Bulgaria

Our tour through Bulgaria, primarily the Rhodope Mountains was quite beautiful if nothing else. The goal of the trip was to help some people from the states come up with a video and other media to help promote their work throughout the mountain region. We traveled all over Bulgaria in an outdated van, but had a great time. The next two weeks here will be spent figuring out what to do with the media we got, such as Bryan making a video. Hopefully it will work out for the best!

Although we had a great time on the trip, I must reemphasize is how we did spend a lot of time in the van. This poor, poor van has been through it a time or two and we did not take it easy. We literally drove up and down mountains the whole time and the van was on the verge of giving up. One time it did over heat, because we had the air on while going up hill! However, this provided amazing photo opportunities of the mountains. We would just see layers and layers of mountains as the drive continued and I can't explain how amazing it was. The last night we were at a great hotel, with an amazing view, including mountains in Greece!

The focus of the trip is working with a Muslim people group. We were able to visit one village which was an interesting experience. Because we were Americans a lot of the ladies were intimidated, the children were shy, and the men were stand-offish. A few of the women who were a little more brave then the rest even approached us asking for money.



The main cash crop of the area is tobacco and they turn the school yard into harvesting area during the summer. They had all types of drying areas set up and were hanging the tobacco from them in the school yard. Most of the people in our group were overly amazed as they had never seen tobacco drying before... Bryan and I however were simply laughing at the fact they had never seen it and were overwhelmed by it. I guess that's part of living in Kentucky.

We also got to visit the mosque and play with some kids who were attending religion class. The teacher had left and they were playing around and tried to entertain us a little bit. They do take English in school and were able to communicate just a little but they were very cute.

We also got to talk to some adults in a different region of Bulgaria. It was very interesting to hear their take on various aspects of life such as religion, family, school, and what is important to them. One thing to keep in mind about this area- they were over taken by the Turks and forced to become Muslim some 500 years ago. They don't know much about their religion, but do follow a little.

They have a lot of fears, but do not mention them out loud. Christians and Muslims live in very close community to each other, but since neither are overly religious, it doesn't seem to have much tension on the outside. However we did find that with different missionaries coming to the area trying to rally the causes the tension is growing. And then there are some areas where it is segregated; either a Muslim or Christian village. This normally stems from animosity and the time when Turks did take over. Many Christian Bulgarians consider the Muslims traders. Therefore, many people are fearful that there will be a crisis as in other countries nearby. On top of those underlying issues, the country was under communism for years, that adds to their skepticism and worry. And now there are a lot of business coming in and capitalizing on their beautiful nature by building ski resorts and hotels causing a water and energy crisis.




So all in all the people we spent the week with are feeling hopeless and overwhelmed, but don't express it often. Hopefully the group we were working with can infiltrate the area and bring a little light into such a dark hopeless place.

Bulgaria was a lot different then the Czech Republic, a little dirtier, people seemed to notice other people (we especially stood out as foreigners), and being in the villages made it feel worlds away from the big city of Prague. But we enjoyed it, ate some great food (lots of shopska salad), got some pottery, and had a great time with the team.



I included a few photos, but as usual, the rest are on our flickr site!

We'll be home in less than two weeks!

-Brittany