Month: May 2023

We have been cheating a bit in our planning for Bulgaria. One of Ton’s best friends from Thailand is coming to Bulgaria with a tour in June and she sent Ton her itinerary and we have been using it to plan our trip. Dangs group had several locations in Veliko Tarnovo on their itinerary, and our friends the Howes told us we must come to this city. We want to thank both of them as it was a great day today.

One of the highlights for me today was at the beginning when I successfully negotiated a 12 hour rate with the parking lot attendant. He didn’t speak much English, and I don’t speak any Bulgarian but when we arrived at the lot he showed me a sign that said each hour was 3 Lev for motorhomes and he gave me a laminated number and manually recorded our license plate number in a ledger with our time of arrival. He then let us in. He seemed like a bit of a character and his pantomime was pretty good. I asked Ton how long she thought we would be in town and she said 4 or 5 hours which gave me an idea. On the sign that said each hour was 3 Lev it also said 12 hours cost 12 Lev, so my thought was if we paid for 12 hours and stayed 4 we broke even and if we really enjoyed the town and stayed 5 or more we would be ahead if we paid for 12. I went back to the attendant with my laminated number and asked him using google translate how much would it cost if we stayed 5 hours and he said 15 Lev. I then pointed at the sign that said 12 hours cost 12 Lev and asked to pay for 12, after a minute he got my point, smiled and took my laminated number from me, made some entries in his ledger and produced a receipt. I gave him 12 Lev, he then hit us with a rapid burst of Bulgarian basically telling me to make sure we keep the receipt safe in case he was not on duty when we came back. With a big smile he sent us on our way.

Veliko Tarnovo was the capital of Bulgaria during the second Bulgarian empire from 1185 to 1393. The ruins of the palace and the fortifications of the city dominate a hill above the city. The walls of the fortifications are largely intact and quite impressive. Since I was determined to spend at least 4 hours in town we covered almost the entire length of the walls.

After our extended tour of the walls we visited the Cathedral inside the fortifications. It is a new building built in 1981 to celebrate the 1300th year since the founding of the first Bulgarian state. It does not look like it is used as a church, but it does have some really interesting artwork that has some Christian scenes in it, but mostly seem to celebrate Bulgarian nationalism. The art is very interesting and reminds me of War posters from the Soviet Union during WWII.

The building was well constructed and followed the style of Orthodox Churches but did not seem to have an altar. Instead of Icons of saints and Jesus normally found in Orthodox churches, there were these very stylized scenes from what I assume are Bulgarian history. It was a very different church than any we have seen since we entered the Balkans, more of a museum.

Having now used up 2 of our hours we headed into the town itself. Our first stop was Samovodska charshya where many of the craftsmen have set up shops. After a little wandering we found it, and it was a charming little stretch of road. We enjoyed looking at the silversmith shop, and a metalworking shop that was producing containers mainly to hold coffee and tea. The workmanship was meticulous. There were also some typical tourist shops. We had just walked into one to look for a couple of small glasses to drink Rakia, when we suddenly were surrounded by about 30 5th graders on a school outing. The store instantaneously turned into chaos and the store owner was perturbed until she realized they all were buying a small souvenir of their trip to Veliko Tarnovo, she suddenly lost interest in us and headed to the cash register.

By now we had walked quite a bit and were hungry. Ton had picked out a restaurant that she said served traditional food. When we got there it was a very modern restaurant, that was serving contemporary takes on traditional Bulgarian food we were also the only customers which is not a good sign. But we were famished so decided to stay. The food turned out to be excellent, and by the time we finished eating another 5 groups had turned up.

Leaving the restaurant we stumbled on the last landmark of the city we wanted to see. Gurko street is named after a Russian General who liberated Veliko Tarnovo from the Ottomans in 1878. He is an important fellow in modern Bulgarian history, but what is cool about the street is that it was the main street in the 1800’s but over time the commercial district moved up the hill, but the buildings that made up the old commercial district in the 1800’s survived largely untouched until today. There were a lot of well preserved old buildings to look at as we slowly walked back to François in our 4th hour of touring the town.

We arrived at the parking lot and met my new friend who was still on duty. He met me with another blast of Bulgarian and a smile, so I think we won our 3 Lev bet (3 Lev is about $1.55).

Last night was the coldest night of the trip. In addition to a hard rain the temperature dropped into the low 40’s for the night. We both got dressed pretty quickly once we got out from under the blankets and while it was chilly the rain had stopped.

