In this first video on “Theological English”, Jonathan Dunne looks at the line, which represents the ego in English (I) and the number 1. Countable nouns are nouns that can have a line drawn around them – a book, a car, a tree. They are accompanied by the indefinite article, a/an. When God made man, he in effect made a countable noun – he drew a line around us and gave us free will. We do the same with products of the earth – we draw a line around them in the form of packaging – but we do this not to give things free will, but to trade in them, to sell them to each other. We appropriate for ourselves the role of author (things begin with us), when in fact we are translators (things pass through us).
To access all the videos in this course, use the drop-down menu “Theological English (Video Course)” above. The videos can be watched on Vimeo and YouTube.
The longest river to run entirely in Bulgaria is the River Iskar, which rises in Rila Mountain and flows into the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania. Geologically, it is the oldest river in the Balkan Peninsula. Plenty of reason to admire it, then.
North of Sofia, it forms the Iskar Gorge, a fact that is taken advantage of by the railway, which runs alongside the river. The first major town heading north from Sofia is Svoge, famous for its chocolate factory, and from here Dobravitsa Waterfall is only twelve kilometres away!
So expect a windy road that follows the course of the river, with some spectacular views. To get there from Sofia, you need to go round on the ring road to Novi Iskar and then follow the signs for Svoge and Mezdra. Svoge is 38 kilometres north of Sofia, so the distance to the waterfall is 50 kilometres, but because of the twists and turns the journey takes about an hour and a half.
When you enter Svoge, do not follow the signs for the centre, which is left of the main road. Keep going and turn left when you reach the sign for Iskrets. You will pass the chocolate factory on your left and now you are following the course of another river, the Iskretska. Drive through Iskrets, but before you exit the town, take a right turn for Breze (5 km). This takes you up into the hills.
Pass an abandoned factory, and shortly after you ‘enter’ Breze (though the village itself is further on) you will see a dirt track leaving the road on your right. This is signposted for the waterfall and for the village of Dobravitsa. You can either park the car here, next to the main road, or risk driving your car up to the village. The distance from the main road to the waterfall is 3.9 km and takes about an hour and twenty minutes. If you drive to the village, the distance to the waterfall is 1.7 km and takes about forty minutes.
Immediately as you enter the village of Dobravitsa, the track veers to the right (the village is ahead of you). Follow this track for 800 m. When the track forks, turn left. The waterfall is another 900 m. There are some wonderful views over the hills, and you can see back to Iskrets.
As you approach the waterfall, you will see a remarkable rock formation on top of the hill in front of you, forming the Greek letter omega (Ω). Follow the rock with your eyes as it descends to the left. The waterfall is at the end. As the track veers back on itself, you leave the track and continue on a path to the waterfall, which is directly in front of you.
On your return through Iskrets, do consider stopping at Iskrets Monastery, which is in the grounds of the Tsar Ferdinand I Hospital, a specialized lung hospital. There is another beautiful waterfall just north of Svoge, near the village of Bov. The autumn colours here are amazing! But this might be better left for another day!
The Iskar Gorge with the railway running alongside it (in the background is Vitosha, the mountain south of Sofia).
The River Iskar as it passes through Svoge.
The dirt track leaving the road in Breze (the yellow sign is for the waterfall, the blue sign is for the village of Dobravitsa).
The dirt track leading to the village of Dobravitsa.
At the entrance to the village, the track veers right (again, the waterfall is signposted).
An island in the sky.
Here, the track forks – turn left (again, the waterfall is signposted).
The Omega formation on the hill in front of you.
Ice in a rut!
The waterfall in front of you.
Arriving at the waterfall.
The waterfall close up.
When we were there, ice kept cracking off the rock and landing in the water near us!
I don’t think we’re particularly interested in the other person’s viewpoint. We like to listen to our own voice, to something that is familiar. If we had a real interest in the other person’s viewpoint, we would be avid readers of foreign literature in translation, but we’re not. Translated titles are supposed to make up only 3% of new publications in the U.S., according to the blog Three Percent. Attention paid to foreign titles in mainstream media is scarce. And translators put themselves at great risk in order to devote themselves to crossing that line between one culture and another.
