The Month of Eight Countries: Bulgaria

This month, we’re traveling over 4,000km from Turkey to France by land. It’s incredibly unusual for us to travel so fast – and to bypass so many lovely places – but there’s a reason for this transit-style travel: Bruno has a date with a knee-surgeon.

We’ve chosen a route to France that is [mostly] direct, avoids the coast (sure to be filled with tourists at this time of year) and has us crossing as few borders as is practical. This month, our planis to drive through Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, and France. Though we won’t be able to properly visit these countries as thoroughly as we normally would (and we won’t have time for touristy detours), we will try to maximize our tourism along the way home.

And so, friends, what will follow for the next few weeks on Wandering Footsteps is a mini blog series charting our transit month though Europe: The Month of Eight Countries. The first post in the series is on Bulgaria. Enjoy!

First Impressions of Bulgaria

I didn’t know much about Bulgaria, but that hasn’t stopped me from daydreaming of traveling here over the past several years. See, I had a Bulgarian friend in college who took me to a Bulgarian restaurant in Chicago one day. I remember eating fresh cut French fries smothered with soft Bulgarian feta cheese, and then partaking in a traditional dance, holding hands with strangers and hopping around in a circle to fiddle music.

It’s funny how the smallest of things can create such large ideas. After that night, another friend and I talked non-stop about doing organic farming in Bulgaria through the WWOOFING organization (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms). That idea, for some reason, has remained in the back of my mind ever since.

A different idea comes to Bruno’s mind when he thinks of Bulgaria, which he visited a decade ago. He remembers all the prostitutes along the side of the highways that would accost him if he pulled over for a pee- or lunch-break. He remembers the signs advertising the most mundane of things – like toothpaste or fridges – with half-naked women front and center.

The prostitutes are gone now, but the half-naked women advertisements are still there.

But this was only my second impression of Bulgaria. My first was that I’d entered a Soviet communist state. Ugly concrete buildings had smashed windows and an abandoned air, crumbling homes were still lived-in, towns all ended with the suffix –grad. Our first campsite looked like it had been frozen in time thirty years ago. I was surprised the water in the sink worked.

Still, I was in a new country (!), and one I’d imagined visiting for so long. I was stepping foot in the Balkans for the first time, experiencing my first Slavic country, and visiting my first country that used what I’d always called Russian letters (actually called the Cyrillic alphabet). Best of all, I was going to (hopefully) get to eat French fries and feta again!

Since our time in Bulgaria was limited, I plotted our tourism carefully. I concluded that we could visit a historical town, a bear sanctuary, and an Orthodox monastery – all located along our route and all in six jam-packed days. It wouldn’t be nearly everything I wanted to experience in Bulgaria, but it would be a good first taste.

The Historical Town of Plovdiv

In Plovdiv, I quickly remembered that first impressions aren’t always correct. Here was a town that had hilltop statues, massive green parks, cobblestone streets, Roman ruins, Ottoman mosques, and Orthodox churches. Cafes nestled themselves under trees, in narrow alleys, and inside funky old buildings with colorful murals painted on the exterior walls. There was a bumping hipster street festival going on with food, records, skateboarding, and participatory art. There were art galleries on every street corner.

It’s no wonder they say you haven’t seen Bulgaria until you’ve seen Plovdiv.

Actually, maybe the reason they say that is that the Bulgarian Revival largely happened here. In the late 18^th century, when Ottoman rule was in decline, nationalist sentiment and Bulgarian culture experienced a rebirth. A lot of the artistic aspects of the Bulgarian renaissance happened in Plovdiv. Today, you can wander on the hill of the old town and see tall wooden buildings decorated with colors and motifs you’d normally expect to see inside a home. Even if the Revival buildings aren’t old, they’re so unique and quirky that I preferred them to the town’s Roman amphitheater and Odeon.

On one corner, just outside the historical section of town, is a cluster of Orthodox churches. We wandered into one and watched as an elderly woman stretched herself up to place candles in front of gold-bordered icons before kissing each image. It was obviously a ritual she – or, perhaps her mother or grandmother – had completed every day for the past two hundred years.

Next door, at the Assumption Cathedral, we watched as a priest gave mass in the sanctuary hidden behind a decorated gold wall. A man stood in a corner of the church with a microphone and a heavy book, chanting prayers like a monk. Three people stood in the center of the nave (which had no pews) observing mass, bowing their heads at certain times and crossing themselves over and over again. Eventually, the priest emerged from his closed sanctuary, held up the Bible and then a large gold cross, offered the host to the faithful, and mass concluded. It was strange. And it was special. It’s what made my first impression of Bulgaria entirely fade from my mind.

The Dancing Bear Park                         

For two nights, we got to camp right beside Syrian brown bears.

