A very long ago
The winter didn’t want to go
And covered everything with snow,
And everyone hid at home.

The animals trembled from cold,
Plants could’t bloom, buried with snow
Not a flower, grass or tree
Could fight the snowdrift.

The dogwood than decided
With the winter to fight
Despite its small size
Often as a shrub described

With a little sunlight it succeed,
To bloom before the leaves appeared
And all animals came to the tree
To eat its fruits that tasted so yammy

Even the bees came to the brave tree
And than made a delicous honey,
The heavy bears heard about this
They came treading through the snowdrifts.

The snow was dumped and melt away
The winter couldn’t any longer stay
But before she left she cursed the Dogwood
When it’s warm not to have any fruits.

But she forgot about her sister – fall,
And during the autumn now it gives fruits the most.
This tree blooms first in early spring
And until the late autumn the animals feed.

There are many more tales and legends about the cornel tree, known as a dogwood. Because of its strength, in Bulgaria we put a little branch in the Christmas bread, and those who finds it has a lot of health during the new year. From the dogwood we also make sorovachki – colorfull branches we use during Christmas. Our ancisters the Proto-Bulgarians used it for arrows and bows. It is also believed that even the Holy Cross was made of dogwood.

The name of this brave tree bears the beautiful Bulgarian town – Dryanovo (dogwood in Bulgarian is dryan). Is this town magical and legendary as the tree? It turned out that was true. There are movies regarding the legends in Dryanovo – they described the stories of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, others are about the Liberation Wars in the 19th century. The place is truly unique and brings some tranquility, and even pride.

Our walk in the city started from the museum of Kolyo Fitcheto – the famous master of bridges and churches – left an indestructible legacy in our lands. The children really liked the hall with miniatures of some of the creations of the famous master.

Next to the museum there are beautifully houses, and a small supermarket from which we got ice cream. We ate it in the shadow of the big monument of Kolyo Fitcheto, next to the street fountain.  We enjoyed the view of the famous Lafchieva House, which turned out to be the only preserved three-storey residential building from the Revival period, built around 1840. It is known as the house without nails because not a single nail

or iron bracket was used in the construction. Another famous house here is the Ikonomova House – the work of master Kolyu Ficheto.

We continued our walk to the beautiful clock tower, built back in 1778, along which there were fountains that unfortunately were not working at the moment.

We were very impressed by the relief map of Bulgaria in the yard of Maxim Raykovich Secondary School.

It turned out that it was made by the geography teacher Bonka Tihova and her students and quite accurately recreates the relief of our homeland. It is even evident that real water flowed along the rivers, flowing into the sea. реките е течало истинска вода, вливаща се в морето.

The whole town can be seen in an hour or two, but we liked it so much that we decided to stay overnight. Hotel Centaur pleasantly impressed us – with a lovely outdoor pool, spacious rooms and delicious food.

In the morning we walked from the hotel to the bridge of Kolyu Ficheto, which was built in 1861 and has survived in its original form to the present day.

A little further down was the church “St. Nicholas” – also erected by Kolyo Ficheto in 1851 with a magnificent bell tower.

However, our children were more impressed by the modern Pump Trak Dryanovo – a playground for scooters,

skateboards, skates and even wheels, which we saw on the way to the bridge.

6 km outside the town in the direction of Gabrovo is the Dryanovo Monastery, erected during the reign of Tsar Kaloyan. It was destroyed and burned three times, and rebuilt three times. During the Renaissance there were about 500 monks here, which made it one of the largest literary centers. Today, an attraction for children are the beautifully painted icons on which you can tell short Bible stories or simply light candles for health and place them in large candlesticks filled with sand.

My children and I collect stamps from the 100 national tourist sites in Bulgaria, and they can be taken from the Kolyo Ficheto Museum, the Dryanovo Monastery and the Bacho Kiro Cave. The three sites were collected under numbers 22 and 22a.

The Bacho Kiro cave is less than 300 meters walking distance from the monastery, and my children went inside hoping to see bats, but it turned out that in July they were hiding very far in order to give birth to their young.