It is an irony because the translator, who believes in intercultural understanding, is more or less forced to live on the land that separates cultures, in no man’s land. The translator is no man. They don’t exist. They don’t receive a salary, paid holidays, a pension. If they are paid (and there is often an expectation that they won’t be), they are often paid after the project is complete, begging the question, “How do they live while they are working?”
We prefer to hear our own voice and to believe that we are right. After all, what’s the alternative? The idea of believing that we are not right would so undermine us that we reject it out of hand. It cannot be. It is impossible. For us to hold on to our sanity, we have to be right.
There is now a crisis between Ukraine and Russia, a crisis that has been a long time in the making. Conflicts arise when people (because I don’t think anybody else does this) draw lines. When you draw a line, implying that you are an author, that something starts or ends with you (a false premise, we are translators, things pass through us), then you rely on two words to maintain the status quo (as you have established it): LAW and WAR. It is curious that these two words are obviously connected by the phonetic pair (pair of consonants pronounced in the same part of the mouth) l-r. The trouble is people don’t know their phonetic pairs, so they don’t see this.
I could give more examples. The reverse of LIVE is EVIL, one path open to us in this life – to do evil. But if we take the ego, “I” in English, and remove it from LIVE (that is, if we count down from “I” to “O”, from 1 to 0), we get LOVE, the other path open to us in this life. Live: evil-love. I study these connections in my book Seven Brief Lessons on Language.
The line that is the ego in English (I) is the same line that separates countries, properties, rich and poor, whatever social divide you care to think about. And where there is a line, there is conflict. Which is why the translator works so hard to engage with the other (OTHER, by the way, is connected to LOVE and THEOS), to cross that line, even though they know they cannot make a living.
I wrote an article at the time of the outbreak of the Covid pandemic about the connection between where the pandemic is said to have started, WUHAN, and the word HUMAN (turn the w upside down and rearrange the letters). Also, between COVID and VOICE (rearrange the letters and take a step in the alphabet, d-e). Human voice. Was Covid, a terrible disease causing pain and suffering in the world, meant somehow to bring us to our senses, to make us pay more attention to the vulnerable, to make us work together in the face of a common enemy? I don’t know, but the connections are there.
Now, this morning, looking at the word UKRAINE on my phone, I suddenly realized there was a very clear connection. It involves the similarity between a capital I and a lower case l. It can then be seen that UKRAINE with the letters rearranged spells NUCLEAR (c and k have the same pronunciation).
There is meaning in words, even though we don’t usually (choose to) see it. There is meaning in words, but, like all things spiritual, it is slightly hidden: a step in the alphabet (d-e), a phonetic pair (l-r), pairs of letters that are similar (i-l, m-w)… You just have to turn a corner.
Why is it that the word NUCLEAR can be found in UKRAINE? Is this a reference to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 that affected not just Ukraine, but other countries as well? I certainly wouldn’t want to think that the current crisis between Ukraine and Russia could lead to nuclear war. Such an outcome would be unthinkable.
Another clear connection with UKRAINE relates to another phonetic pair: g-k. If we apply the phonetic pair g-k to the word UKRAINE, we will see that in the middle of the country is GRAIN. Two dangers have been highlighted during the conflict in Ukraine: the danger of damage to nuclear plants, and the danger to world food supplies if grain is not exported. It is interesting that both these words are found in the name of the country. And if we take away GRAIN, we are left with two letters: U-E, which could be a reference to the European Union (EU).
We need to consider the other. We need to hear the human voice, the voice of the other. And that involves not judging people on the basis of our own criteria and actually trying to get to know them, to understand their motives. That hasn’t happened very much between Ukraine, Russia and the West. Perhaps now would be a good time to start. To see what we have in common instead of spitting at each other over the fence. And to hire a translator who will enable us to hear what the other is saying.
Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Bulgaria, Ovchartsi Waterfall is named after a Bulgarian maiden, Goritsa, who lived in the local village and was betrothed to a shepherd called Yovitsa. This was during the time of Turkish slavery, Ottoman rule in Bulgaria during the fourteenth-nineteenth centuries. The Turkish overlord or bey was struck by Goritsa’s beauty (it must have been a slightly terrifying time to be beautiful) and ordered his servants to fetch her for him. Goritsa took to the hills, in search of Yovitsa, who was watching his flocks, but the servants reached her before she could get to him, so she threw herself off the cliff. Ever since then, the waterfall (39 metres) and the river have borne her name.
The waterfall is above the village of Ovchartsi on the northern slopes of Rila Mountain. To get there from Sofia is about an hour and a quarter by car. You take the motorway to Greece (Kulata) and leave the motorway at the signs for Dupnitsa. You actually leave the motorway seven kilometres before Dupnitsa and follow the old road into Dupnitsa, past a succession of second-hand car dealers. On entering Dupnitsa, you take a right just before the OMV petrol station, signposted Sapareva Banya. You then follow this road, ignore a left turn that is signposted Plovdiv and Samokov and continue to the next set of lights, where you turn left for Sapareva Banya and Panichishte. If you take the road for Plovdiv and Samokov, you will have a very picturesque ride alongside the northern slopes of Rila, but you will not be able to reach the villages that nestle on these slopes. This is why you continue to the next set of lights and turn left here. This road takes you through the villages of Samoranovo and Resilovo to Ovchartsi.
In Ovchartsi, head to the central square, where there is a town hall and a children’s playground. Turn right on the near side of the square and go straight up the steep road in front of you, which bears right at the top, leading to a fountain and a place to park. From here, continue on foot. There is an ecopath to the waterfall, and it only takes about fifteen minutes to get there. Admire the view. When we went in February, there was a lot of ice, which made the path very slippery and people were having difficulty going up and down (with the inevitable laughter).
You can also make your way down to the river below the waterfall, but to do this you have to leave the path and climb down a slightly steep slope. Heading upstream, you will come to the lower part of the waterfall, with a wonderful view of the rocks above and trees silhouetted against the light.
Between Resilovo and Ovchartsi is the Resilovo Convent of the Holy Protection. It is a short drive from the road. The nature is beautiful, and the church has stunning frescoes. You can light a candle for your loved ones and enjoy the view back to Sofia!
The road into Dupnitsa, flanked by second-hand car dealers. Rila Mountain is right in front of you.
The fountain where you can park the car.
The steps at the start of the ecopath, with information boards in Bulgarian and English.
A peak in the distance.
A second, longer flight of steps.
With a wooden bridge at the top, leading to the waterfall.
Ovchartsi Waterfall.
The upper waterfall.
A sign with the story of Goritsa (Goritza).
The lower waterfall, seen from above. From here, the rock resembles the head of a young woman.
Beautiful February cloud formations.
The ice rink!
The river below the waterfall.
The lower waterfall. The rock now resembles the head of an old woman.
Directly above the rock, note the figure in white against a black background that seems to be jumping, thus confirming the legend.
The whole waterfall, seen from below.
Ovchartsi Town Hall (which has pictures of the waterfall).
01 Holy Trinity, Church of the Nativity (Arbanasi). The Father embraces the Son. The Father represents eternity; the Son, time. His wings resemble an hourglass. His wings with his torso resemble a heart.
02 Christ Pantocrator, Alino Monastery. Christ’s mouth is slightly ajar, because he is the Word. His face resembles an almond; at the top, a crack, where a shoot will appear.
03 Archangel Michael, Berende Church. A very tender image of St Michael. He normally holds a sword. Here he resembles a classical Greek statue.
04 Adam and Eve, Iliyantsi Monastery. Adam and Eve are painted against a background of the Tree of Knowledge and its golden fruit, under which there is darkness. Adam holds up his hand, affirming God’s prohibition; Eve is less sure. Adam even steps on Eve’s foot.
05 Annunciation, Berende Church. The Virgin Mary is with bowed head before God’s will. The dove, by which she will conceive, is aimed at her brain, the rational part of the soul.
