I left early this morning for the trip to the monastery. The drive was a few hours and as we got up into the mountains, there was maybe 6" of snow everywhere. There were a few other people on the trip, all from warm climates - Australia (2x), American Samoa, and Brazil. Most of them had never seen this much snow before and hadn't known how to dress for it, so they spent almost the whole time complaining about how cold and wet they were. For once, I was adequately dressed. The monastery is beautiful in the snow, and I was glad to come at this time of year since I don't think it would have impressed as much if it weren't snowy. I liked walking around the grounds and exploring the snowy paths all over the area. I will say that while the other people on the trip were all nice enough, I didn't really enjoy their company that much, especially since most of what they had to offer was complaining.

Afterward we went up to a tomb for the guy who founded the monastery nearby. Our driver, who spoke no English at all, led us up and it was extremely funny watching the others try walking in snow for the first time. When we got up, the building was closed and since the only local there (the driver) didn't speak any English I'm not really sure if we were supposed to be able to go in, nor what we would have seen if we made it. There was a cool cave shrine thing nearby though, and it had a ladder that I was able to crawl my way out of to appear on the top of some rocks. The hike down was somehow much slower than the hike up, to the point where it was really frustrating for me. They took easily quadruple the time it took me and it ate into the day. I don't think the time budget that we had accounted for this sort of delay.

We went back closer to the city to a different park. The driver dropped us off at a few places and acted like we should know what to do there, but it wasn't especially clear and he couldn't tell us. Eventually, we found ourselves driven up to this radio tower that may have also been an observation tower high up on the mountain. It was a very evil looking building that I don't think would have looked out of place on an Empire controlled planet in Star Wars, and there was no view because of the fog. On the side of the mountain like this it was incredibly windy and not an especially comfortable environment. There was supposed to be a 2 km hike from here to another point of interest, but I was the only one who had any willingness to do that so we elected to move on. The final stop was somewhere else on this mountain. There wasn't a whole lot to see here, but there was a bar and we stopped by to get some hot chocolate. They had a video playing of what I assume was traditional Bulgarian music and dancing, and the place was almost empty. The only other person there was an old guy who beckoned us to join him, so we sat down and he tried to communicate with us for a little while. He spoke no English at all so it didn't go well until he figured out that we would recognize the tune if he tried singing a western song. At that point he brought out his guitar and played various American and British classic rock songs for a while. He was actually quite good despite missing the highest string of the guitar. Eventually, we headed back to the driver, but he first bought us all fridge magnets that for whatever reason the bar sold. I can't imagine that get that many tourists up there.

We ended up going to dinner. I didn't love spending time with these people but it's not like I knew anyone else. Before we got our food, someone started a massive ring of dancing in the center of the main room and all the locals piled in to do this dance that everyone seemed to know. It was really basic and frankly everyone looked kinda bored after a couple minutes, but they dragged it on for a lot longer. Then the diners were replaced by what appeared to be at least semi-professional dancers who did a whole routine with live music. Their dancing was much more intense and I thought it resembled really frantic skipping. It was cool to hear the traditional music and see them wearing their traditional clothes. Still, I have no idea what was happening or if this is something they do often. There were signs all over the place but I of course couldn't read them so I don't know if they were relevant to what was happening. Anywhere else I'd have said this whole display was to pander to tourists, but... No, not here. I think we were the only tourists in the whole place. It's cool that this stuff is still popular and a normal part of daily life for the people here, since in most of my travels it seems as though American music and dance has almost totally supplanted everything else.

I booked a bus to Romania for tomorrow night, giving me a last chance in the day to explore Sofia since I still haven't really seen the city. It's 7 hours and overnight but was one of the only options. I leave at 11 PM and then get in to Bucharest at 6 AM, so it's a fairly miserable timing. The route from there to Istanbul is even worse - it looks like about 11 hours. I looked into trains and while they do exist, they're more expensive and take way longer. They're usually not direct, either, now that it's the off season. As much as I'm not looking forward to sitting in a bus seat for such a long time, at least it'll be over with sooner and I won't have to connect at all. I'm probably going to regret detouring to Romania, but when am I going to be in this part of the world again?