In the second edition in 2015, our partners DAN Travel Ltd. announced a large reward special thematic section MY CITY!
It was a Voucher for tourist services (on amount of 500€).
The same voucher is announced for the second time in the photo salon in the same section and again will delight some of the participants in the third edition.
Last year this award was won by Claudia Dietl from Germany, who come at the opening to get it personaly! With many smiles and mood, they spent several wonderful days with our hosts and our partners from Dan Travel, and the voucher was happily utilized. She and her husband were so impressed by Bulgaria, so they repeated visit in the summer with the whole family.
If you want to learn more about their impressions, here’s the whole story, personal by the winner:
“In 2015 I was the lucky one, who won the voucher for tourist services (on amount of 500 €) – by DAN Travel EOOD with my picture “Krupp Quartier” in the section “my town”. In the same section my picture “Essener Rathaus” won the FIAP Silver medal. After receiving the results, my husband and I followed the invitation from DAN Travel and the salon chairman to come to the opening of the exhibition and awarding ceremony of the 2-nd IPS Plovdiv 2015. The suggestion was to use the travel voucher for this trip, which included also a very nice touristic program. We were picked up at Sofia Airport by a personal transfer service. In the evening of the first day we took place at the awarding ceremony. We were overwhelmed by the huge and light-flooded exhibition room, the very friendly people welcoming us as special guests and the organisation of the ceremony was perfect. The presentation of the pictures was professional and on very high level: Excellent print-quality, valuable frames, enough space for every picture and a very good light situation. Seeing my Rathaus-picture on the entrance poster and also on the cover of photo salon catalogue made me feel excited, but also indescribably proud! After the awarding ceremony my tension slowly decreased and I started to enjoy the delicious food and Bulgarian wine, which was served for the guests. Also the “IPS Plovdiv 2015” cake was an artificial masterpiece and very delicious! That whole evening was an experience, which I never will forget! The next morning we were picked up by two employees of DAN travel for a tour through the nearby mountains. First we visited Bachkovo Monastery, an old and very impressing cloister and afterwards we went to Assen’s Fortress, an old castle with an amazing view over the Plovdiv plateau. There we had our personal guide, who told us everything about the history and the former importance of the castle. Our last destination this day was the winery Villa Yustina, where we first went to the wine hills and afterwards had a guided tour through the very modern manufacturing facilities. In the end we had a private wine tasting with very delicious Tracian wines. We ordered four cases with different wines afterwards. On the third day we had our personal city guide, a very enthusiastic young man, who spent the whole day showing us the very interesting historical places, buildings and excavations of the ancient city of Plovdiv. It really was a pleasure to learn all these stories and we had lots of fun together. On the fourth day we were free to discover Plovdiv on our own, so we climbed up the six hills, enjoyed the different overviews from their tops, visited some markets and spent one more very nice summer day. We were lucky, that exactly on our weekend in Plovdiv the decision was made that Plovdiv will be the Cultural Capitol 2019. So there was a huge party all over the city with lots of musicians playing in the streets and big fireworks in the park on Saturday evening. Full of good memories of the interesting old city, the beautiful landscape, the hospitable and friendly people, the delicious food we became curious to learn more about Bulgaria and also wanted to share our experiences with our children. So we decided to spend our summer holidays in Bulgaria, too. We spent four days in the mountains in Borovets for some amazing mountain hikes like the Rila lakes and the top of the Mussala. Afterwards we went back to Plovdiv and also our children were impressed by that wonderful interesting city! One of the highlights here was the dinner with Lyubkа and Anton (the oragnizers of photo salon) in an old typical Bulgarian restaurant. We really enjoyed the meal and the atmosphere and want to thank them once again for that wonderful evening! It was a pleasure to stay there with you! Our next destination was Sozopol at the black sea coast. We stayed in a nice hotel close to the beach and had a relaxing time there. We discovered the coast and the nature in the surrounding and were stoked by the diversity and beauty of the landscape one more time. Our last stop was in Sofia. Here we only had one evening to look around, but what we saw, convinced us, that Sofia also is a nice city, that we would like to discover once again. So we are looking back to two very nice trips to Bulgaria now with good memories and more than 1500 pictures! We are sure, that we will come back again!
Thanks to everybody, who had a share to these wonderful experiences!
Best regards,
Claudia Dietl“