Unification Day Holiday

Sofia, Belogradchik, & Skopje, North Macedonia

Things are coming along here in Sofia, Bulgaria. I’m including some shots from recent events.

A couple weeks ago, I ran in front of the Aleksander Nevsky cathedral and noticed a stage had been put up. I didn’t know who was going to be performing. The next night, I was sitting on my couch around 8:30 in the evening and remembered to look it up. I was disappointed to see that I had missed the Sofia Symphony playing alongside two of the surviving “Three Tenors:” Plácido Domingo and Jose Carreras. After turning on a show to watch for the evening, I realized that I had the date wrong and the concert was that evening! So I hopped up, threw the shoes on, and walked the five blocks down to the cathedral where I found standing room only space to the side of the cathedral. Caught the end of the first act and all of the second! Amazing what you can stumble upon in this city.

The next night was a “Rivers of Sofia” festival at South Park. I went with a few friends here to see art exhibitions, lights in the woods, live music, and food trucks. A fun time for sure!

This past weekend was the Unification Day holiday in Bulgaria. Since the holiday landed on a Saturday, people have the following work day off. So on the three day weekend, I took advantage and went to Belogradchik Fortress on a trip put together by Traventuria, a local tour operator.

The tour also included a trip to the nearby Venetsa Caves, also in the northwest region of the country near the Serbian border.

The next day, I joined some teacher friends on a tour to North Macedonia. It’s a 3 hour drive by van and there were three other guys that went with us. Our driver gave us lots of Bulgarian traveling advice. Here’s a random building in Sofia on the way out of town. Lots of murals in town.

Upon arrival to Skopje, the capital city, we got a local tour guide who walked us around the main parts of the city. Most of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in the 1950’s, and in 2011, the government spent a lot of money to rebuild the city how it once was. So they’re modern, older style buildings.

Skopje is also known for being the birth place of Mother Teresa, and there is a museum located where she was baptized as a baby.

There’s an old castle on the hill in the city, which of course, I had to go check out.

The rest of the day consisted of a walk around the bazaar, lunch, and then the drive back.

With Monday off, I joined a friend for a 20k run (yes, I’m trying to convert to metric units now). As one of the coaches for the High School Cross Country team, I’ve got to keep in good running shape. I found a route from my apartment through the city and up into the mountains. It was a beautiful jog through the woods.

After coming out of the woods, we scouted Boyana Church. Known for being one of the most notable sites in all the country. It’s an 11-13th century church. Unfortunately, we didn’t have tickets to go inside.

And just a couple of random photos.