Sofia Apartments

I would be dishonest if I did not write a blurb about Sofia's apartments. Plain and simple, they are ugly, rundown, eyes sores. There are not just a few but most, miles and miles of them. I have written about the beautiful history of the churches here, but Bulgaria is still a second world country and it is very visible. Today we drove up to Saint Ivan Rilski Monastery. We took a hostel bus out of town. (Yes, we met in a pot smoking hippy joint...a hostel. That was an education for Miriam in itself, but it was cheap and decent transportation!) It took a full 20-40 minutes just to drive to the outskirts of town. The entire town all the way to the end was full of 10-15 story high rise apartments. The apartments were concrete and stucco. Many windows are blown out or covered with cloth and laundry strung out to dry. The stucco is peeling in most all of them and unoriginal graffiti is the norm covering the lower floor outdoor walls. The amazing thing is that even with all this poverty there is not a lot of real violent crime. It is mostly theft and scams.

Before we came here we thought it was only the Roma's (gypsies) that lived in this sort of housing. But, it is almost all of Sofia! The difference is that the Roma areas are filthy, not just run-down. We have been informed that about 80% of the population lives in "the blocks" as they call the high rise apartments. Average pay here in Sofia is about 1300 lev which translates to about $750. It is amazing that people can live off that amount. Food and clothes are inexpensive, at least half of what they would be in America or perhaps less.

There is a very modern 4 story mall full of new construction, windows, granite floors and escalators, next door to our hotel. When one walks in the doors they can pretend they live in a modern city. It is surreal.

We are in Plovdiv now. It is much nicer, only about 70% of the buildings look like this instead of 90%.

These photos were taken from the window of our 14th floor hotel room. The hotel was very new and modern. These apartments were just across the street. These pictures are mild compared with most.

There are miles and miles of concrete high-rise apartments.

Ivan Rilski Monastery. The dogs were very sweet.

Bell Tower at the Monastery, from around years 1400-1600's

Fresco. Can you pick out which Bible story is depicted? We had fun trying to figure them out.

A walk in the woods. This photo is dedicated to Mike Schaar who we took the photo for. We passed cabins like this for rent in the Balkans! Next time....

Creek

Nice Selfie!