Immediately upon crossing the border from Greece into Bulgaria I felt a massive jump into a different quality of life and relationship to global consumer culture; Greece: part of the European union, neo floridian prefab housing the norm, people in the towns on scooters, in the villages with cars, tourism very strong, the Orthodox church strong, holding on to its culture amidst a tidal wave of MTV culture.

Bulgaria: the southwest corner of Bulgaria where I entered the country may have almost zero tourism, very isolated from the West throughout the communist era , now isolated purely through poor infrastructure, the Orthodox Church is weak but local culture seems strong although suffering under inflation and its pressures, etc. The first sight that greets me upon entering Bulgaria is all these fellows on horseback. Men on horseback, horse-drawn carts, haystacks being built with wooden pitchforks, dirt roads, wow. People are really moving slow here, taking their time, watching me with great curiosity. My first night in Bulgaria I stayed with the family of one girl who spoke a bare smattering of German which we used to communicate, being the odd star attraction of the wee town of General Toderov in Bulgaria's far South Western corner. Her email was megi_666q@mail.bg

One interesting change from Greece in body language: shaking the head from side to side quickly (which in the USA means "no") here means "yes." And the confusing part for me is the word in Bulgarian for "no" is "Ne" and just 20 kilometers before in Greece that same word, "Ne" meant "yes."

They make repeated jokes about "take me with you to America" etc. but it is really too much to be funny.

Note: One Bulgarian girl has in her little finger ten times the sexiness of all of Thessaloniki, Greece (which was a total flatline for me - my interest was so little there I thought in my five day visit to Athos I had managed to shake off all wordly desires).

The next morning after leaving the home of Megi with some freinds of hers on the train I arrived at the station of Blagoyovgrad, from where I biked to the downtown, did email, and then up almost 40 kilometers on a healthy incline to the Rilski monastary (the last 10 K of which was SERIOUSLY uphill). After spending one afternoon determining that the Rilski monastary was much more of a guesthouse with a skeliton crew than a real place of inner meditation and monastic life I left me bags and bike with the owner of a freindly nearby hotel and headed alone up into the mountain heights.