Until recently, seeing a dancing bear on the streets of Bulgarian towns – as well as other towns throughout the Balkans – was fairly commonplace. These baby bears went through a rigorous training program to get them dancing. The first stage was their physical preparation. Their faces were mutilated in order to place rings through their nostrils and upper lips. The ring was attached to a metal chain that could be yanked if the bear got out of order. Then, their nails (which, unlike in humans, contain sensory glands) were pulled off so that they were less threatening to their masters.

The second stage was to teach the bears to dance. They were pushed onto sheets of glowing hot metal, and their masters would begin playing violin music. The bears would dance around to keep their feet off the hot coal. Eventually, they no longer needed the metal sheets because they so associated the sound of the violin to the feeling of burning feet.

In 2007, just before Bulgaria joined the European Union, the NGOs behind the Dancing Bear Park in Belitza managed to convince the Bulgarian government to outlaw this archaic and inhumane practice. But the twenty-four bears now living out their days in this park still wear scars of their former lives (and there are more former dancing bears still hidden away in private homes). Many of them have no eyesight or missing fur due to malnutrition. One has a missing leg, another a missing ear. One poor bear walks back and forth on a small patch of worn grass because he’s never gotten over the trauma of dancing for people.

Visiting the Dancing Bear Park was rather emotional. The bears live in fairly spacious enclosures hidden in pine tree forests on the hills near Rila Mountain. You can walk the several-kilometer-long walking path around the enclosures and read the story of each bear’s traumatic past, current state of wellness, and personality. We watched bears play with car tires, swim in their pools, play fight (and really fight, once), eat breakfast, and have sex (he bears have been all been spayed or neutered because the center’s aim is not to breed them, but to allow them to have as normal of a life as possible). The best sign that the bears are returning to a normal life? They all hibernate (something they never did during their dancing careers) and most even dig natural dens.

To learn more about the organizations that support the Dancing Bear Park, visit Four Paws or Fondation Brigitte Bardot.

The Rila Mountains and the Monastery Trail

The road was narrow. That’s because it was squished between a rapidly running river and tall, green mountains. When the road finally opened up onto a cobblestone square, we were greeted by big white tour busses offloading hundreds of people. We’d arrived at Rila Monastery, the most touristy place in Bulgaria.

The Rila Monastery dates back to the 10^th century, when Orthodoxy in Bulgaria was at its height. When the Ottomans arrived a few centuries later, however, they destroyed most of the Orthodox churches and monasteries in the country. Only those that were isolated enough not to be found were spared. Rila Monastery was one of such places. For centuries, this monastery was one of the few places that preserved traditional Bulgarian religion, language, and culture, and it is now a place of pilgrimage for Bulgarians. It’s even depicted on the back of one of Bulgaria’s banknotes.

The monastery was, indeed, beautiful. The black and white striped residential building surrounding the courtyard was built during the funky Bulgarian Revival period. The church in the center of the courtyard has the ornate and gold detail and frescoes typical in Orthodox churches. It’s the walls on the exterior of the church that really struck me. The colorful frescoes are really spooky. A lot of them feature demons doing really violent and grotesque things. I can’t explain how the demon deeds play into the religious history of this monastery but I’d never seen religious images like that anywhere before.

From Rila Monastery is a walking trail that runs parallel to the road for several kilometers. This path leads to the home of a famous monk, a church, and another small monastery. Behind the tiny forest monastery were hundreds of messages, written in Cyrillic, folded, and stuffed in between the rock layers of the monastery walls. A cave behind the monastery held more messages, as well as icons hidden in the dark and only visible on our camera. These hidden expressions of faith – still very much alive in Bulgaria – were well worth the walk.

French Fries and Feta

Throughout our six days in Bulgaria, I got to taste a bit of the history, culture, religion, and natural environment of Bulgaria. But I also got to taste lots of French fries and feta! Who knew they were actually a ubiquitous snack on every restaurant menu?

Bulgaria was a wonderfully cheap country. Bruno and I visited fresh produce markets, where we overbought and subsequently gorged ourselves on fruit (a kilo of cherries for less than a dollar? 3 kiwis for fifteen cents?). But we also ate out a lot – and not only because a pint of beer was less than bottle of water. As always, I wanted to try some of the local food, and Bulgaria had a few interesting vegetarian dishes I was eager to try. I ate loads of shopska salad, which is the Bulgarian version of a Greek salad and uses the same white cheese that comes loaded on the fries. I also got to try guveche po shopski, a vegetable stew cooked in a clay pot and topped with an egg and, yes, white cheese!

I ran out of time and wasn’t able to try the various fried vegetable and cheese dishes, the bean soup in a clay pot, or the breakfast cakes. I guess, once again, my experience of Bulgaria’s food makes a good parallel to my experience of Bulgaria: What I tasted was yummy, but I didn’t get to try enough, and now I have a taste for more!

Bulgaria, I’ve wet my whistle, and I’ll be back.