We had about 130km’s to transit thru the Balkan Mountains to our next campground Camping Veliko Tarnovo. This campground had been recommended to us by our friends Rick and Kathy Howe as they had stayed here during their trips thru Bulgaria, and had made good friends with the owners who were just starting up the campground when they visited.

After a pretty but uneventful drive over the Balkan Mountains we arrived at the campground around 12:30 and settled in. We spent some time talking to Niki the owner about tips on things to do and I asked for a place I could find a new headlight bulb for François as he has blown one of the ones we just replaced in Montenegro in the fall. Niki and her husband Nick are a nice British couple who moved here in 2009 with the intention of building a campground as they saw an opportunity when they toured thru Bulgaria in 2007. They have built a first class campground. Business has taken a hit since Covid, but hopefully it will rebound this year. Nick is now the head of the Bulgarian campground organization, and they are starting to do some national marketing to make sure people are familiar with what is available for campers in Bulgaria.

Niki mentioned there was a village down the road about 1 kilometer so Ton and I walked in to see what we could see. The countryside around here is beautiful, rolling hills with mountains and very green fields. In fact the whole country has that verdant green that comes with spring.

While the village had some nice houses on the edge, the center felt a little neglected. Many of the buildings were unoccupied and run down. This is a pattern in rural Europe where between a declining population, rapid urbanization and in countries like Bulgaria emigration to more affluent countries in the EU a lot of the villages are emptying out. In a town that once looked like it had a sizable population we only saw two small markets and two coffee houses/bars.

Today has been an interesting day. We woke up to rain, and it has continued to rain all day. We decided to head into the Balkan Mountains to check out an area called the Rose Valley. One of Bulgarias major agricultural products is rose oil which is used in cosmetics and perfumes and this area is the center of production for the roses.

When I punched the campground into Greta Garmin it was only about 120 kilometers so today was going to be an easy drive. Since we had time and the weather was pretty dreary we decided to stock up the refrigerator before leaving Plovdiv. We joined rush hour traffic into town to go to a grocery we had seen the last couple of days from the bus and were there in a few minutes.

Having stocked up our pantry we set out for the Rose Valley. The drive was uneventful but slow as we were on 2 lane roads the whole way. The quality was pretty good, but there was a fair amount of traffic so progress was slow but steady. It rained all of the way and as we climbed up into the Balkan Mountains the temperature started to drop into the low 50’s. We arrived at the campground around noon and were startled by what we found.

We pulled into a nearly new very posh looking campground, but there was no sign of life at all. There was one trailer on site but it looked like it was in storage. Ton and I wondered if it was open, when we saw a head pop out of one of the buildings. It was open but we are the only customers. All of the buildings are nearly new and there are spots for 100 campers. It is a little lonely, but the showers are clean and the free internet is lightning fast so we are enjoying our solitude.

Our other interesting experience was at the Damascena Ethnographic Center. Next to the campground was this very impressive looking building. As we walked up there was a parking lot that would hold a couple of hundred cars and places for 8 to 10 tour busses to park. The parking lot was completely empty so once again we wondered if it was open, it was and we were the only customers.

The region we are in was the center of ancient Thrace so the complex we were in was advertised as both a rose oil factory and a museum about Thracian culture. The building was striking and it had a large grounds with water features and statues. It looked like something you would find in Las Vegas.

The complex was extremely luxurious. It had an outdoor coffee shop that could easily seat 100 people. There were 4 very cold looking workers huddled under blankets and no customers.

The interior was marble and glass and quite large. There was some artwork on the wall depicting scenes from ancient Thrace, and a few photographs of relics from archaeological sites around the area. As a museum it was not very impressive, but the building was fantastic.

The floors were highly polished marble, all of the railings were hand made iron. The furniture was hand made wood of really high quality. We found a restaurant that looked like it could seat a couple of hundred people in high luxury. There were a few workers about but not much being done as we wandered around, they almost seemed startled that there were customers in the building.

There was also an amphitheater on site that looked like it could seat 500. All of this looked like it had been built in the last 5 years. The only thing missing was roses. We bumped into the guy who sold us the ticket and he explained that the roses used for oil production only bloom from mid-May to mid-June so we were a week too early. We could see the fields but there were no sign of roses.

He then showed us a small vial of frozen rose oil. He explained that pure rose oil will freeze and form crystals and is stored that way. He then warmed up the vial in his hands for a couple of minutes and it turned to liquid. He put a couple of drops on our hands and it smelled wonderful. The vial of about 1 ounce costs €25. To produce one kilo (2.2lbs) of oil he said takes 3.5 tons of Rose buds that have to be picked by hand. So we now understand why it costs so much.

