Monastery Part 2

I'm back from Istanbul and will post something about that later. Right now I would like to post some photos of the monastery I visited last week. The nave of the church was very black - either due to candles or some sort of fire, but it was undergoing restoration. We were still able to go in and see it, and it was quite nice that there were no tourists who had trekked the six kilometers in the subfreezing temperatures to see it. The cold was not an issue, as the climb was strenuous and we had to do it both ways!

I especially like this one of Christ above the chandelier, which I had to work on to show the proper effect. It was quite macabre but spiritual at the same time.

It was rather interesting to see the restoration paints sitting there as in a proper art studio. As the church was quite beautiful, I'd be interested in going back to see it when the restoration is complete. The church is unique in that the outside of it is also painted. My favorite part of it was the wheel of life, seen below. Click on it to make it bigger and see the stages of life painted there. Nothing like getting eaten by a big fish with sharp teeth.

The monastery had once housed rebels fighting for independence from the Ottomans. It's a shame that landslides from the rocks above destroyed part of the monastery in 1991, but at least the church was spared.

I leave you with a few more photos, including one of the incredible view from the monastery.

The Monastery Part 1

The English guy Tom and I finally got to the monastery, albeit a kind of roundabout way. We left much earlier this time rather than waiting until the waning hours of daylight. Wanting to take a different path, we asked about it and were given another way of getting there. We climbed and climbed a hill along a narrow path that looked more suited for goats than humans, but as we got further along, the path grew closer and closer to the cliffside until we were staring straight down at certain death if we were to slip, and it was muddy.

Not in the mood for death, we chose to climb up the hillside to see if we could find another safer path higher up. Perhaps we had just missed a turn somewhere, we thought, and the real path was up a bit. After all, why would our host send us on such a dangerous trail?

But there was no higher path. We had three options: to follow the cliffside path and hope we didn't slip in the mud, to turn around and start again on the path we had taken on the previous night trip, or to climb the hill up to the summit (in some parts crawling was a better word than climbing) and join the path we had used before. Given that we had already been walking for a half hour, we didn't want to turn around and start again, which would have wasted an hour of precious daylight, so we chose the hill route, which was pretty fun. Since the hillside was so muddy, we had to make use of some of the trees to ease our ascent.

We finally reached a rock formation near the summit that Tom had no problem climbing, as he is quite tall. I, on the other hand, could not possibly scale the thing with my short legs. I stood there for a few minutes wondering how I was going to get up there, looking around at my limited options. I spotted a rock which had broken from the formation, disappeared for a moment, and returned with it, placing it at the base of the formation, which gave me just enough extra height to make it up the rocks.

From there, we found our path and made it to the monastery with no problems getting there...

Halloween

It was a dark and stormy night.

Ok, it wasn't. It was dark and it kind of rained a little at the end, but the evening started out to be quite pleasant when we set off for a nearby monastery. The 6km trail began at the top of Turnovo, and a whole city spread out beneath us until we disappeared around the hill and moved towards the forest. I recalled Halloweens of my youth when we walked through "haunted" forests in the dark and thought it an appropriate day to be taking a dusk hike.

There was a distant sound of what we thought were gunshots, so we made up stories about the gunman in the woods as we continued to walk. It turned out to be a gunboy using a rifle longer than he was at a trapshooting range. We didn't know what was scarier - our gunman story or a child shooting a gun!

After passing the shooting range, we descended into nature, climbing up and down hills, crossing bubbly creeks, and walking over a carpet of yellow lime leaves. Every now and then, the path required a little work to traverse the rocks, but when we reached a peak and could see the city's fortress in the distance, we could catch our breaths and stare at the beautiful sight before us.

Dusk began to fall, putting everything into a cartoon-like state, and the forest came to life. This wasn't entirely pleasant for me, considering I am not a big fan of wild animal encounters and every rock and log was a potential lump of fur to my eyes. I walked with two nature loving guys, however, so that was some comfort.

When dark finally swallowed the last crumbs of the day, the forest became a very black place, though fallen leaves had opened a hole for some of the cloudy night sky to come through. We discussed Brothers Grimm and South American fairytales as if we expected elves and imps to appear on the trail in front of us.

At one point, we encountered a massive boulder perhaps ten feet high that had fallen from the hills above. Each of us immediately saw the same thing - a face in the rock. Not only that, but it was winking at us! Such is the way the eyes work in a darkened forest.

We arrived after 6pm at the monastery, which would have seemed isolated had it not been polluted with the roar of cars on the motorway in the valley below. As the monastery had closed for the day, we sat there a bit and stared at the lighted fortress in the distance before returning to the city by road. Rain began to fall slightly just as we entered the town, but it was still warm so it was not uncomfortable. We ended our Halloween adventure by going to a costume party at a bar filled with university students determined to bring the Halloween tradition to Bulgaria.