Tag Archives: europe

keep steady or climbing mont blanc

by

  To be honest, Mont Blanc wasn’t in my plans of peaks to tackle. After Kilimanjaro in 2014, it was a toss-up between it and Elbrus and I chose the latter, which I climbed in August 2016. But a friend of mine asked me to try it together for his birthday so we started making …

sofia lightning storm

by

  I’ve been waiting for a chance to shoot lightning for years now. It’s not as easy as it sounds — you want to be at a safe distance and ideally not get rained on, but still close enough to the action with a good vantage point. Well, I finally got lucky a couple of …

pushing through or climbing elbrus

by

  After climbing Kilimanjaro in 2014, the supposedly easiest of the 7 summits, I started thinking about potentially tackling some of the remaining ones. This is a daunting (not to mention costly!) task and I’m not quite sure whether I’ve completely settled on it, but I figured it’s worth trying out Elbrus, which ranks as …

hidden istanbul

by

  I’m saddened by the recent political developments in Turkey. Istanbul has always been one of my favorite cities to visit and now I find myself avoiding going through it like I normally would on my way east, as I’m sure many others do. It remains one of the most interesting and vibrant mixes of …

kovachevitsa

by

  I realize now I must have pressed “Publish” before completing my post 🙂 Note to self not to write when super tired late in the evening. What I wanted to say is that one way or another each summer I somehow find myself in the Rhodope mountains and often in Kovachevitsa — a small …

never forget your past

by

  One of communist Bulgaria’s most famous remnants is the Buzludzha monument, sitting atop the historical namesake peak. The UFO shaped building, opened in 1981, is little more than a ruin nowadays, but it still attracts thousands of people with its unusual architecture, unique location, and the symbol it’s become to how we handle our …

all is well in the rhodope

by

  The Rhodope mountains have always had a certain magnetic appeal to me. Unlike other mountains in Bulgaria that are known for their high peaks, rocky climbs or great winter sports opportunities (so much that we’ve even had people very likely set fires on purpose to clear out forests for future ski runs…), the Rhodope …

for all that it’s worth, you were worth it

by

  Sometimes the weather’s just not on your side and goes against your grand plans of making a great weekend getaway. But every cloud has a silver lining as they say, almost literally this time 😉 We were in Strandzha, a small-ish mountain in southeastern Bulgaria, but weren’t getting what we had hoped to be …