We did make some purchases in their gift shop as they had some very nice Rose oil based products. We also bought a bottle of Rakia made from rose oil that we tried with our dinner. Ton loved it and regretted we did not buy more.

Plovdiv definitely needed another day, so we headed in late morning. Today is the final day of a long weekend, most of the stores were open, but the roads were pretty quiet heading into the center. We got off the bus near the town center and heading for the fountain in the main square. The pedestrian mall was still full of people out enjoying the long weekend and good weather.

Without a clear plan except to explore some more and maybe go to a museum we set out to see where the day took us. We came across an archaeological site that was the forum from the Roman era. We joined a large group of Romanian students exploring the area, and after the Romanians left we had it to ourselves. It was uncovered during some construction in the 1990’s like a lot of the Roman ruins in town.

From the forum we spotted a beautiful park a few hundred yards away so we headed over to see what was there. The park was quite large and held quite a lot of artwork. The trees were mature and we enjoyed the shade. Ton was really fascinated with a temporary exhibit by a local photographer. She had shot a series of photos featuring local women dressed to the nines and posed in front of local landmarks, the catch was that they were all very pregnant. Ton thought the women looked beautiful and she lingered for quite a while looking at the photos.

Ton had picked out the Bishops Bascilica of Philippopolis (Philippopolis was the Roman name for Plovdiv) as our museum for the day. In the 1990’s again, the city was doing work on one of the main avenues in the city when they unearthed this site which had been built around 350 AD. It was the main church in town.

In the Roman empire the mosaic makers of Plovdiv were renowned for their craftsmanship and artistic ability so they took great pride in working on the floor of the Basilica. As the work took place over a century, you can see the development of mosaic art over several generations.

When the site was discovered some preliminary work was done to survey the site and archaeologists were very excited about the find. In this period Bulgaria was just emerging from the communist period and the government did not have the money to pay for full scale work on the site so it was covered with a temporary cover and sat mostly untouched for about 8 years. The temporary cover collapsed and the floors that had been preserved for over a thousand years were in danger of being severely damaged.

The US Agency for International Development stepped up with a grant to begin to work on a proper cover and restoration of the site. The grant eventually became the American Society of Bulgaria that continued to fund the restoration, and the eventual building of the museum we toured today.

After a long and enjoyable tour of the large Basilica, and a short tour of a smaller Basilica that came with the ticket, we were ready for some refreshment. We turned up at a local beer hall that features Bulgarian microbrews as well as beers from all of Europe. We each had a beer but they did not have any food except peanuts.

We remembered a place we had seen at the top of the hill in the old town that seemed promising so we headed back up the hill to check it out. It still seemed promising when we got there. We lucked into a table by the railing with a great view of the city. The place was full of locals (for us a local is a Bulgarian, they may all have been from Sofia for all we know.) Unfortunately, the food was mediocre.

We headed back to the campground and settled into François for the night just as a thunderstorm rolled in. Plovdiv has been a real revelation for us, we both agree that it is one of the prettiest and most interesting cities we have visited in Europe.

I’ve always felt that I was a seasoned traveller who had a pretty broad knowledge of many countries history and geography. I had studied Bulgaria a bit during college and in the military, but not enough. I had never heard of Plovdiv until we started reading that it is a must see during any visit to Bulgaria. It turns out it is the second largest city in Bulgaria, it is believed to be the longest continuously inhabited city in Europe with evidence of habitation going back 8000 years. The fact that I had never heard of it until last month humbled me.

Our day started with an act of kindness from a bus driver. We were about 100 yards from the bus stop when I saw the bus approaching from behind us, so we started running to try to catch it, but didn’t have much hope as at our age we are not exactly sprinters. As he came opposite us he stopped and opened the doors and let us get on, and then drove the 80 yards to the proper bus stop.

We stumbled onto a free tour of Plovdiv and decided it would be a good way to get oriented to the city so we joined up. Plovdiv has undergone a bit of a renaissance in the last 10 years as neighborhoods that had deteriorated under communist rule have been revitalized thru good urban planning.

The biggest contributor was converting a major road and a section of old shops that had fallen into disrepair to a pedestrian only zone. This pedestrian zone is the longest in Europe and now is thriving with shops, coffee houses, and restaurants. It was especially busy today as it is a long weekend and the weather is perfect. All of the restaurants were packed, and people were enjoying strolling up and down the pedestrian zone.

