Hi
I recently started receiving your emails.
Thank you for taking the time to share your trip to Bulgaria. I know absolutely nothing about it and have really enjoyed reading about it.
Regards Crawford
Rosemary Kneipp
October 3rd, 2013 at 12:29 am
Hi Crawford, thank you for commenting. Before we went to Sofia, I tried to find more detailed information and photos on the city and they all seemed to be the same – the Nevski and Sofia churches – so I wanted to fill that gap. I still have to write about Plovdiv where we met up with our home exchange hosts and their daughter which made our stay in Bulgaria much more enriching.
Fascinating! What would you call the architectural style? Moorish Italianate with a touch of Romanesque thrown in for good measure? Are all the interiors painted or is some of it mosaic? Such a shame no photos allowed. Did they indicate why? (My guess is either security or because photographers cause bottlenecks.)
What a terrific coincidence with the tour company!
I’m not so surprised that everyone has vines. Bulgarian wine is excellent (the reds anyway). We used to buy it from time to time in London.
And I’m going to be naughty and point out that you have fallen into a false friend trap, using ‘fastidious’ in the French sense, not the English. Tedious is the word you are looking for 🙂
Rosemary Kneipp
October 3rd, 2013 at 9:13 am
Thanks, Susan, I got rid of the fastidious! I think I use that quite often …
I’m not convinced the word is really “Renaissance”. Revival might be more appropriate but Renaissance is what’s used in the Unesco description. It’s an amazing combination, isn’t it?
The churches inside are usually completely covered with murals, frescoes, icons and iconostases. I don’t remember seeing tiling anywhere in fact. Some of the murals in Boyana, the later ones, if I remember correctly, were tempura.
I think photography is forbidden for religious reasons. It’s the priests that suddenly appear from nowhere and say “no photos”. It seemed disrespectful to insist. We were free to take them in the art gallery, for example.
butcherbird
October 5th, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Sounds lovely – I’ll keep this in mind if ever I get there!
Plamena
October 26th, 2013 at 2:14 am
I am not surprised this was your best day in Bulgaria. You stayed at the worst part of the city, where illegal immigrants, gypsies and some poor old women live- difficult to find worse than that, or ok- the gypsy ghetto is worse. When you said in your previous posts that on Vitoshka people are dressed differently- well, yeah, those are the average, normal people ;), the illegals, gypsies and the rest of the people at your place are at the bottom of society, it is hard to expect from them to dress well, to keep clean around their place (it is great if they even have a job)
It is interesting to see how choosing the bad neighbourhood can completely drive you out of the real city life. I am passing to the next blog posts about Plovdiv, let’s see how you perceived the clean, charming, and renewed city 🙂
Rosemary Kneipp
October 26th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
I certainly agree that if we’d been staying in the centre of Sofia we wouldn’t have had the same initial impressions, but that was our experience. However, as I said, Sofia grew on us with time and maybe we needed the initial impresssion to help us appreciate the city as a whole. Stay tuned for Plovdiv!
[…] Hungary and Switzerland, was undoubtedly my best holiday ever. We also unexpectedly went to Sofia and Plovdiv (which reminds me I still have a post to write […]
Hi
I recently started receiving your emails.
Thank you for taking the time to share your trip to Bulgaria. I know absolutely nothing about it and have really enjoyed reading about it.
Regards Crawford
Hi Crawford, thank you for commenting. Before we went to Sofia, I tried to find more detailed information and photos on the city and they all seemed to be the same – the Nevski and Sofia churches – so I wanted to fill that gap. I still have to write about Plovdiv where we met up with our home exchange hosts and their daughter which made our stay in Bulgaria much more enriching.
Fascinating! What would you call the architectural style? Moorish Italianate with a touch of Romanesque thrown in for good measure? Are all the interiors painted or is some of it mosaic? Such a shame no photos allowed. Did they indicate why? (My guess is either security or because photographers cause bottlenecks.)
What a terrific coincidence with the tour company!
I’m not so surprised that everyone has vines. Bulgarian wine is excellent (the reds anyway). We used to buy it from time to time in London.
And I’m going to be naughty and point out that you have fallen into a false friend trap, using ‘fastidious’ in the French sense, not the English. Tedious is the word you are looking for 🙂
Thanks, Susan, I got rid of the fastidious! I think I use that quite often …
I’m not convinced the word is really “Renaissance”. Revival might be more appropriate but Renaissance is what’s used in the Unesco description. It’s an amazing combination, isn’t it?
The churches inside are usually completely covered with murals, frescoes, icons and iconostases. I don’t remember seeing tiling anywhere in fact. Some of the murals in Boyana, the later ones, if I remember correctly, were tempura.
I think photography is forbidden for religious reasons. It’s the priests that suddenly appear from nowhere and say “no photos”. It seemed disrespectful to insist. We were free to take them in the art gallery, for example.
Sounds lovely – I’ll keep this in mind if ever I get there!
I am not surprised this was your best day in Bulgaria. You stayed at the worst part of the city, where illegal immigrants, gypsies and some poor old women live- difficult to find worse than that, or ok- the gypsy ghetto is worse. When you said in your previous posts that on Vitoshka people are dressed differently- well, yeah, those are the average, normal people ;), the illegals, gypsies and the rest of the people at your place are at the bottom of society, it is hard to expect from them to dress well, to keep clean around their place (it is great if they even have a job)
It is interesting to see how choosing the bad neighbourhood can completely drive you out of the real city life. I am passing to the next blog posts about Plovdiv, let’s see how you perceived the clean, charming, and renewed city 🙂
I certainly agree that if we’d been staying in the centre of Sofia we wouldn’t have had the same initial impressions, but that was our experience. However, as I said, Sofia grew on us with time and maybe we needed the initial impresssion to help us appreciate the city as a whole. Stay tuned for Plovdiv!
It certainly ranks among my favourites.
[…] initial impression of Rila Monastery built halfway up a mountain and surrounded by forest is quite […]
[…] Hungary and Switzerland, was undoubtedly my best holiday ever. We also unexpectedly went to Sofia and Plovdiv (which reminds me I still have a post to write […]