<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-637" title="Functioning Fountain " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dsc05439.jpg?w=225" alt="Functioning Fountain " width="225" height="300" />I went to Melnik for a second time this year.  I still love the place.  It's a wonderful little town with one main street, lots of places to stay the night, to eat and to buy wine.  I don't think a girl needs much more than this.  Oh and there's a monastery not far away if you think you need to do a little repenting before you start in on the wine tasting.

This time the Fulbright organized the trip.  We made a day trip of it.  In hindsight an overnight may have made more sense but such is life.  It's a three hour bus ride so we met at 7:45 and talked all the way to Melnik.  I love to talk so this was good for me.

We went first to the monastery Rozhen.  It's about 20 minutes car ride outside of Melnik.<!--more-->

It doesn't look like much from outside but inside you get a sense of how peaceful it is there.  That and lots of people come to see the icon.  The story goes that there is an icon of Mary and baby Jesus.  It was going to be destroyed by (who else) the Turks.  So the owner of the icon saved it by slipping out with it in the dead of the night.  The owner put it in the Black <img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-638" title="Up to the second floor! " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dsc05423.jpg?w=225" alt="Up to the second floor! " width="225" height="300" />Sea and it floated--upright of course--to Bulgaria. (It should be noted that this is my retelling of the story that I read on the wall at the monastery so it may not be 100% historically or culturally accurate.  Also it has been condensed and I am just retelling the highlights.  If you read it for yourself at the monastery, it's about 10 paragraphs in rather small font.)

Is the story true? Hard to say for sure.  I am a skeptic but the last time I was there people were lined up around the church to be able to kiss the icon or to touch Mary's hand.  It was really moving to see so many people lining up to pay their respects to this icon.  So I this time around, I figured I'd light a candle for my loved ones and try out touching Mary's hand.  I am not ready to start kissing icons.  Yet.

I did notice that the Bulgarian women before me left a 50 leva bill at the base of the icon.  That's a lot of money in this country.  I couldn't help but wonder what she was praying for.

There's also a great spring in the monastery.  The water comes slowly but it is cold and fresh.  The Bulgarians always fill up their water bottles at this fountains or they drink from the fountain with the communal cup.  So I filled up my water bottle.  Again, I am not into the communal cut, at least not yet.

From here we went into the city of Melnik.  We had lunch at a traditional little restaurant.  They all seem to serve about the same thing so you really can't go wrong.  The best thing we had was dessert.  This was a thick rich yogurt topped with green fig jam.  Wow.  It was so good that I bought my own jar of green fig jam so that I could eat this dish at home.  Lucky for me there are lots of old women who sell jars of homemade jam and honey and the like. (I know that the Bulgarians who read my blog will hate what I am about to write but I am doing it anyway... I think that the closest way to try this at home in the states is with fig jam and Greek yogurt.  This is because you want the yogurt to be really thick and creamy.  But just for the record, I am not saying that Greek yogurt and the Bulgarian yogurt...кисело мляко..are the same but what I am saying is that in the States this would be a good substitute.)

<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-639" title="Me, my wine and my Fulbright Friend. " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dsc05489.jpg?w=225" alt="Me, my wine and my Fulbright Friend. " width="225" height="300" />Also lucky for me the Bulgarians know how to drink.  I bought a three litter bottle of Melnik red wine.  I couldn't not.  The whole bottle was only 15 leva.  That's a lot of wine for not much money.  In other words: a deal!

I felt a little silly carrying it around so I made my Fulbright friend Max do the heavy lifting.  It was especially funny seeing that this year we've got two Fulbrighers with nearly brand new babies.  They are lugging around babies while I am lugging around a giant plastic bottle of wine.  Oh to be twenty something living in Sofia.

Now the challenge is drinking all of the wine before it goes bad.  Good thing I am up for the task.