With 8000 years of continuous inhabitation Plovdiv has its fair share of ancient sites to look at. In the new town a Roman stadium was located during construction in the 1980’s. Part of it is on display and it is well preserved, the rest of it is still there but it runs exactly under the main road of the town and it turns out many of the 16th and 17th century buildings are built directly on top of the viewing stands, because of that it has not been fully uncovered as the buildings themselves are also rich cultural heritage.

Our next stop was the old town which is on one of the seven hills that make up Plovdiv. The buildings are mostly from the 18th and 19th century so they are not nearly as old the Roman ruins, but the name was given before most of the ruins were discovered and at that time they were the oldest buildings in town.

The old town was where the wealthy residents of the city lived and the homes are very large. They are built in a style called Bulgarian National Revival. They have been restored and we enjoyed seeing a different style of architecture than we have seen in other European countries. The differences are small, but make for a totally different feel.

After the tour was over we headed into town to try to find lunch. The first restaurant on our list told us they could not accommodate us until tomorrow. We noticed all of the restaurants were absolutely packed and began to wonder if we would get in anywhere. Our second choice restaurant had one table left, and while it was not great we took it. Right after we got our beer and appetizer the sun umbrella next to our table got hit with a gust of wind and tumbled into our table. Ton caught a glancing blow as it landed. Somehow our beers did not get knocked over, but the vinegar jar did and some of it got onto Tons favorite hat. The staff reacted weirdly though. After finding out we were ok, they began repairing the damage and cleaning up the mess. They did move us to another table, but other than that they never acknowledged the incident again, no apologies or anything.

Having survived lunch we took another turn thru town looking at sites and mostly people watching. When we got back to the old town there were several couples getting their wedding photos done. The light must be better in the afternoon.

We headed back to the campground in the afternoon having discovered a beautiful culturally rich city neither of us had heard of before last month. To make up for it we are going to go into town again tomorrow to check it out again.

We decided to move on to Plovdiv this morning. We debated whether to go back into Sofia for one more day, but we were afraid that it would be crazy with the military parade and all of the other St. George Day festivities, so it was off to Plovdiv.

We got an early start, and even though the freeway was busier than any we had seen in Europe except Germany we arrived at our campground before noon. We are staying at the Plovdiv Glamping Alliance which is absolutely the most high tech campground we have ever stayed at in either North America or Europe. George at the campground in Sofia warned us that we needed to book in advance because you need a QR code to get access to the site. So last night we picked our spot and got our QR code.

The first step went ok as our QR code got us thru the two sets of gates, we found our spot and began our well rehearsed set up procedure for François. After I located the electric hook up behind a shrub and crawled on my back to get at it I yelled for Ton to verify we had electricity. She said no so I crawled back into the shrub and confirmed everything was ok, but still no power. This happens sometimes and our standard procedure is to shift to another spot and see if the power works there. In this case we were committed to this spot, and even though the place was about 80% empty I wasn’t sure we could just move. So I decided to set off to find a human to talk to.

As I was walking towards the 4 story hotel that the Glamping is attached to I saw a German camper and asked him about the electricity, or if there was a human around. He said I could check the hotel but he hadn’t seen anyone all day. My QR code got me into the hotel, but in fact there was no one there. It was kind of weird wandering thru a brand new hotel by myself, but they really take this contactless stuff seriously here. After some research I discovered I had to activate the electric on a website and as soon as I did the power came on.

They also had a washer/dryer combination machine and we decided we’d do a quick load of clothes before heading into town. After some more on line gymnastics our QR code was updated to allow us access to the washer/dryer. We loaded our clothes and started the cycle and the timer said it would be 5 hours and 48 minutes to completion. At first we thought it was a mistake, but we noticed the other washer that was running showed over three hours to completion so our thoughts of going to town were dashed and we ended up spending the day in François and chatting with our German and Korean neighbors. I think you can take this high tech stuff too far, and they may have accomplished that here.

I had low expectations for Sofia. I think my views of the former Soviet Bloc countries are sometimes skewed by my experience serving in the US military during the cold war. I expected a cold, ugly downtown, and Sofia was not that. Ton on the other hand had done research on Sofia and she expected a pretty city center with lots of gardens and flowers. Her expectation was correct and mine was wrong.