06 Nativity, Eleshnitsa Monastery. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ without pain. She has turned away, as if aware of the pain that awaits her. Christ in the manger resembles Christ in the tomb, two births, together with baptism.
07 Presentation in the Temple, Eleshnitsa Monastery. The Mother and Child are separated for the first time, while Simeon the Righteous holds the Child and receives a blessing from him. Mary’s hand moves towards her child like a spider, but they do not belong to each other.
08 Christ among the Doctors, Seslavtsi Monastery. The dome under which Christ sits is like an egg shell – Christ is new life. The folds of his hair resemble the folds of his brain – Christ is heavenly wisdom.
09 Baptism, Preobrazhenie Monastery. Christ’s body in the river Jordan is like a child’s – not only because we have to be like children to enter the kingdom of heaven, but because it shows his complete kenosis – emptying of himself – in this world.
10 Healing of the Sick, Seslavtsi Monastery. Christ’s hand is three-dimensional, like the Holy Trinity. His body is almost transparent, because he has overcome the world. There is a bitterness in his features.
11 Transfiguration, Strupets Monastery. There are two lights in this scene – red created light, and white uncreated light. The latter resembles the pendulum of a clock, gathering time and eternity into one.
12 Raising of Lazarus, Eleshnitsa Monastery. Christ raises Lazarus with his two fingers, which signify his two natures. Lazarus’ shroud resembles a snake. With his resurrection, Christ overcomes the snake.
13 Entry into Jerusalem, Bilintsi Monastery. Christ is wrapped in his clothes like a baby in a nappy. He rides a donkey the way a child would ride a wooden horse. He will enter the labyrinth of the city, from where he will emerge as the Risen Christ.
14 Cursing the Fig Tree, Seslavtsi Monastery. Even when Christ curses, he blesses. See how the tree, which resembles seaweed, shines with his light.
15 Last Supper, Alino Monastery. The disciples’ hands are open on the table. This is because the gesture of giving precedes the gesture of receiving. From now on, they will give the Word of Christ all over the world.
16 Washing the Feet, Seslavtsi Monastery. Christ washes the disciples’ feet, a gesture that mirrors Pilate washing his hands on the following day. In this way, Christ pre-empts Pilate’s question, ‘What is truth?’ Truth is service, not self-justification.
17 Arrest of Christ, Iliyantsi Monastery. It is as if this scene has been taken from a play by Shakespeare. Christ is being pushed from all sides. We can see the swords and helmets of the other people, but not Christ’s hands, because he refuses to protect himself.
18 Crucifixion, Boboshevo Monastery. Christ’s body on the Cross describes a figure of eight. Eight represents eternity, and also the eighth day, the Resurrection.
19 Christ in the Tomb, Malo Malovo Monastery. Christ is already in the sky – see the blue behind his halo. He resembles a fish, a symbol of Christianity. His hands are crossed not in death, but for Holy Communion.
20 Descent into Hell, Seslavtsi Monastery. Christ draws us out of the many waters. He holds a cross, like Jacob’s ladder to heaven. The lower left part of his robe draws a heart – his love for us.
21 Doubting Thomas, Seslavtsi Monastery. The cave is like a womb. Christ is born in a cave. He heals the paralytic who is let down through a cave (a roof). He resurrects in a cave. And he allows Thomas to place his finger in the selfsame wound.
22 Sea of Tiberias, Seslavtsi Monastery. As the disciples throw their net into the sea, so Christ on the shore throws the net in which Peter is swimming. Not only did he make the water holy by his baptism in the Jordan, he has promised to make his disciples ‘fishers of men’.
23 Ascension, Seslavtsi Monastery. Christ’s body is in the egg shell of the universe. He is in the centre because he is the one who nourishes. His body resembles a tear, which in the monastic tradition is a symbol of purity.
24 Assumption, Karlukovo Monastery. The Virgin Mary is not dead, she is sleeping. Her body resembles the body of Christ in scenes of the Nativity. Her soul is like a baby in Christ’s hands, just as she herself held Christ when he was a child.
