Rila Who?

Monday, after hitting all the highlights in Sofia, I found myself with some more free time, so I decided to book a tour to the Rila Monastery. I did not know much about the Monastery’s history or its significance, but I had seen enough eye-catching postcard pictures of it to convince me that it was somewhere I wanted to go.

Now having returned from my tour, not much has changed. I can definitely vouch for the very picturesque nature of the Monastery and I still have no earthly clue what its story may be. The chief problem was that our very affable guide spoke very limited English, and what he did speak was enough to convey that he knew even less about Rila Monastery. When asked how old the building was, he shrugged and said “Old, very old.” While inside the church, one of the monks signaled for me to come up to the altar where he removed a white sheet from a coffin-like box.

Inside the box, there was something that looked like a small piece of brown slate covered by glass which, to my mounting alarm, I realized the monk wanted me to kiss. I briefly toyed with the idea of kissing my hand and touching the glass just to appease the monk, but (a) I am an atheist and no one likes it when atheists make church walls bleed and (b) I could not figure out what the hell I was looking at.

In the end, I took the easy way out and pretended not to understand his command as I scurried off the altar and out of the church. I ran to our guide and tried to explain what had happened, which didn’t really go very well, but he grasped that I wanted to know what was in the box. He, of course, had no idea but knew to find the most religious looking old woman around and ask her. He eventually returned to inform me that it was a heart. I wanted to know whose heart it was. “A heart, it is a heart” he repeated, this time pointing to his chest for emphasis.

In the end, I could not hold his lack of information against him. He was a driver not a guide and the agency I used had unfairly put him in this predicament. I liked the guy, so much so that if I am ever back in Bulgaria, I plan to call him for a trip to the Black Sea; one that I expect will require no narration whatsoever.

Some later googling revealed that the heart belonged to St. John of Rila, the founder of the monastery and patron saint of the Bulgarian people. And now experience has revealed that in the case of at least one Bulgarian travel agency, “driver” and “tour” are interchangeable terms, in the future I should probably come armed with more research than pretty postcard pictures.