SlowTours.BG with Ekaterina

20/12/2024

**🌟 Today We Celebrate Ignazhden! 🌟**

One of the most beautiful winter holidays, filled with traditions and faith in goodness!

According to folk beliefs, it’s important to notice who first crosses the threshold of your home today. If it’s a good person who comes with full hands, the year ahead will be full of luck and prosperity.

🎄 **The Ignazhden Feast** is special as it follows the Christmas fasting tradition. Here are the dishes that are good to have on the table:
- Vegan banitsa (a traditional pastry)
- Cabbage rolls
- Dried fruit compote (oshav)
- Dishes with beans, corn, wheat, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and pickles

🍞 Particularly important are the **Christmas bread rolls**. The first one is shaped like a cross and is kept at home to protect it from evil forces. Additionally, one roll is made for each family member, symbolizing health and unity.

Let goodness enter our homes today, and may our tables be filled with flavor and love! ❤️

✨ Wishing you a bright and blessed Ignazhden! ✨

25/11/2024

👰Ribnovo is the last village in Bulgaria where traditional weddings with a written bride, gelina, have been preserved. The "Gelina" ritual is performed on the second wedding evening when elderly women prepare the bride, paint her face with white cream, and decorate it with sequins, garlands, and colored stones. Dressed in a traditional Ribnovo costume, the gelina sets off for the boy's home and walks with her eyes closed with a mirror in her hands. This is done so that she does not see where she is going and does not turn back, and if she opens her eyes - she sees only her beauty. 👰
On 2️⃣8️⃣ and 2️⃣9️⃣ December is "The Secret World of Weddings in Ribnovo" tour, in which we will have the unique chance to attend this ritual, filled with a lot of splendor, color, history, and old Rhodope songs.
⁉️ What else will we do?
👰We will have fun at a traditional Riban wedding
🥧We will take part in a culinary class on rolling out a traditional Rhodope banitsa in Kovachevitsa
🎋We will attend the Butterfly custom to attract rain
🥘We will enjoy the unknown dishes of the Western Rhodopes
🏡We will take a walk around Leshten and Kovachevitsa
🍷 We will taste the elegant local wines in a sophisticated wine-tasting

‼️There are a few places left, so don't wait until the last minute👉For reservations: ☎️0898471201 📧[email protected]

@последователи

02/11/2024

We are ready for the first donkey milk cheese tasting in November 🧀🫏
On this unique autumn day, when the warmth of the sun greets us in the picturesque freshness of The Вълшебната гора / The Magical Forest, a celebration of flavors and an unforgettable experience awaits - a tasting of three types of delicate cheese "Magara", created from high-quality donkey and goat's milk - rare and a valuable product rich in flavors and healthy qualities 🌳🌳🥂🍷
The cheese is paired with selected Bulgarian wines and fresh seasonal fruits. A cozy conversation awaits us with people who love good food and wine 🍎🍇👫
If you want to enjoy such an experience, book in advance on ☎️ 0898471201

@последователи

08/10/2024

🎗It is our honor and joy to announce that SlowTours.BG with Ekaterina is now a professional member of the World Food Travel Association (WFTA) - the leading global authority in gastronomic tourism.
‼️WFTA annually serves a community of 200,000 professionals in 150 countries. The association's knowledge, tools, and training help trade professionals and organizations use their area's food and beverage to create a strong sense of place that increases visitor interest, generates destination brand equity, and exports demand for food and drink.
‼️WFTA has a powerful strategy to enhance economic and community development, along with food tourism research, professional certification, and the development of invaluable resources for business owners and entrepreneurs in the food and beverage tourism sector.
‼️WFTA is the oldest and largest food tourism organization in the world and is highly respected among stakeholders in the food, beverage, travel, and hospitality sectors.
❣️Thank you for the honor! ❤ 🙌

Learn about culinary tourism & how to benefit your business or destination.

15/08/2024

The feast "Panagia - Raising of the Bread" from 2008 is celebrated in Kyustendil on this day - Great Mother of God. The women of the local community centers prepare Virgin Mary pies as it was done in the old days. Their involvement takes place around old churches that need restoration. Everything begins with a prayer, and the wheat is consecrated. Maidens bring silent spring water for the preparation of the ritual bread, and the participants in the ritual wash their faces and bosoms and in complete silence knead the Virgin cakes. The involvement begins with the mother woman and then ends with the maiden who accepts the tradition. When the bread is ready to be baked, it is placed in trays (vessels for baking bread, characteristic of the Kyustendil region). A lid (cover) is placed on them, which is covered with embers from the hearth. Thus, according to popular ideas, the saucer symbolizes the earth, the whisk is the sky, and the dough - life. Making your own bread is the first step towards a sustainable lifestyle, say the participants in the ritual. According to them, bread, in addition to being something sacred, is a kind of art, but also a test of inner peace and the feelings you carry - if it becomes beautiful and tasty, then you feel good. It is no coincidence that in the folk tradition, a sick person is not allowed to make bread. It is very important to share the bread with someone. Ritual breads are characterized by placing a prosphoric seal on them, as well as the fact that they are lean - only salt, water, and flour
The organizers of the celebration in Kyustendil are the Municipality of Kyustendil and the Episcopal Vicarage.

