BULGARIA MAY 2026

 

We – John and Ali, Anthony and Magda and I – arrived in Sofia after a very early start from Stansted and were met by our guide Kamen with Ian and Allan Kerr.

We set off immediately on a 2-hr drive to the old town of Koprovshtitsa. On the way, the many statues of Vasil Levski allowed Kamen to start educating us on the universally revered passage of Bulgarian history: the failed revolution of 1876 and the successful expulsion of the Ottoman empire by the Bulgarians and the Russians in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8. Levski (“the Lion”) was captured and hanged in 1874, but his inspiration, and the revolutionary cells that he set up, gave a serious footing to this last revolution (of many!), which in turn triggered the war.

Koprovshtitsa contains a number of houses associated with heroes of the revolution, such as Todor Kableshkov and the writer Lyuben Karavelov. The houses are interesting in themselves as part of the Nationalist Revival – inspired by the Romantic movement – which started to create a Bulgarian national imaginary from the 1820s and 30s. (There is an interesting parallel with the nationalist movements in the Baltic States at about the same time.) Although the Turks had kept Bulgarians in poverty and underdevelopment since they conquered the Second Bulgarian Kingdon in the late 1300s, in the early 19^th century some successful Bulgarian merchants and traders could acquire significant wealth.

 Many built beautiful modern houses of a basically Turkish design but with Bulgarian stylistic elements. Koprovshtitsa has several which are now museums, and we saw more later in Plovdiv.

We also entered the church of the Dormition (Assumption of the Virgin) of 1816, where a wedding was going on! The Turks allowed Orthodox Christianity to continue under their rule (although conversion to Islam was encouraged, not least by the fact that Muslims paid lower taxes!) Churches had to be small – smaller than mosques and no higher than a man on horseback. The Bulgarians got round the law by digging down to build their church floors below ground level, and one frequently descends steps to enter old churches. 

The next day we went on to Plovdiv.

 The second-biggest and the oldest city in Bulgaria, it claims 8,000 years of continuous habitation. The original agricultural settlers would have spoken what is termed “pre-Greek substrate” and (according to Wikipedia) produced some of the earliest gold and pottery artifacts in the world. The earliest named people were the Indo-European Thracians, after whom Bulgaria’s central valley, the Vale of Thrace, is named. Arriving in around 1,500 BC, they were neighbours of – and perhaps related to – the Macedonians. A Thracian wall survives on the top of the hill where the city first existed. Plovdiv’s first recorded name is Philippopolis, for Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father. This historical period is highly complex, with Celtic and other incursions and a period of Persian domination (ended by Alexander in 335); the country was then conquered by the emperor Claudius in 46 BC. Trimontium was an important Roman city, with a large stadium

 (partly excavated - here seen against the background of the Ottoman mosque built with stones from the Roman city wall), baths, a beautiful theatre discovered quite recently, and a large, well-preserved forum, on which the communist government built a hideous “brutalist” post office in the 1970s! Despite its Roman name, Plovdiv claims to be built on 7 hills, one of which is topped by a contentious monument of a WWII Russian soldier.

Our next stop was the C11^th Bachkovo monastery, with magnificent frescoes in the main church (19^th century – the original C11^th church was closed for repairs). Bulgaria was converted to Christianity in 869 AD at the establishment of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. Tasked by Constantinople with evangelisation in the area of Bohemia and Moravia, two monks from Thessaloniki, Kiril and Methodius, developed an alphabet in order to present the scriptures in written form to their converts. This is known as the Glagolitic alphabet (and is used for example for some Russian “Old Church Slavonic” writings). A disciple of St Kiril, one Kliment, refined the alphabet for use in Bulgaria to produce what is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet, used – with some variations – throughout most of the Slav-speaking world today.

That night we slept in the tiny mountain village of Kosovo, with a resident population of 10, and some houses maintained as summer or weekend houses.

