Blagoevgrad by Jessica Barcelos

Day 1  03.08.2010


Today we arrived here in Blagoevgrad about 10am/11am. We took the train in Sofia and we took about 2h30min to arrive here. The trip was very nice, the train was adapted for this kind of long trip. We took a good part of the time studying Portuguese, because I was so anxious and couldn`t sleep since last night before we meet us to go to the train station, and laughting a lot with all the jokes that the Chinese girls was doing all the time. Then we arrived soon in Blagoevgrad, and Nick ( work in AIESEC and is organizing the project with the others too) and Tania waiting for us to pick us up to the place we will stay here. We took one bus in the train station and arrived in the Grandfather`s Nick lived ( at least was what I understood). Here we have everything we need : kitchen, beds, bathroom( there is a window inside the bathroom, I couldn`t believe when I saw it) , etc.

We were very tired because of the trip, but had a lot of things to do. We just have time to leave our backpacks and suitcases and go to the bus station where we will take another bus to go to Rila Monastery. This place is almost a small city, near Blagoevgrad that we can find a beautiful church and all the constructions work so hard with a lot of details. When we arrived there, needed to dress a kind of mantle to hide our shoulders. Because in their religion there is a prohibition to show some parts of our body as shoulders, legs etc. After we dressed it, we could come in inside and enjoy the beautiful church and all the huge work in that builds. It`s difficult to describe it because it wasn’t just one more beautiful church, is one more amazing church but with the mountains around it. Really wasn’t so difficult to take good pictures, everything was so beautiful and interesting one more time. After we spent a time visiting inside the church and taking pictures, we went eat a sweet bread that is a traditional food offered here. Is a kind of fried bread that we eat with powdered sugar. Delicious and cheap :)

We finished our tourism in Rila Monastery, take back the bus to arrive so fast in the room to take shower and rest. And, of course, enjoy our kitchen. We cooked pasta with vegetables and chicken made by Katherina and Dasha! It was a tired and hot day, but view around the mountains is compensator.

Tomorrow we will leave Blagoevgrad at 10am and go the Bansko .



Good Night . 22h41 – Blagoevgrad

Jessica Barcelos