Bulgaria is a nice place to visit and we're glad we went – there were lots of interesting places we didn't have time to get to and a person could spend a month there (you'd probably need a car though).
We found reading the Bulgarian language not too bad. I recognise the letters and the technical words tend to be the same as other European languages. A lot of people didn't speak any, but we were never stymied (except the day we had to order random burgers because the waiter didn't know how to translate the ingredients).
While the feel is basically that of a modern European town, with the same sorts of shops and people looking mostly similar, still a lot remains from the Communist era. Bulgaria simply doesn't have the money to go round knocking down things unless it needs to.
The most political of the statues, like Lenin and Dimitrov (the first leader of Communist Bulgaria and a hard-line Stalinist) were removed (a few were collected in a special museum we visited). However loads of stuff remains which isn't too obviously Soviet – until you examine the style, in which case they're very obviously Soviet Realist.
They also still have most of the main Communist administration buildings, which are now government offices. They did blow up the Dimitrov mausoleum (similar to the Lenin one in Red Square) but had nothing to put in its place, so there sits a flat bit of concrete in the middle of Sofia.
Another great building civilisation, but this time in a good way, was the Romans. Bulgaria is largely the ancient province of Thrace and had been linked to the Greek world for 500 years before the Romans got there, so was heavily colonised. All the sizable towns are ex-Roman (and most ex-Thracian before that).
Plovdiv had the partial remains of the wall, a theatre, an ancient stadium (for chariot-racing) and an aqueduct – which in typical Roman fashion shifted water 30 odd kilometres to a town which was built on a river. The coastline around Varna had only bits and pieces because the modern parts are built on the ancient ones, but a clear history from Thracian times through to the Byzantines.
The surprise was Sofia, which has much of the ancient town excavated, literally two levels down from the modern city, so you find bits of it on show as you wander around the Metro.
What seriously impressed me though was the road the Romans built south of Plovdiv, from Asenovgrad down to the Greek coast. There are large sections still clearly visible, which we walked.
It ran through the hills for some 150 kilometres, much of it carved out of cliff faces to cart width. Because the river bed area is prone to flooding the road runs several hundred metres higher than the river. It had been a trade route for centuries, but only the Romans went the full way and built a proper road – they certainly built things once, to last.
Of course we learned quite a lot more about Bulgaria, too much to relate here. There were oddball things – at all the restaurants we went to they served the dishes at random times, so we didn't get to eat together. There were solutions to things that had bothered me – I had always wondered how Alexander the Great and his father had conquered such a hilly country so quickly, but it turns out that the Thracians were a lot more civilised than I had thought and had sizable towns to conquer and that most of the country isn't that hilly. And so many churches with so many icons!
So now we are in ancient Dacia, modern Romania, and it's intriguing the similarities and the differences. More of that later.
We found reading the Bulgarian language not too bad. I recognise the letters and the technical words tend to be the same as other European languages. A lot of people didn't speak any, but we were never stymied (except the day we had to order random burgers because the waiter didn't know how to translate the ingredients).
While the feel is basically that of a modern European town, with the same sorts of shops and people looking mostly similar, still a lot remains from the Communist era. Bulgaria simply doesn't have the money to go round knocking down things unless it needs to.
The most political of the statues, like Lenin and Dimitrov (the first leader of Communist Bulgaria and a hard-line Stalinist) were removed (a few were collected in a special museum we visited). However loads of stuff remains which isn't too obviously Soviet – until you examine the style, in which case they're very obviously Soviet Realist.
And one of the reasons they remain is that they are huge. Far too large to dismantle easily.
Here's Alison at the base of the one above, to show just how stupidly big it is.
They also still have most of the main Communist administration buildings, which are now government offices. They did blow up the Dimitrov mausoleum (similar to the Lenin one in Red Square) but had nothing to put in its place, so there sits a flat bit of concrete in the middle of Sofia.
Another great building civilisation, but this time in a good way, was the Romans. Bulgaria is largely the ancient province of Thrace and had been linked to the Greek world for 500 years before the Romans got there, so was heavily colonised. All the sizable towns are ex-Roman (and most ex-Thracian before that).
Plovdiv had the partial remains of the wall, a theatre, an ancient stadium (for chariot-racing) and an aqueduct – which in typical Roman fashion shifted water 30 odd kilometres to a town which was built on a river. The coastline around Varna had only bits and pieces because the modern parts are built on the ancient ones, but a clear history from Thracian times through to the Byzantines.
The surprise was Sofia, which has much of the ancient town excavated, literally two levels down from the modern city, so you find bits of it on show as you wander around the Metro.
What seriously impressed me though was the road the Romans built south of Plovdiv, from Asenovgrad down to the Greek coast. There are large sections still clearly visible, which we walked.
Alison on the Roman road, with cliffs above and below.
It ran through the hills for some 150 kilometres, much of it carved out of cliff faces to cart width. Because the river bed area is prone to flooding the road runs several hundred metres higher than the river. It had been a trade route for centuries, but only the Romans went the full way and built a proper road – they certainly built things once, to last.
Of course we learned quite a lot more about Bulgaria, too much to relate here. There were oddball things – at all the restaurants we went to they served the dishes at random times, so we didn't get to eat together. There were solutions to things that had bothered me – I had always wondered how Alexander the Great and his father had conquered such a hilly country so quickly, but it turns out that the Thracians were a lot more civilised than I had thought and had sizable towns to conquer and that most of the country isn't that hilly. And so many churches with so many icons!
So now we are in ancient Dacia, modern Romania, and it's intriguing the similarities and the differences. More of that later.
So in the footsteps of Rome eh
ReplyDeleteYou came, you saw, you got the tourist experience!