Gastrotour “The Submerged Church, the Donkey’s Milk, the Goddess Cybele, and the 100 Voivodes”

Day 1: Donkey’s milk, Sliven peaches and food from the Balkans [/ su_heading]

At 7 o’clock we leave Plovdiv and go to the Submerged Church in Zhrebchevo Dam. Once, before the waters engulfed the village of Zapalnya and two other surrounding settlements, the temple was the center of life in the valley, and the crystal ringing of its bell hovered over the fragrant carpets of oil-bearing plantations at the foot of Sredna Gora. During the Turkish rule, Zapalnya was famous for its 120 cans of rose oil. At that time the village was at an important commercial crossroads. From here the road passed from Kazanlak to Edirne, and there were several inns near it. Today, however, no trace of the once neat houses and narrow dusty streets, echoed by children’s laughter, masterful hammers and horse hooves. In the middle of the last century, a decision came from the capital to build a large dam right here, which would collect the waters of the Tundzha River. In 1962 Zapalnya, together with the neighboring villages of Zhrebchevo and Dolno Panicharevo, were sucked by the centrifuge of the huge body of water literally overnight. And they remain forever buried at the bottom of the dam. But a small part of the lost world still refuses to be erased. This is the old church. For half a century, the lonely silhouette of the temple has been floating like a ghost ship in the silent waters of Zhrebchevo.
We head to the Valley of the Peaches. We try juicy Sliven peaches from the villages, where the Golden Peach holiday is organized every year. Nearly 70 percent of the peach orchards in Southeastern Bulgaria are grown in the Sliven region. We go to the first donkey farm in Bulgaria of Ivan Kyuchukov, who with his son for the first time in the world managed to produce cheese and yellow cheese from 100% donkey milk. Its price is BGN 75 per liter, as it has proven hto healproperties. While telling us about the healing properties of donkey’s milk, we try the exotic drink. We have a photo session with little donkeys on the pasture. We have lunch with traditional Balkan food and continue our donkey adventures with a visit to the only donkey museum in Bulgaria in Gurkovo. Then we will ride on carts with a donkey team. Our guide will be the former champion in classical bodybuilding Deyan Georgiev, who in 2007 squatted 182 times with a barbell weighing 100 kilograms, and today lives in Gurkovo and is engaged in breeding horses and donkeys. In the evening we stay overnight in Sliven.

Day 2: Bulgarian Manchester, picnic in the vineyards and possessions of Cybele in Kabyle – Bulgarian Troy [/ su_heading]

After breakfast we visit Sliven – once known as the Bulgarian Manchester. The city is still famous for the only Museum of the textile industry in Bulgaria. The idea of ​​creating an industrial museum in the city dates back to 1903, but was realized 90 years later. The building in which the museum is arranged was built in 1906-1907 for the first vocational school in Bulgaria, which during this period was called the State Model Textile Factory “Dobri Zhelyazkov”. It is located in a landmark place for Sliven – in the former yard of the State Cloth Factory, built and managed by Dobri Zhelyazkov. Adjacent to the museum is the only preserved to this day impressive building of the factory, built in 1842-1843. We will see demonstrations of various techniques for weaving, extracting silk threads, making braids. In the City of the 100 Voivodes we will visit the native house of our national hero Hadji Dimitar. It was built at the end of the 18th century in the Klutsohor district of Sliven. The museum complex also includes the inn of the hotel. Nikola Assenov with the adjacent farm buildings, where the atmosphere is typical, typical for a pre-liberation inn. We have lunch on a picnic among the vineyards, where we will taste the wines of the newest wine cellar in Sliven. In the afternoon we will visit the Bulgarian Troy – the ancient city of Kabile. It appeared at the end of the second millennium BC. near a large cult center on the hill Zaychi Vrah. In antiquity, the city was an important economic and cultural center in Southeastern Thrace and Lower Tundzha. According to historical records, Kabyle was conquered by Philip of Macedon in 341 BC, and later for some time his son Alexander III the Great of Macedon resided in it. In the first half of the third century BC. Kabyle was the residence of the Thracian kings Spartok and Skostock. It is believed that it bears the name of the Thracian goddess mother Cybele, depicted on a relief of the rock sanctuary “Rabbit Peak”. It is at the foot of this ancient astronomical observatory that one of the largest commercial and cultural centers within the borders of former Thrace arose. Our trip will end with a visit to the Kabyle Monastery “Nativity of the Virgin”, which according to ancient legends has existed since the time of St. Emperor Constantine. His mother St. Helena knew about the healing properties of the water in the Kabyle Monastery and often sent people to bring it from her. When Bulgaria fell under Turkish rule, the conquerors began to search for treasures that were talked about in the Ottoman Empire. Since they found nothing, they enraged the Holy Monastery to the ground. It was not until 1898 that a beautiful woman dreamed of a peasant and pointed out to him in a dream the place where the magic spring was located. After the person started digging at the indicated place, water gushed. The water from Kabyle Monastery is useful for stomach ailments, bone diseases, cancers, recovery from injuries and operations, chemotherapy, infertility, kidney, heart, lung, liver problems. liver, bile, lymph nodes, and others.