There are three major monasteries in Bulgaria: Rila in the south-west (a World Heritage site), Bachkovo in the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains to the south, and Troyan in the Balkan Mountains in central Bulgaria.
But aside from these three major sites, there are many monasteries dotted about Bulgaria, in particular around the capital, Sofia, and many of these are inactive or abandoned. The monasteries around Sofia make up what is known as ‘the Little Holy Mountain’, a reference to the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos in Greece, famous for its monasticism.
You can be in Sofia and not realize that there is a different experience awaiting you only twenty minutes by car from the capital. Unfortunately, many people don’t get this opportunity to travel further afield or don’t know about these places. When you leave Sofia, you enter a different world, one of beautiful nature and one of great spirituality. We do not realize that nature has its own language and it takes time to begin to decipher it.
The Bulgarian poet Tsvetanka Elenkova and I visited 140 monasteries from our home in Sofia during the period 2006-2012. The fruit of this pilgrimage was a series of ten essays by Tsvetanka contained in a book published in Bulgarian as Bulgarian Frescoes: Feast of the Root (Omophor, 2013), accompanied by more than a hundred of my photographs. These essays cover different feasts, from the Nativity of Christ to his Resurrection and Ascension. We have made a small selection of the best images to give people an idea of the riches hidden away in monasteries in Bulgaria that are often abandoned and can be difficult to get to.
The best example is Seslavtsi, a district of Sofia 12 km north-east of the capital. The frescoes here are breathtaking. They were painted by a famous iconographer, Pimen of Zograph, a monk from the Bulgarian monastery of Zograph on Mount Athos who was called by St George in a dream to return to his homeland and to build and paint churches, which he did at the start of the seventeenth century, four hundred years ago. The church containing these frescoes was used for target practice during Communism and is next to a uranium mine. The quality of the frescoes is so good that attempts have been made to cut them out of the wall and take them. The frescoes have not been restored, which gives them a lifelike quality. Once frescoes are restored, they lose something of their spontaneity and acquire a sheen.
Other monasteries containing high-quality frescoes in the environs of Sofia are Alino, a village on the south side of Mount Vitosha, the mountain that overlooks Sofia from the south; Eleshnitsa, a village 25 km north-east of Sofia; and Iliyantsi, a district of Sofia in the north.
Further afield, we find the church of Berende, a village 50 km north-west of Sofia in the direction of Serbia, overlooking a disused railway and with wonderful autumnal colours. Not far away from Berende is the village of Malo Malovo, a very difficult monastery to find. Our first attempt was unsuccessful. We were with our year-old baby and unexpectedly came across some young lads hanging out in the mountain. We caught the glint of metal, beat a hasty retreat and returned a week later, this time without our child, successfully locating the monastery, which was hidden away behind an elevation, perhaps deliberately if one considers that a lot of these monasteries were built during the Ottoman occupation of Bulgaria in the fourteenth-nineteenth centuries, when churches were not supposed to exceed the height of a man on horseback and so had to be dug into the ground.
To the north-east of Sofia, still in west Bulgaria, we find Strupets and Karlukovo. To the west of Sofia lies Bilintsi, on the road to Tran, which has a very attractive gorge. Here, we came across a monk who had taken it upon himself to paint over the old frescoes and who kindly offered us tea in the hovel he was living in (which had a large hole in the ground). Fortunately, his work of ‘restoration’ was incomplete and we were able to photograph some of the original frescoes.
South of Sofia, near the motorway to Greece, is Boboshevo, another excellent monastery for frescoes. And then in central Bulgaria, we have Arbanasi, a hill with old churches next to the medieval capital Veliko Tarnovo. One of these churches is the Church of the Nativity, an example of a building that is sunk into the ground, with sumptuous frescoes inside. A little to the north of Veliko Tarnovo, overlooking the river Yantra, with Holy Trinity Monastery on the other side, is Preobrazhenie (Transfiguration) Monastery, which has a wonderful Wheel of Life fresco on the outside.
These are only some of the monasteries we visited, but they are the ones with the most important images. Our aim in presenting these images is to show the high quality, the naivety (we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven), the deep spirituality of Bulgarian frescoes. In the West, our attention is drawn to the likes of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, considered a high example of religious art. Some of these monasteries – Seslavtsi, in particular – can quite rightly be included in the same canon of European religious art.
