Bulgaria

On the journey from Istanbul to Croatia, we spent six nights in Bulgaria. Two in the capital city of Sofia, and four in Veliko Tarnovo, the former capital, perched among the mountains in the northwest.

Sofia still looks like a post-Communist city. Over-sized concrete buildings are easy to spot just outside the centre, and over-sized concrete monuments scattered through the city's vast parks proclaim everlasting friendship with Russia.


But, the centre of the city is a tangle of construction sites that will help modernize the city - overseen by the symbol of a revitalized capital, an enormous golden statue of ‘Sofia’ herself. The women who stride in stilettos over the uneven mess of a sidewalk are confident that they, and Sofia, are cultured and European.

We did a free walking tour to get to know the city - saw the historic Bulgarian Orthodox churches, the smattering of Roman ruins (more of which are surfacing as plans for a metro are carried out), the government buildings that date to the era between Ottoman rule and Communist. And then, best of all, we spent a few hours drinking beers in the park with our twenty-two year old tour guide, comparing the worlds in which we grew up.

It's basically a playground.

Our second day in Sofia we walked out to the Military Museum. The inside section is mostly uniforms from the war fought against the Ottomans for Bulgarian independence, poorly marked and dull. But outside, before you even pay to get in, you can roam a lawn cluttered with tanks and big guns and fighter planes, all rusting away quietly (some painted red so it's harder to tell) at this little out-of-the-way museum. Once you've paid your one Euro, the inside lawn contains everything from WW1 trucks to a missile launcher and advanced radar.

Awesome!

That evening we discovered one of Bulgaria's hidden charms: food. This is a very fertile country. The richness of its farmlands is evident in the plump, juicy tomatoes and the creamy deliciousness of the local yogurt and cheese. The markets are full to bursting with vibrantly coloured produce. That the land and the expertise of the farmers was wasted throughout the Communist era, and that the people in Sofia so often did without fresh food, is incomprehensible.

And, as Bulgarian produce is glorious and varied, so follow suit the restaurants. Their menus are books. There are pages of salads - they take their salads very seriously here, even though the diet is largely meat based. Pizza has been adopted and re-imagined (pickles is a very normal topping) and the traditional meat-and-potatoes style meals are amaaaaaazing.

I'm beginning to drool just writing about it all.

Leaving Sofia, we grabbed a three hour bus into the mountains to Veliko Tarnovo, a small student town perched on the edge of a gorge. We’d planned two nights and ended up staying for four, enjoying the people and the food and the stunning scenery.

One afternoon, after the heat had dissipated, we climbed up the closest ridge in the hopes of hiking to a nearby monastery, which, like many in the area in the mid-nineteenth century, was a haven for rebel soldiers fighting the Ottomans. But, as we reached the top of the ridge and started down the path, we heard gunshots. A shooting range was throwing clay pigeons down the path right in front of us... hike cancelled!

So instead, we sat on a bench at the top and looked over the gorge, cutting away dramatically beneath us, falling to the wide, rushing river that winds like a snake through the town, houses cascading down the three hills. Veliko Tarnovo is beautiful.

We spent a day shopping for warm-weather clothes and shoes (unsuccessfully) and then a day out with a hostel-organized day trip of the region. We saw another monastery (no shooting range this time!), a historically preserved town (think Fanshawe Pioneer or Upper Canada Village) full of traditional crafts, and we drove all over the rolling, forested mountains and the wide valleys, inhabited by tiny, insular villages and by small, impermanent gypsy camps.

Finally, we visited a Russian-built monument that served as a conference centre - a massive, concrete-domed bowl at the side of which was attached a thin, five-story tower, adorned with a huge red star.

These days, it’s called the UFO, because that’s what it looks like. It was abandoned after the Communist party fell and its lavish insides were plundered - marble flooring ripped up, the copper roof stripped, the spray-on red velvet ceilings torn out. It’s technically still locked, but armed with headlamps, we climbed through a window and explored its dark and dusty corners.

Upstairs, in the round conference room, all that remains of the former glory are the coloured-glass murals on the walls, depicting Party members and heroes, content workers and Socialist glory.

We went down to the basement, where mushrooms grow in the damp piles of rubble and someone has spray-painted creepy messages ('Zombies round here') - more thrill than history. No hidden creepers down there, I was watching.

The place has remained as it is, because it would seem that the government doesn't really know what to do with it. So it sits abandoned, red star broken but gleaming, sometimes visited by curious tourists but mostly by wild horses seeking shelter from the mountain winds.

I was entirely unprepared to leave the Veliko Tarnovo, for no good reason at all. I hadn't done enough laundry or researched our rapidly approaching weeks in Croatia, and I was still doddling along with my blog.

But really, I was reluctant to leave Veliko Tarnovo because it meant leaving Bulgaria, and this beautiful backwater with its fascinating past and its delicious food has stolen my heart.

We boarded a mid-morning bus to Sofia and wound our way up over the tall ridges, peering over secretive valleys that have hidden rebel soldiers and gypsies alike over the centuries. I'll miss this fertile land with its fantastic food and hidden-gem monuments and monasteries.

After a few hours in Sofia (just enough to trade our lev for dinar), we were on our way towards Serbia.

We'd decided to skip Belgrade and just cut straight across the south of Serbia from Sofia to Sarajevo, with a night's rest in the Serbian city of Nis. We were reluctant at first because there isn't much information on Serbia's bus system online, but with a conformation from our chosen hostel that a bus does run from Nis to Sarajevo (one at 6 am and one after 9 pm if you are googling this) we decided it would be easier than Belgrade.

Our only impressions of Serbia come from the uncomfortable buses, the funny and helpful owner of the Happy Hostel in Nis, and a massive dinner of rich, smokey meat and thick bread. So although I've heard many stories about the mistreatment of Americans (and Canadians) in Serbia - mostly in Belgrade - we experienced only kind hospitality.

The trip from Nis to Sarajevo was long - ten hours - but beautiful, all mountains and emerald rivers, endless gorgeous scenery.

S.