Today, Monday, we boarded our new, more comfortable and spacious bus. Fortunately, I was able to have two seats to myself so that I could spread out! We also met up with our new bus driver for the week - Yousef. Yousef doesn't speak English, but you can tell by his constant smile and the sparkle in his eyes that he is not only a masterful driver (which the pictures later will show) but also a kind and generous man.
We first drove to Valjevo, where we stopped for a mid morning coffee break. It was sprinkling, but you can still see how charming the streets and cafes are. This section of town is known as "Tesnjar."
Our first monastery visit was in Lelic (sounds like Lehlich), the "Serbian Jerusalem." This is the town where St. Nikolai was born, and where he built the monastery in which he is buried.
Here we are inside the monastery. Fr. Djokan translated for the priest, who gave us some history on St. Nikolai and the monastery in Lelic. The inside is a holy feast for the eyes - beautiful frescoes and icons everywhere! The casket contains the relics of St. Nikolai...
After visiting the monastery, we stopped in the gift shop, where we found lots of goodies for reasonable prices. I bought a few icons, some monastery-made honey, prayer bracelets, and two votive holders. I'm betting I don't buy many books this week - most of them are in Serbian!
Our next stop of the morning was at Monastery Celije, built in the 13th century, and is currently a women's monastery. Here's a pic walking up to the gate:
The waters from this well are said to be healing waters - of course I drank a cup!
The drizzle finally stopped and the sun came out while we were there. Here's a pic of Shelley with the nuns' residence in the background.
Shelley and I wandered out on our own, mainly to find the restroom, but the nun hosting our group shepherded us back into this building with the rest of our group. It was clear she didn't like us being outside by ourselves, once everyone else was inside...
Here's a shot of the nun telling us about the monastery:
Here we are inside, where the nuns put together a hospitality table for us - Turkish coffee and water and nibbles - yum!
After we said goodbye to the nuns at Celije, we made our way down the road a bit to a place along the river for lunch. I had grilled chicken and Sropska, which is a Serbian salad of cucumbers, tomatoes and white cheese. Absolutely delicious! What a great surprise for me to have delicious home-grown tomatoes so far from home and so early in the summer! I couldn't get enough of this and ate it nearly everyday for lunch...
Fr. Wright and Louise at lunch:
A coffee break, two monasteries, and lunch - I'm sure you can guess that this took longer than noontime. In fact, this group is a bit like herding cats...we've started nothing on time, and everything we stop for takes twice as long as the time budgeted. My recollection is that we wrapped up lunch around 3:30 or 4. But we still had another bus ride to yet another monastery before we were done for the day. And this is where we began to realize just how skillful Yousef is - check out this road in the mountains. There were portions not yet paved, and they were quite curvy!
Our last stop was at a newer monastery, St. Nikolai in Soko City, Ljubovija. It is currently used primarily as a retreat center, and the story behind this monastery is that the land at this location was scheduled to be used for a toxic waste dump. A bishop in Germany bought many acres of this land and created this monastery to prevent the toxic dumping. What a beautiful gift!
After our visit here, we made the long drive through the mountains to our hotel for the night - Villa Romantika - on Mt. Zlatibor, 4000 ft. above sea level. It was almost 11pm by the time we got there - ugh! But the hotel staff had dinner waiting for us when we arrived, so we dropped off our bags and headed right down. It was at dinner that Shelley and I discovered that today was Fr. Wright's 45th anniversary of his ordination - congratulations, Fr. Wright! So glad to have shared an adventurous day with you on your anniversary!
Phew - how's that for a full day???
No comments:
Post a Comment