Inside St. George monastery, near Godech, a colorful and emotional travel story of 30 photos

I am going to tell you a story of a small, almost hidden special spiritual place, called "Bukurovski Monastery St. George", established near the small city of Godech, in Northwestern Bulgaria.

This is not one of those big monasteries, visited by thousands of tourists and pilgrims. The road leading there is not good, it's probably still a dirt road.

However, it is not abandoned, contrary, there is a lot of life in it, and what makes it unique, a lot of art activity going on there. Because one of its main buildings is mainly used for art workshops. Still, it's an acting spiritual place.

This unique place is located just a few kilometers from the country border with Serbia. While the name found on the maps, and the name of the village close to it is spelled "Bukorovtsi", according to the priest and the monk who takes care of the monastery, this is a typo, as the history of the local people has somehow been related to people coming from Bucharest.

In Bulgarian, Bucharest is pronounced as "Bukuresht". I suppose a Romanian could tell what's the etymology of the name of their capital.

Now what you see below is a partial view of the yard of the monastery.

A really charming garden, isn't it? Well, as it all has been left to the efforts of a middle aged man, one doesn't expect gardening miracles and beautiful bushed cut in fancy shapes but the yard was maintained pretty well, given the circumstances.

As a side note, I always wonder why certain places of faith are not well funded and the most of the work there is done by volunteers. I know it is not all about money. Or at least, it should not be all about it. Anyways.

Apart from the priest, the only other living creatures we met there were a trusty cat and a goat, both of them seemed happy to meet us :)

The bell tower has three bells that chime during the holidays and the other events:

Everything here is hand-made. Even all of the crosses have this artisanal feel...

The oldest year I could read on the grave stones, was 1925:

That means the monastery had been established in the XVIII-th century if not even before that.

The Orthodox tradition is to bury the holy people who served the monastery inside the yard.

Here is a sign that asks the visitor to keep the holy place:

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Here is another fact that makes this monastery unique, this time from an architectural perspective.

It has three "similar" buildings, at least when looking them from outside, placed next to each other.

One of them is, of course, the place for prayers.

All of those buildings interconnected with doors between them.

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Here comes the last, but the most interesting, of course, from my humble perspective, "room". The one that looks like a library and like the atelier of a painter at the same time. A place where groups of children are initiated into the sacred art of painting :)

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It is indeed amazing to be present among the pieces of art, created by the blessed hands, minds and hearts of those children. Take a look at some of them:

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Finally, here is one recognition of the efforts and work done by the priest and monk, Mr. Dragomir Uzunov, this certificate of gratitude.

If you find yourself near Godech in Bulgaria, I strongly recommend you visit this place. It was a real pleasure and I bet the conversation with him with enlighten everyone who finds a half an hour to sit on the wooden bench next to this holy man!

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