Sandanski and Rupite
In the valley of the Struma River, which connects Thessaloniki with Sofia, runs the main road into the Balkans. Along it are several charming towns and cities, one of the most beautiful among them being the city of Sandanski, famous for its hot springs. Remains of a settlement in the area were discovered from Roman times, and the residents are proud that the legendary Spartacus was born in their city. In the heart of the town, there is an impressive botanical garden, spas, and a pedestrian street.
North of Sandanski is the town of Kresna. In this area, the river forms a beautiful canyon used for rafting. The town holds historical importance because it was here that a rebellion broke out against the Ottomans at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was part of Ottoman Macedonia. The rebellion was brutally suppressed (Kresna and Razlog Rebellion). From Kresna, there are roads leading to the Elijah Monastery in the mountains to the east, as well as to villages in the Pirin Mountains and the beautiful valleys in the west.
Near Sandanski is a crater of an extinct volcano, where hot water springs emerge from the ground close to the Struma River. In this place, the prophetess of the Balkans — Baba Vanga — chose to build her home and a special church that became a pilgrimage site. She claimed that the ground in the area has special energies. The site has since become a pilgrimage destination for all her followers and believers. Visitors can see Baba Vanga’s house, the room where she received guests and gave prophecies, a small museum built in her honor, as well as the church she directed to be built, intended as a house of prayer for all nations. On the walls are modern paintings that create a psychedelic atmosphere.
The blind prophetess of the Balkans was born in 1911 in the nearby town of Strumica, which is in southeastern North Macedonia today, but was then Bulgarian territory. Her father was a Bulgarian activist and her mother died in childbirth. The family became poor, and Vanga was left at the mercy of others. When she was 13, the event that changed her life occurred: she was picked up by a tornado and thrown a long distance. When they found her in a distant field, her eyes were covered with dust and sand, and from that point, she gradually lost her sight. At age 14, she was brought to Zemun, near Belgrade, to learn how to manage as a blind person (Macedonia was then part of Yugoslavia), where she learned to read Braille and play the piano. She returned three years later to Strumica and took on the role of mother in the household founded by her father. At the same time, she began to display supersensory and healing abilities.
During the Second World War, she was already known as a psychic and helped locate missing people. In 1942, Bulgarian Tsar Boris came to consult her. In May of that year, she married a Bulgarian soldier and moved to a village near Petrich in southwestern Bulgaria. Her husband became an alcoholic after the war and died in 1962. Meanwhile, Vanga became very famous, and people began making pilgrimages to see her. In the 1990s, Leonid Brezhnev (the Russian leader) sought her advice, and in the 1980s, she connected with Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the Bulgarian communist leader.
Vanga claimed that her abilities stemmed from the presence of invisible beings who provided her with information about people she met or thought about. Time and place, she said, were irrelevant. She would see the lives of those standing before her like a film, from birth to death. She explained that the beings conveyed information to her, though there were parts she was not allowed to reveal.
Vanga predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Chernobyl disaster, the fall of the Twin Towers, rising tensions with North Korea, and more. One of her deeper prophecies was that in 2004, another realm of existence would emerge: entire civilizations would begin to spread through false worlds, and each person would be able to think in synchronicity with others, thus creating a second type of existence. This prophecy is often interpreted as a reference to life on the internet, and indeed, Facebook began its activity in that very year.
Vanga also predicted her own death in 1996, stating that a ten-year-old blind girl in France would inherit her abilities. She prophesied the coming of a secret doctrine of the White Brotherhood that would spread throughout the world — a Bible of fire. She foretold that all religions would disappear and only the White Brotherhood would remain, white would cover the earth, and all of this would come from Russia.
rupite garden Bulgaria
