Archive for the 'BG History' Category

In Honor of Dr. King

Since most of you had yesterday off to celebrate/memorialize Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his role in the Civil Rights Movement, I thought I would do a serious post (gasp!) on the race relations here in Bulgaria. In living here, where there is almost no desire to integrate the “minority” population, I have a […]

Chestita Nova Godina 2007!!

Happy New Year! And welcome to the E.U, Bulgaria! For a variety of reasons, there was a gi-normous party out on the streets of Sofia on New Year’s Eve. Firstly, New Year’s is THE holiday here. Since there was no Christmas during the 50 years of Communism, the big celebration around here was New Year’s […]

Rila-y Beautiful!

As promised, a recap on our trip to Rila Monastery… Of course, first you must know a little history (click here or here for more in depth history) of the place. In the 10th Century, a hermit named John lived in a cave and prayed near to where Rila is now located. The scholars who […]

We *heart* Plovdiv.

Plovdiv should be called P-love-div. It is such a beautiful city. We loved visiting, and we will definitely return! Some Plovdiv background: Plovdiv is the second largest city in Bulgaria, second behind Sofia (where we live). The Ottoman Empire (the Turks) controlled Bulgaria for 500 years, until the Russians helped free Bulgaria from Turkish rule […]

The End of Our History Lessons

*Kids–this is probably going to be boring reading for you, so you may want to go check out my pictures or solve the math problem instead. Well, this may seem weird to you, but I must end (for now) my small series of history lessons. Two times now, I have had strange people write long […]

History of Bulgaria, Part 1: Pre-History

I would be remiss in my duties if I did not spend some amount of blogging time/space to recount the history of this fine country. But, like most countries in Europe, the history is thousands and thousands of years old. And I would hate to bore you. So, I will give you snippets of the […]

Who is Aleksander Nevski and why is a church named after him?

Last weekend, Mark and I set out to find the glorious Nevski church, one of the most famous landmarks here in Sofia. I spent all 7 of my college years (I’m including my Master’s degree—I didn’t just go through college slowly) at a Catholic University, so I have developed a love for giant, overly decorated […]