On Friday we didn’t have students, but we had to go to
graduation. Longest graduation for 120
some-odd people that I have ever sat through.
It was almost as long as SME’s graduations that graduate nearly 500
kids. Plus, since I only teach 11th
grade, I didn’t even know any of the kids.
I was a nice ceremony, but I wasn’t that invested since I have no
personal connection to any senior. Next
year, I’ll know them all, so that should make it better. Dimitar Berbatov, a Bulgarian player for
Manchester United was the keynote speaker.
Of course, he spoke in Bulgarian, so I didn’t really get anything out of
it, but he seemed to really win the crowd over and the kids were all really
excited that he was coming.
The Belogradhcik Fortress was first constructed in Roman times. Only one side of the fortress had to be
constructed as the 230 ft high rocks protect the back side naturally. It was initially built for surveillance and
not defense, but in the 14th century it was fortified and became an
important stronghold. The Ottomans
captured the fortress in 1396 and expanded it.
It was last used in war during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War.
The fortress is mostly cool because of the giant rocks that
make up the entire back side. These red
sandstone rocks are found all around Belogradchik and are really
impressive. Plus, they have many stories
associated with the shapes of the rocks (Wikipedia has a couple of stories at
the bottom of this
page) After you enter the first gate
of the fortress, you walk through a giant walled courtyard before passing
through a second gate to stairs that lead up to the rocks.
The thing about Bulgaria (and Europe in general, since they
are less law-suit happy than Americans) is that you can go right up to the edge
of these giant rocks (not that I’d recommend it). You can climb and explore an area that in the
US would be roped off and restricted. It
was great. Other than when S almost
couldn’t make it back over from a rock she had climbed onto. From these giant rocks you can see mountains,
the town, other giant rocks, and tons of cute little lizards! J
Challenge #3: Find
Magura Cave. The next morning, we wanted
out to visit Magura Cave. There are
signs pointing the way out of Belogradchik, but you drive and you drive and you
drive and you drive a long way before you see a second sign. This always leads me to believe I’ve made a
wrong turn, but eventually we found it and climbed up the hill to the
entrance.
We emerged from the cave and could overlook Bulgaria’s
largest inland lake, Lake Rabisha. We
then walked back to our car, which took awhile (remember the cave is 2.5 km
long) and then headed back to Sofia. We
only had to stop one lady that was out walking for directions. She instantly said, “Sofia?” and pointed us
in the right direction. Once again,
apparently it is easy to spot tourists in that area (ok, and we were American,
so that might have given us away as well).
We made it back and had Monday to relax before
school on Tuesday.
After graduation, we began our 3 day weekend! S, A, and I rented a car and heady out of
Sofia towards Belogradchik. We took a
rather windy mountain road on the way there that was fine, but gave me a
headache from the back seat. Although
the scenery was great, we decided to take the main highway home. A couple of hours late we were in Montana (no
not that
Montana, this Montana)
and an hour later, we began seeing the first of the amazing rock formations
that Belogradchik is famous for.
Challenge #1: Figure
out how to get to our hotel. Our hotel
was on a one-way street, so even though we found the street, we couldn’t go
down it. Challenge met: We sent down a partially dirt, super steep
hill that we’re not entirely sure we were supposed to drive on, to get there. Hotel Madonna was really cute and had the
most powerfully flushing toilet I have ever encountered. If you didn’t put the lid down, it would
splash out onto the floor (ewww).
Challenge #2: Find
Belogradchik Fortress. This wasn’t that
big of a challenge as it had pretty good signs, but at one point we were
confused. However, a car we let passed
us was honking and had every single person inside pointing up a road giving us
directions. Apparently, it’s a small
enough town that it’s easy to spot the confused tourists.
The Belogradhcik Fortress was first constructed in Roman times. Only one side of the fortress had to be
constructed as the 230 ft high rocks protect the back side naturally. It was initially built for surveillance and
not defense, but in the 14th century it was fortified and became an
important stronghold. The Ottomans
captured the fortress in 1396 and expanded it.
It was last used in war during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. 
The fortress is mostly cool because of the giant rocks that
make up the entire back side. These red
sandstone rocks are found all around Belogradchik and are really
impressive. Plus, they have many stories
associated with the shapes of the rocks (Wikipedia has a couple of stories at
the bottom of this
page) After you enter the first gate
of the fortress, you walk through a giant walled courtyard before passing
through a second gate to stairs that lead up to the rocks. 
The thing about Bulgaria (and Europe in general, since they
are less law-suit happy than Americans) is that you can go right up to the edge
of these giant rocks (not that I’d recommend it). You can climb and explore an area that in the
US would be roped off and restricted. It
was great. Other than when S almost
couldn’t make it back over from a rock she had climbed onto. From these giant rocks you can see mountains,
the town, other giant rocks, and tons of cute little lizards! J
After we finished up at the fortress we hiked a trail that
went all the way around the back of the fortress and the rocks. We saw an old outdoor theatre and managed to
eventually make it back to downtown Belogradchik, which is not where our car
was. So, we then hiked back up a set of
stairs to the fortress parking lot. We
drove back to our hotel and then headed down to the restaurant for dinner.
We ate a lot. We also
played UNO. I got progressively colder
as the night went on, but that didn’t stop me from getting ice cream. I just put my jacket hood up and powered through.
Challenge #3: Find
Magura Cave. The next morning, we wanted
out to visit Magura Cave. There are
signs pointing the way out of Belogradchik, but you drive and you drive and you
drive and you drive a long way before you see a second sign. This always leads me to believe I’ve made a
wrong turn, but eventually we found it and climbed up the hill to the
entrance.
Magura Cave is 2.5 km long and supposedly has Neolithic cave
paintings, although we didn’t see them.
Of course, we didn’t take the guided tour since it was in Bulgarian and
my Bulgarian currently enables me to understand about 1 word per sentence,
sometimes 2. However, I could still
appreciate that the cave was gigantic!
The ceilings were so high and it was really impressive and wet, which
brings me to…
Challenge #4: Do not
fall on butt inside cave. The path
through the cave was made of some sort of limestone rocks as were the steps and
since it is a cave, they were wet and slick!
We made extensive use of the handrails and walked like we were extremely
old ladies and managed to escape injury.
The cave also had bats.
A told me she did a project on bats in the 4th grade. I asked her what she could tell us about
them. She said that she did a project on
them in the 4th grade.
We emerged from the cave and could overlook Bulgaria’s
largest inland lake, Lake Rabisha. We
then walked back to our car, which took awhile (remember the cave is 2.5 km
long) and then headed back to Sofia. We
only had to stop one lady that was out walking for directions. She instantly said, “Sofia?” and pointed us
in the right direction. Once again,
apparently it is easy to spot tourists in that area (ok, and we were American,
so that might have given us away as well).