An English edition of the book Bulgarian Frescoes: Feast of the Root is forthcoming.
Jonathan Dunne
(In the slideshow above, captions are by Tsvetanka Elenkova, photographs and translation are by Jonathan Dunne.)
There are two waterfalls on the outskirts of Sofia, on the lower slopes of the mountain that overlooks Sofia from the south, Vitosha. They are Aleko and Boyana. Aleko is the name of the last stop on the cabin lift that climbs the mountain from the Simeonovo district of Sofia and finishes a few hundred metres shy of the summit, Cherni Vrah (‘Black Peak’). Aleko Waterfall, however, is much lower down the mountain, between the districts of Dragalevtsi and Simeonovo.
To reach Aleko Waterfall, the best way is to head to Dragalevtsi Monastery, one of the oldest monasteries in Sofia, which has an old church with valuable frescoes. Above the monastery is a car park. From the far corner of the car park a path leads directly up the mountain, with the monastery residential building on the left, but you don’t have to go any higher up the mountain. Instead you take a path that forks immediately left (with the monastery behind you and on your left) and then you stay more or less at the same height and wind your way around the mountain. Within a few minutes, the path forks again. Do not be tempted to start to climb the mountain; take the left fork and continue until you reach two wooden bridges crossing the Dragalevska River. This is a charming spot, with the river threading through the forest, and there is a wooden walkway between the bridges to help you keep your feet dry!
Continue at the same height. The path winds through a wonderful beech and pine forest. After a short time, you reach the disused Dragalevtsi-Goli Vrah chairlift, my first experience of taking a lift on Vitosha Mountain. It was like sitting on a park bench suspended in mid-air and for me, a novice at the time, it was a terrifying experience. I gradually became used to it, but sadly the lift has been discontinued. This is a shame since it offered a very useful way for walkers and mountain bikers to head up the mountain.
At a later stage, you will come across a fountain with a bench and a small icon of the Mother of God. All the time, paths continue up the mountain or drop down, but there is no need to change your height. After about an hour, there is a rocky outcrop with one of the most beautiful views of Sofia down below. Be careful not to go too close to the edge! This is an ideal place to stop and take some refreshments. You are now two minutes away from the waterfall. Continue along the path, and you will come to the waterfall, which when I visited in February was partially frozen and made for a wonderful sight.
The waterfall is formed by the river Skakavitsa, and I understand there is a second, smaller waterfall further down. You now have a choice to retrace your footsteps (if you have left the car in the car park) or to continue to Simeonovo and the Simeonovo Lakes, a set of small, artificial pools, which takes another half an hour. Buses go to and from the districts of Dragalevtsi and Simeonovo, so whether you retrace your footsteps or continue to Simeonovo, you should be able to take a bus from there back to the centre of Sofia.
A tree has been protected by a fence. On the left is the wire fence surrounding Dragalevtsi Monastery.
The monastery buildings through the trees.
The path forks almost immediately. Keep left.
A wooden bridge over the Dragalevska River.
Snow and beeches!
The disused Dragalevtsi chairlift, with Sofia in the background.
More cables cut through the forest, offering another view of Sofia.
Beneath the snow is one of many moraines – rocks left by glaciers – on Vitosha Mountain.
Small trees pushing against the odds.
Rock formations.
The rocky outcrop just before the waterfall.
From here you are within touching distance of the waterfall.
The waterfall, which in February was partially frozen.
A more general view of the waterfall.
The rocky outcrop offers one of the best views of Sofia.
Chavdar is a pretty village about seventy kilometres due east of Sofia, a little south of the main road, the E871, that connects Sofia with Burgas on the Black Sea coast. This road runs alongside the Balkan mountain to the north, so from Chavdar and the walk to the nearby waterfall of Kazanite you get wonderful views of the Balkan itself. To the east, you also get a glimpse of the industrial town of Pirdop.