 Our hostess and her two sons turned out to be fluent Spanish speakers, having lived for many years in Venezuela!

The next day we went deeper into the Rhodope mountains

 to the typical little village of Shiroka Luka (Broad Curve) with the National Folklore School. Passing through Devin, where mineral water is bottled, we set off on a 3 km walk up a gorge

 to a waterfall in the national park. Very pretty, with oak, Ostrya carpinifolia, and lots of wild flowers which tested our botanical expert, although he was generally quite convincing! We arrived in the evening at Lyaskovo – the village was rather run down but Ruman’s guest-house was impeccable and the home-made rakias unforgettable.

Lyaskovo contained a number of soviet-era vehicles,

 including one truck (made in Gorky, in Russia) which we thought was probably WWII (no photo, sadly).

An early start brought us to the Devil's Throat cave in the magnificent Trigrad Gorge at 9 a.m.

 One enters a huge cavern, possibly traversed by Orpheus on his way to the Underworld. There is a charming little carving of the legend halfway through the tour – the electric light-bulb enables moss to grow in the otherwise pitch-dark of the cave!

The underground river which formed the cave now flows by a different route.
 

We then drove on to our hotel in Trigrad. Leaving our kit, we set out on a 17 km walk through the beech and pine forest down to the Greek border (the cairn in the photo).

 This was a frontier between the West and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, and the rusting barbed wire and tall gates were a sinister reminder of that time.

 There were also ruined bases for patrolling Bulgarian units.

The next day’s walk was similar, but with more open landscape and longer views. We saw a red-backed shrike (no photo!) at our picnic lunch stop, which thrilled everyone. 

Leaving Trigrad for the last time,

 we walked 9 km to the Yagodska cave – nearly losing Ian and Allan on the way! A long limestone passage, once the course of an underground river, it presents no less than 7 types of cave formations: stalactites, stalacmites, stalactones, leopard-skin, curtains, dendrites and cave pearls. We ate our picnic in a bar by the river, then drove down to our last hotel at Govedartsi in the Rila mountains, stopping to buy fresh strawberries on the way!

Our last day was beastly! We went to climb to see the seven Rila lakes, but we started in rain and climbed up into the cloud.

 Thank goodness the top station of the ski lift was open (although the lift wasn’t!) for hot chocolate.

 Some crocuses were the wildlife highlight of the day!

 We gave up soon after and returned to Govedartsi soaked to the skin! Ali’s birthday made our last night a special event. 

The next day the party split up in Sofia, with Allan and Ian leaving early, and John, Ali and Anthony after lunch. Photographs thanks to various members of the group. 

Magda and I remained to explore Sofia for the afternoon and following day. We did a walking tour and of course saw the Alexander Nevski cathedral (started 1882).

 Here for contrast is a modern church interior.

 We also visited the Red Flat – a flat recreating middle-class life in the 1980s, not very different from life in the UK a decade earlier. 

Outside the National Theatre

 we saw a bit of folk-dancing but couldn’t do any… Sunday was the celebration of the Cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian literature and culture. The whole city was on the streets.

PRAGUE,

We were last in Prague in 2007. Our immediate impression was that there were many more people (tourists)! However, as we stayed with our friend Jarka outside the city centre and only ventured in for specific purposes it did not affect us too much. We went to a Black Theatre production, which we enjoyed. And the next day to the palace of the Lobkowicz family, just next to the royal palace. It contains a great collection of portraits, mainly with a family connection. The one which really struck a chord with me was Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza! A cousin of his married a Lobkowicz in the C16th. We stayed in the palace for a chamber concert (piano, flute and viola). Probably the same concert that we heard in the same place in 2007!!

