A picture of the chapelLiving quarters?One of the frescos at the chapelThe monastery from the outside
So yesterday, the owner of the hostel I'm staying at right now, which is a different one than before, asked me if I was interested in going on this tour to a monastery. Since I had done hardly anything but studying since I came to Sofia, I didn't ask many questions and just agreed to be in the common area by 9 am this morning. So then me, the owner, who is a super friendly girl from Ukraine, and three other guests got into a car and drove to the monastery, which is an eastern orthodox one. For more info about the place click the link in the heading. The monastery itself is surrounded by high walls and covered in religios frescos, which are quite impressive. Unfortunately, one is not allowed to take pictures of the inside. As soon as we had seen everything we went to get some Bulgarian Donuts and then followed a smaller path down to a secluded cemetary that we had a look at.
The holy spring that cleans your body
Once we had seen everything around there we took a short drive to another place, from where we hiked to a cave where Saint Ivan of Rila had lived as a hermit. There was a small chapel there as well, and next to it the entrance to the cave. It was very narrow and there was hardly enough light to take pictures. The place where that man spent his days had the size of a small room. The second exit, which went up, was again so narrow that one could just fit through. According to the common belief, when you enter that cave your soul will be puriefied and you will leave all your bad traits behind once you leave. So I guess I can count myself lucky and pure now :D. From there, another five minute walk took us to a spring of holy water, which did the same to our body that the cave had done to our souls. Also, we left a small note with a wish behind, and we shall see if it comes true...
The way up the hill we tookThe strange soil formationsThe view over the town
Since everybody agreed that we should do even more hiking, we then drove to another place that had the strangest formations of earth and rocks around it. Basically, you would get columns of earth that would be held together by a rock sitting on top of them. Wind and water would wash away the soil around the rock, but by some mechanism that I don't know the rock would keep the soil underneath in its place, until it sat on a multiple meters high column. We walked around there for a while, taking pictures and enjoying the sun.
And now we are back, having a beer, sitting in the common area and just chillin'. Tomorrow I'll have a look at javascript, which almost completes my webdesign crashcourse. After having a closer look at PHP I should then be able to go deeper into a more stable, useful and sofisticated design of this site