Photos: Marieta Ivanova, Kyustendil

13/08/2024

Returning to childhood as if with a time machine, to pet a sheep, play with a dog, carve a boat out of pine bark, ride a horse, grill potatoes and mushrooms (well, there were venison sausages too 😋), to ride on an old truck, knead mekitsi, and climb in the rope park. 🏞🌳🐑🐎🔥
And all this in the green bosom of the Teteven Balkan, where nature simply takes your breath away. This is what this family from Israel, who lives in London, but returned to their Bulgarian roots to touch childhood again, experienced with us from SlowTours.BG with Ekaterina in Приключенски парк ,, Рибарица". There were so many emotions that very soon we expect them again in Bulgaria! 🇧🇬🥰

@последователи

09/08/2024

The people of this family came from Israel, through London, and all the way to the Teteven Balkan, Bulgaria, to ...make Bulgarian mekitsi! Master Rositsa taught them how to knead soft dough to make the soft ones fluffy. With powdered sugar, cheese, and jam, this is how the glory of Bulgarian mekitsi will be spread around the world! 🇧🇬🥞

24/06/2024

🌺🌾June 24 is one of the biggest Bulgarian folk holidays − Midsummer's Day known as Enyovden (Enyo’s Day) dedicated to herbs, water, sun, and health rituals. We also associate it with the former premarital divinations with bunches of flowers.
🌺🌾 The most common and enduring belief is that herbs picked before sunrise on Enyovden have great healing power. Modern herbalists, as well as people who use medicinal plants in their daily lives, really get up literally in the middle of the night and go to their favorite places to pick Enyovden herbs.
🌺🌾An object of healing and protective properties is Enyo’s wreath, which the girls weaved with herbs. According to popular belief, it must contain 77 and a half herbs. Such is the number of diseases - 77 are known, and "the half" is unknown. Folk healers know which are these 77 herbs for known diseases, and the “half” they are supposed to pick with their eyes closed - a stalk that accidentally falls into their hands. This bunch of herbs is dried and stored, it is believed that it can cure all diseases.

15/06/2024

Purple Bulgaria! Lavender season 💜 Ask us about lavender tours

06/06/2024

I had the honor of being a tour guide to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense in the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Zukan Helez, and high-ranking military personnel from NATO during their visit to Plovdiv. The city under the hills enchanted the delegation with its ancient history, culture and beauty 🥰

03/06/2024

🔥The great mystery of the Bulgarian firedancing 🔥

Tour "In the Hot Footsteps of the Strandzha Firedancers"

Bulgaria

10/05/2024

A dozen ambassadors and consuls of different countries in Brussels trusted the services of SlowTours.BG with Ekaterina for a walking tour of Old Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Despite the bad weather, the diplomats looked with interest at the different cultural layers from the era of the Thracian civilization, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and the Bulgarian Renaissance, which left their mark on the oldest living city in Europe.

06/05/2024

Tourists from Hong Kong fulfilled one of their dreams with us today - to see Utrobata cave. Also known as Womb Cave, it is a prehistoric cave sanctuary in Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria. The cave resembles a female v***a and dates to the Thracian period. Historians believe that it was once used as a fertility shrine.

27/04/2024

"Kostenski sharove" is a preserved old tradition of writing Easter eggs in the Bulgarian village of Kostenets. Their painting takes place at the peak of today's Lazarov's Day, as the raw white egg is written using a special "pen" with wax, then fixed in cabbage soup and finally boiled in red dye. So the wax falls, and the egg glows with its wonderful patterns - tulip, dogwood, cock's comb, cross, fish, embroidery, vine, pitcher. Painted eggs are not to be broken, but to be looked at, that's why people say about a girl that she is "looked at like a painted egg".
ИНТЕРКУЛТУРА-INTERCULTURA

08/04/2024

We invite you to experience the amazing beauty of Bulgaria and the Eastern Rhodopes 🌳🏞🌄
WhatsApp +359898471201
Email: [email protected]

05/04/2024

Dimyat and Rubin are among the local Bulgarian varieties that Dragomir Winery Estate is most proud of. We try them with our guests - IT specialists from five American states, who remain fascinated by Bulgarian white and red wines and rosé.

01/04/2024

Original and diverse, Ban cuisine is known throughout Bulgaria for its stewed dishes, unique home-made sausages and appetizers. The most characteristic are kapama, chomlek, katino meze, Banski starets, Banski sujuk and krvavitsa, which are served in all local taverns and restaurants in Bansko and Dobrinishte. We taste the local cuisine, based on old recipes and pure home-made products, to bring our tourists from Canada closer to the distinctive way of life and culinary traditions of the local people