BERLIN

In Berlin we stayed with friends Sophie and Leo. The city is huge and varied, and impossible to do justice to in the three days at our disposal. However we had an enjoyable time as well as taking in some of the historical and cultural highlights. Magda had been in 1990, just after the wall came down, and found things very changed. This was my first visit.
We saw the inevitable sights - Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, Checkpoint Charlie, a preserved stretch of the Wall. While all important, they are so commonplace as to lose some of their impact. The same cannot be said of the Jewish memorial, two and a half hectares of big concrete slabs in sight of the Reichstag (parliament building) as a conscious reminder to legislators that ”never again....”
We climbed the cathedral dome (completed 1905) for a view over the city centre. Downstairs was a photo of von Ribbentrop coming out of the cathedral after his marriage in I think 1935 to a younger actress whose name escapes me. Opposite the cathedral is the site of the old imperial city palace. It was destroyed in WWII and replaced in the 70s by a new GDR government building. This has now been pulled down and the huge new Humboldt Forum is being built behind reconstructed palace facades. The decision has been criticised as resuscitating Prussian imperialism... Having said that, much of the city centre had to be reconstructed after the war when it suffered very severe damage. In the Soviet zone, which included most of the mediaeval city, not much money was available for the purpose, so less was done.
We saw the Concert House and Frederic the Great’s great matching catholic and protestant churches, all of which have been restored (east zone).  We also spent a day walking round the huge estate at Potsdam with its collection of mainly C18th palaces. The Bode Museum offered an exhibition in which European works of art were shown together with superficially similar African works, and a comparative analysis suggested. We also went to a concert of C20th composers from the old Soviet bloc, all of whom had suffered official disapproval of their art. The venue was an old warehouse full of old pianos and parts of instruments.

VILNLUS, LITHUANIA

Unlike the other two BS, Lithuania has a previous history of statehood. Indeed, it is claimed that in the late C14th the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest state in Europe, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea!
Actually, things were bit more complex, as Lithuania was closely linked to Poland for several centuries, and together they fought off both the Golden Horde and the Teutonic knights (with the help of Henry Bolingbroke). The King of Poland was usually also Grand Duke of Lithuania - both elective appointments; or sometimes brothers, and when one died the other ‘inherited’ the title. As from 1569 they formed a ‘commonwealth’ while remaining nominally independent. Lithuanian power waned and it was incorporated into the Russian empire in the C18th, when Vilnius was the 3rd largest city in the empire! It was also Polish between WWI and WWII when both states finally recovered their indepndenc (till 1939), and the Lithuanians had a hard time getting their capital back.

Vilnius was known as the “Jerusalem of the north” (among others by Napoleon, who stopped here twice) for its huge Jewish population (64,000 in the C19th). The whole of Lithuania contained 260,000 Jews in 1939, 95% of whom were ‘liquidated’ by the Nazis. We walked through the Small Ghetto  — it is now a tourist area, but I found it a bit creepy and we did not stop for dinner there.

Another difference from its neighbours is that Lithuania is catholic, although their baroque churches are fairly sober - especialy that of St Casimir, a mediaeval member of the ducal family who embraced the most ascetic version of cathlicism. I thought this was merely the aftermath of communism until we entered the Polish St Dominic, which was far more extravagant.

RIGA , LATVIA

A 5-hour bus journey over a rolling, sandy plain brought us to Riga and another new world, at different times the biggest city in the Swedish empire and the greatest port in the Russian. It is indeed a big city, making Tallinn look quite provincial. The old centre on the east bank of the Daugava river contains a much modernised fortress and several mediaeval churches. We visited St Peter, but it was closed for a service on Sunday morning; however we went to St John were we heard an organ and flute recital. Going west one enters an area of broad boulevards, parks, a canal with little boats, the opera house and other signs of C19th bourgeois life. We went to a Strauss extravaganza by the national ballet (“An der schoenen blauen Donau”) in the evening. Full house.

