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).
