BULGARIA – Our recent visit to Inter Campus Bulgaria took us from Mount Rila all the way to the Rhodope Mountains in the south of the country, the autumnal colours of the trees punctuated with the familiar flash of black against blue.
The area around the Rhodope Mountains is home to the most isolated and ethnically diverse communities in all of Bulgaria, where Bulgarian Slavic influences are particularly strong. Yet it is also a place inhabited by the vast majority of the country’s Pomak Slavic Muslim population, whose ancestors would have converted to the religion under Ottoman rule in the 1500s.
Our trip began in the Rila Mountains, in the town of Dupnitsa, around 50 kilometres south of the capital Sofia. We organised a two-day technical training course for our two new Bulgarian coaches, Stefan and Ventsislav, who joined the 200-strong global team of Inter Campus instructors just a few months ago.
The project in Dupnitsa has been working with around 30 boys and girls for around a year. All of the kids were excited to see us given that a couple of months had passed since our last visit, their welcome warm and genuine.
These children, who have either been abandoned by their parents or have had their parents taken away from them for various reasons, received theory-based lessons and practical sessions on the football pitch from our coaches Gabriele Raspelli and Roberto Radaelli.
Next we headed for the Rhodope Mountains and the stunning region of Plovdiv. Our destination is the Inter Campus Bulgaria centre in Banja, a spa town on the outskirts of Karlovo (the hometown of the revolutionary Vasil Levsky, one of the ideologists and strategists behind the Bulgarian revolution).
Awaiting us is indomitable local instructor Doncho and 30 children, the majority of them belonging to the Romani ethic group. A further 15 kids have come from another centre in Troyan to see us, along with their coaches Midko and Vladi.
We spent a memorable two days in Banja, running multiple training sessions but – most importantly – enjoying an unforgettable experience based on integration and sharing, on friendship and having fun.
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