You drive straight through the village and continue for another three kilometres along the asphalt road until you reach the river Topolnitsa, a beautiful river that looks like elephant hide. Here the asphalt road becomes a dirt track. We went in January and decided to park the car on the verge just before the bridge. You then walk about 700 metres along the dirt track in front of you before cutting through the forest on your right (there is a signpost), again along a rutted track that climbs the side of the hill, offering wonderful views of the Balkan and Pirdop behind you.
You reach the top of the hill, and the track begins to descend. Shortly afterwards, there is a steep path going directly down to the waterfall. Again, this is signposted. The path leads to a metal bridge over the waterfall and to a picnic table on the other side, next to the stream (a tributary of the Topolnitsa). From here, you can see the top of the waterfall, but the only way to get a general view of the waterfall like the one in the photos is to backtrack a little and then edge your way along the side of the stream until you can see the waterfall in front of you. The ledge you walk along is narrow, so this is not for the fainthearted! You can also walk off the path down to the stream below the waterfall and again look upstream to the waterfall, though from here you will only see the lower part of the waterfall.
The waterfall is called ‘Kazanite’, meaning ‘The Cauldrons’ in Bulgarian. The various pools look like cauldrons, the running water is the ingredients being stirred. In the photos below, you can see the walk to the waterfall, which takes about an hour and a half, and the waterfall itself. A perfect day out from Sofia. On the way back, you can stop in the village of Chavdar and have a drink in the centre.
The river Topolnitsa, where we left the car.
A view alongside the Topolnitsa.
The rutted track running through the forest.
A view west (the side of the hill is being mined for something).
Beautiful white winter blossom.
Looking back – the Balkan mountain to the north of Chavdar and the E871.
The road ahead!
The bare forest – down below is the stream that creates the waterfall. We are nearly there!
The short path leading down to the bridge over the waterfall.
A general view of Chavdar Waterfall (I am standing on a ledge!).
A close-up of the waterfall. Note a waterfall comprises two things: the water and the rock around it.
A fiery heart in the forest. You can see the stream below the waterfall and an open area to the left.
Ditto. You can see the path on the left, which has a wooden handrail.
The open area next to the stream below the waterfall. You have to leave the path to get here.
Looking back up to the lower part of Chavdar Waterfall, with a January sunset.
Today I revisited Izgrev, meaning ‘Sunrise’ in Bulgarian, the old artists’ and writers’ quarter of Sofia, where I lived when I first arrived in Bulgaria seventeen years ago. It’s obvious my wife, a poet, is the one who found me the flat. I used to enjoy living in this quarter, it was quiet, relatively small, there were one or two embassies, a disused railway track and, on the other side of the track, a very cold swimming pool. You could even catch a bus to go to Vitosha, the mountain that overlooks Sofia from the south (in those days I didn’t drive, that would come later). I lived in a flat on the eighth floor of a high-rise, perhaps twenty floors in all, six apartments per floor. I remember people being friendly and cultured. There was a family whose daughter was a professional pianist and she used to practise at dizzying pace in the afternoons. There was a lovely old couple that lived upstairs, but unfortunately their son (perhaps to forge an identity of his own) used to be up and about at night, and his bedroom was on top of mine. This is one of the reasons I left the apartment after little more than a year. The other was a drunk who lived downstairs and who would get inebriated on vodka on a Friday night, come home, put his music on loud and throw up in the toilet (I was still able to make this out over the loud music). It wasn’t a bed of roses, but I was experiencing my first taste of Eastern Europe, a culture shock for someone who had lived in England and Spain before that, but one that has served me well. The flat was comfortable and cosy, and the icing on the cake was a house martins’ nest just outside my bedroom window. I used to watch the adults flying at exactly the height of my apartment over breakfast. Unadulterated joy. I also did a lot of work there, and translated my first and only Catalan novel, In the Last Blue by Carme Riera, winner of the Spanish National Book Award, about the persecution of Jews on the island of Mallorca in the seventeenth century.
