two major holidays in Bulgaria and I'm looking forward to being a part of this special celebration. Apart from dying eggs, there are also special foods associated with Easter like kozunak, a sweet bread made with raisins or marmalade. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing that weekend but I will definitely post updates with photos of all the festivities. 

Zdravo, Makedonija!

I was very impressed and surprised by Macedonia. The language was really similar to Bulgarian- enough to get by and understand most interactions we needed to but not enough to know everything. As our hotel manager in Ohrid explained, Macedonians and Bulgarians can understand one another up to a certain point, but the fact is that there are some words in both languages which are entirely different. This is because despite all the discussion and nationalistic arguments to the contrary, Macedonia has its own history and its language reflects the nuances of its culture. For example, being a former Yugoslav republic, Macedonians use the same word for “thanks” as in Serbo-Croatian. Some of the signs we read in Skopje and even the travel map we were given were all written in Albanian, no doubt because of the capital’s close proximity to Kosovo. The food was nearly the same as what we would normally find in Bulgaria, but this is true of most countries throughout the region. Burek, yogurt, cevapi and ajvar were all familiar and available everywhere.

We took a bus from Sofia to Skopje, spent a couple of days there before heading out to Ohrid, about three hours away, and then had a stopover in Bitola before getting on a night bus back over the Bulgarian border. You can see the most important sights in Macedonia in a few days, but I’m glad we had the extra time to relax and enjoy the break. There weren’t really many tourists and the weather wasn’t bad- mostly overcast with a few light showers. But it was a lot warmer than it has been recently and there were plenty of sidewalk cafes to sit down in on the wide pedestrian streets.

The center of Skopje is under a lot of construction at the moment but you can tell that when it’s all finished it will be a very charming and attractive city. Most of the sights are close to the main square and medieval stone bridge that spans the river. On one side is the carsija, or old Ottoman district, with its bazaars, Turkish baths and mosques. The other side is the new town, with lots of malls, cafes and churches. There is a gigantic neon cross perched atop one of the hills, something that reminded me of Boise, Idaho. Because it’s so close to the Kosovo border, accommodation and food in Skopje are much higher than other parts of the country. But we managed to find a decent hostel offering private rooms not far from the bus station. My favorite part of Skopje was definitely the old town because it was such a contrast visually to what I’m used to here. I know that when I visit Turkey it will be more of the same but I really love just wandering around and admiring the architecture (especially at one of the old baths which had been turned into an art gallery).

Ohrid is a small town on a lake nestled between the mountains near the Albanian border. There’s a beautiful lakefront path, a small harbor and a medieval fortress looming over the old town. I read from one website that Ohrid is home to 365 churches- one for every day of the year. While I didn’t count so many, there were a few breathtaking ones we visited, like the one overlooking a cliff on the path up to the fortress. Another church was situated amongst the ruins of Ohrid’s medieval university and may have housed the remains of St. Clement, a well-known and loved Orthodox saint. The walls and towers of Csar Samoil’s fortress provided an unbeatable view of the town and the lake. Not far away was the less-than-impressive ancient theater and archaeological museum. Most buildings in the old town were in a similar style to the Bulgarian revival period houses I’ve seen here. There was also a bazaar area with a few mosques and a thousand year-old tree still standing in one square. The best part about Ohrid was the lake itself. The first evening we arrived we had dinner in a terrace restaurant above a hotel overlooking a gorgeous sunset. It was a perfect getaway, and not too far from home. I loved it and would definitely go back.