Last night was the chilliest night of the trip, so neither one of us was in a big hurry to get out from under the covers in the morning. Eventually we got moving and after some coffee we headed downtown. We took the subway from near our campground and the fare was the equivalent of 80 US cents each.

As the capitol Sofia has its fair share of monumental buildings, and we spent time trying to figure out what they were. We identified the building that the parliament meets in, and the Ministry of Defense. But there were several other important looking buildings that we could not figure out, including the one the two soldiers in the cool uniforms with big feathers were guarding.

After we got all of the big buildings out of the way we headed to the main Cathedral. Along the way we passed thru a series of nice parks that were full of Tulips in full bloom. Ton really enjoyed the gardens and I kept losing her as she would see something and stop for a photo. I finally had to walk behind her so I could keep her in sight.

Tomorrow is St. Georges day which is a national holiday. As we were walking there was suddenly a low pass by about a dozen different aircraft from the Bulgarian Air Force who must have been rehearsing for tomorrows parade. Later in the day they repeated the low pass and flew over us in the campground at about 500 feet.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral occupied the center of a large square. It is one of the largest Orthodox Cathedrals we have seen. The interior is interesting because a lot of the pictures of the saints are rendered in a more modern, less rigid form than most Orthodox art.

After the Cathedral we headed to the main shopping street with the intent to people watch and find some food. Ton had a traditional tavern in mind she had found on line last night. After walking down the long pedestrian street with the normal mix of high end stores and coffee shops we found our restaurant.

We ordered a meal for two which consisted of a large skewer of kebab, some pork cutlets, chicken and sausage plus coleslaw, potatoes, and to Tons delight grilled peppers. Ton pronounced the meal the best she has had on this trip, as the coleslaw and chicken reminded her of Thai dishes, and the peppers were very tasty, but a little mild.

We enjoyed Sofia it had a nice mix of impressive buildings, nice parks, and a vibrant street scene. After Greece it felt cleaner and there is certainly less graffiti. For Ton it was exactly what she expected, and for me it was not at all what I expected.

Once again we woke up and realized we were nearly halfway thru our trip and had not reached the country we had picked as the country we were going to visit on this trip. We have gotten very comfortable with Greece, and Nikos had recommended several other places we should visit, but we decided we needed to get to Bulgaria as that was the country we had intended to visit and time was running out.

So we woke up a little early, checked out of the hotel and headed out to the motorhome dealer we had left François at. There was a little drama when we learned from the dealer last night that the warranty against leaks we thought lasted 10 years had expired and they could not do the test. After a quick email with a representative from Knaus we learned that the 10 year warranty started in 2017 and François is a 2016 with a 5 year warranty that had expired last year.

We headed out towards the Bulgarian border for a very quick and relaxing drive on the Greek toll ways. The border was uneventful, except while I was dealing with the Greek passport control guy, there was a knock on Tons door. The guy was not in uniform but announced he was Police and we needed to open the door and let him inspect the interior. I looked at the passport guy and asked him police? When he looked up quizzically the guy not in uniform had been replaced with a guy in uniform so he said yes let them inspect, but I could tell by his face this was unusual.

After I let them in the policeman in uniform told me to open all of the doors and cupboards, but the guy not in uniform said something to him in Greek and asked me to show him the bathroom. While he was looking in the bathroom he asked me where we bought it. He then asked where the kitchen was so I pointed at the stove top and refrigerator. He then asked me how much we paid for it and did we like it. I told him how much and yes we loved it. He then asked if we had enjoyed Greece and I told him Greece was awesome and we would be back soon. He said great and thanked us.

I think the guy might be in the market for a camper van and saw us in line and decided to get a tour of the inside of ours. This explains the confused look from the passport guy, and the other policeman being confused that he did not want to see all of the nooks and crannies of François. The good news was while I was dealing with our “police inspection” the Greek passport guy had handed our passports to the Bulgarian passport guy who he shared an office with and we were welcome to enter Bulgaria.

After weeks of beach front living we are parked in an Aire next to the second busiest road in Sofia and across from a very busy self serve car wash, by the way self serve car washes do not exist in Greece for some reason, so we will be giving François a good bath in the next couple of days. The owner of the Aire lived in Massachusetts for 6 years and said we were his first American customers. He gave us some recommendations for places to visit in Bulgaria and Sofia and we talked about life in the US and Bulgaria for a while.

We started out on a short walk, but it was cold and Ton decided I could finish the walk without her. I went down the road to find a grocery and take the bad pictures for todays blog. Tomorrow we are heading downtown to check out Sofia.