I grew up in a village in Surrey and one of my first memories is visiting the local woods. To my good fortune, it turns out Izgrev has a wood and I used to immerse myself in this wood, going for walks every day, leaving behind the slightly grey high-rise blocks (and the car alarms) and seemingly entering another world. The forest took me in. I think it understood I had recently left my familiar surroundings, so it took me under its wing, so to speak. It accepted me. I spent many hours circumambulating the forest, walking around its furthest extent, then diving into the interior, criss-crossing the wood, until I reached the very centre, where there stood a tall sequoia tree. Some days were better than others, but I grew to love this wood, and I think this wood loved me. There was one particular gentleman, a fellow walker, who used to be there as much as me. He would walk around with his head in the air, looking upwards, his gaze distracted, as if he had entered another dimension. I’m not even sure if he noticed me. Or perhaps it was just the thick glasses that gave him this otherworldly look, as if he had climbed further up the ladder of divine ascent. I wondered what he could see, what it was I wasn’t seeing. The world can seem so two-dimensional from transport (a car or a train), even three-dimensional when we are in it, but it is difficult to reach further in, to enter the code, to strain our eyes. We must wait for the vision to come to us.
The sequoia tree at the heart of Izgrev Forest.
I took solace in this forest. I remember a Romanian-Nigerian couple coming to stay for a night, and I religiously took them on my daily outing, a swift walk around the forest’s outer border. We couldn’t walk next to each other, the path wasn’t wide enough, and it was getting dark, so we walked in single file, with me leading the way. Goodness knows what they made of this quasi-nocturnal outing, but they never said anything and smiled all the way.
Today I went back to the forest, the path that leads away from the high-rise buildings, up into the woods. A short ascent, and then you are on the level. I started by following the main path all around the forest, busy roads limiting its extent on every side where there are not buildings. Then I cut in along a path I knew in order to get back where I had started. It seemed to take much less time than I had anticipated. Perhaps twenty minutes in all. And I had been expecting a single circuit of the forest to be enough. I was a little disappointed. Had the forest become smaller in my absence? No, it seemed the same. Was it because it was winter, and I could see through the trees, which therefore gave the impression the forest had shrunk? Or is it that, in order to package our memories, we make the places we have been to smaller? They expand when we are there, when we live in a place on a daily basis, but when we leave, they contract in order not to occupy too much memory on the hard disk of our minds. It felt like revisiting an old girlfriend. You wondered what all the fuss had been about. The world – what am I saying, the universe – you had shared now seemed small and provincial. Your life lay elsewhere. In the intervening period, I had got married, had a child, learned to drive, been through a wealth of experiences. And that little pocket I had explored so much now seemed just that – a little pocket.
Sometimes I wonder if the world is all flat. When we visit a place, we blow it up, like a balloon, and it expands in order to contain our life, our loves and experiences, and when we leave, it deflates again, like a balloon after a party.
I didn’t go there to revisit my past. I went because it’s New Year’s Day and I wanted to give Simi, our dog, a run-around. We were a bit late to go all the way to the mountain, Vitosha, so I took him there instead. He was happy, charging ahead, choosing a path when there was a fork in the expectation that I would go the same way and then charging back when I chose another (which I invariably did), his nose close to the ground. I wondered what it seemed like to him. After all, he’s only about half a foot tall (a foot, if I include his tail). The trees must seem enormous. They must multiply him about sixty times. Did he realize when I was retracing my steps, taking a path for the second time or in the opposite direction? Or was it all new to him, virgin territory to explore? (Does virgin territory even exist for dogs, can’t they always smell who’s been there before?)
Izgrev Forest.
We reached the end of our walk, Simi didn’t seem too unhappy to leave. He’s very accommodating. We passed the Korean restaurant on the ground floor of a house (so that was still working – why hadn’t I ever gone there to eat?), went past my old block with its bench out the front, seemingly inviting neighbourly conversation, past the supermarket where I did my first shopping (did Bulgarians even eat the same food as we did?), and back to the car. We hopped in, I did a three-point turn and drove back the way we had come, past the Russian Embassy compound and the garden dedicated to Peter Deunov. I left behind this remnant of my past and returned to the world I am in.
Stones Of Ithaca 