I had a nice meeting with my friends today after work - yeah, although it is Saturday, we work to compensate one of the days the government gave us around May 1 - 6th long holiday. One of my American friends who we all know and have not seen for 2 years is back to Bulgaria for 4 months on a program with the US Embassy here. In a nutshell, nice to have him around - he is a cool guy!!
Once our sweet almost dinner time shakes and cafes, we headed towards the nearby Sofia City Art Gallery. Meanwhile, I got it is the Night of the Open Museums in Sofia. WoW! What a pleasure! Only was I to such an event once I was Berlin two years ago! Aww what a midnight late afternoon's stalk I had with a Uzbek friend! But that is another story!
Let's turn back to the current!
We did not enter the art gallery because were attracted to the Balkan beatbox music coming from the corner of the gallery. It is located in a beautiful garden in the heart of the city so people who gathered had space to cram in. And there were a lot of people actually! Either it was a working day and everyone took a break by walking in the warm and welcoming weather, or they knew it was a special evening! Well, I was of the first but never mind did I enjoy Karandila - this is the name of the brass band - a very famous gypsy band who plays Balkan music! We took our places on the grass as everyone else and listened , moved in in tact to the music and me precisely even was whistling to myself part of their songs - it was a nice time!! They continued with the open air concert but I moved into the nearby Archaeological museum - one of my friends dragged me there to have a look of movie costumes from the whole past century! And since it is the Night of the Open Museums you can get in as many as you can from 7 pm till the next morning for free. Furthermore, there are additional special short feasts you can watch too - for example, there was another band playing on xylophones the same music the guys out were - it is good to hear different interpretations, followed by a folklore performance.
The National Archaeological Museum is a cool and humid place esp in summers I have never before been to, a miss I consider! "It occupies the building of the largest and oldest former Ottoman mosque in the city, Büyük camii ("Grand Mosque"), built from stone around 1474 under Mehmed II. This is the oldest museum in Bulgaria (thank you wikipedia)" There are so awesome stuff in - starting from stones, pottery, pikes, armours, jeweleries either made of rock, brass, silver or pure gold to large authentic icons of different saints. (to get an idea of all the Roman jeweleries - i enclose a link here http://romanart2.hit.bg/index2.html) One of them I really liked - the icon of St Dimitar - this looked more or less like a mural and it was so old that part of it was missing, just was lost in time. All the things displayed (not the icons though of course, but they were pretty old too - like from 5 - 8 centuries ago) date back to the VI, V, II or so century before Christ - I felt in awe! I was so much fascinated by the icon by one more reason, I remembered when we, the stuff of my company, were on our way to Halkidiki, Greece and passed for several hours through Thessaloniki. I together with some other friends had the chance to go to probably the most famous church in the town, named after this saint - a crowded place where I had the chance to write a wish note and place it in a big box to come it rue! It came!
In front of one of the halls on the second floor was a big line - that was where Bulgarian gold treasures were. I queued! It took me a while to get into a medium-sized circular room where most of the silver and pure gold excavations from different epochs are . I had seen most of these on the TV only, that made me tremble. It is really worth seeing - I do recommend it to anyone! Another good side I saw in that was the educational part - seriously, young people, among whom small children as well, we lining to get in, fathers or grandparents were reading and explaining to their boys and girls all the side notes to each precious stone or jewelery. And jewelries were really beautiful and some of them even big! I thought of all the searches it took to archeologists to excavate them, how fine and noble objects are and what they tell us for our ancestors!
Although I was left with some incomprehensible unanswered questions, overall I feel in awe of the seen! This spontaneous visit worthed my time there!
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