On arrival we discovered that we had hit off the national holiday commemorating 150 years since the foundation of the Latvian Society (to promote national sentiment) and 100years since the declaration of independence!Furthermore it was the 817th anniversary of the city's foundation. So the whole city was in party mood - and buses and trams were free! We found folk music and even folk dancing, lots of handicrafts, local foods etc. Tourists were in a minority, in contrast with Tallinn... Due to this festival we did little conventional sight-seeing. We visited two venues where different regions displayed their wares -  Selonia in the south and Latgale in the east. Wool items (and knitting!) were very frequently offered, as well as wood-working, honey, linen and cheese.

Latvians seem very patriotic and independent - more markedly so than in the other two BS; but that impression may be the result of our visit coinciding with the Riga Festival. Russians make up nearly 30% of the population and seem to coexist without too much friction, although the Latvians have plenty of reminders of the Soviet occupation, including a museum devoted specifically to the subject. Our hotel catered almost exclusively to Russian men, and English was of little use. After 1991, ethnic Russians had to pass an exam in Latvian language and history to obtain Latvian citizenship. Some 250,000 have never done so and are non-citizens; however they will die off over time as anyone born in Latvia gets citizenship automatically.

An attractive characteristic of the Latvians is their love of flowers - there were many stalls selling, and plenty of people buying... our (not very smart) hotel was conveniently sited on the edge of the old centre next to the bus station and the market. It was full of Russians, but when you went out of the front door you were in a paradise of flowers with the overpowering scent of lilies.

TALLINN, ESTONIA

The contrast as we entered the mediaeval city of Tallinn could hardly have been greater! The narrow, irregular, switch-back streets are lined with tall, gabled houses, almost all hundreds of years old and carefully restored. A sprinkling of art deco provides a more modern note. Massive stone walls are dotted with towers that could have been transplanted from Carcassonne. At the top of the old citadel, a strongpoint since at least the 9th century, the pink parliament building faces a large Orthodox church from ca.1900. The walled town centre is full of tourists, and every other house is a shop or restaurant. The area, controlled from the iron-age hill fort, was christianised by the Danes in a crusade around 1219, when the Dannebrog (Danish flag) was sent down from heaven. Construction of the mediaeval town began shortly afterwards. The Olaviste (St Olav) church was, so they say, the tallest building in the world when it was built in the 13th century, over 160 m! After two rebuilds, shorter each time, the spire is now just over 120 m tall and provides great views over the city. The nave roof is also impressively lofty... The Niguliste (St Nicholas) is similar in age and design, tall and spacious with clear glass and light gothic tracery. We went to a concert there of 15-16th century music. This was associated with an exhibition in the city’s main art museum, KUMU, of an exhibition of paintings by Estonian artist Michael Sittow 1469-1525 (look in Wikipedia). He was one of the foremost portrait painters of his age, employed in the Spanish court for 10 years and commissioned to paint - among others - Henry VIII and his sister Mary Rose, and Christian II of Denmark. Walking up to KUMU, I passed Kadriorg Palace built by Peter the Great (in 1718) after he conquered Tallinn from the Swedes during the Great Northern War of 1700-1721. One of Peter’s earliest war aims was to acquire the site on which to build St Petersburg. Mediaeval Tallinn was a Hansa port. Most of the territory that now makes up Estonia and Latvia, apart from the Hansa ports and associated trading towns (most of the cities), consisted of the small or large fiefs of the German land-owning class descended from the Teutonic knights who manned the crusade to convert the region in the C13th. This situation persisted almost up to WW II. The history of the area is incredibly complex, but basically the three Baltic States declared independence in 1918 (like Finland) based on shared linguistic and cultural grounds. Estonian is a Finnougric language distantly related to Finnish; they are not mutually comprehensible. Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages with something in common with the Slav group, but you wouldn’t know it without doing a PhD on the subject. Estonian nationalism started to grow in the C19th, and many of the works in the KUMU reflect how artists (as well as writers, poets, etc.) sought to create a national identity. One striking C19th painting was called “The Sermon on the Mount”. Christ does not appear, just a crowd of Estonian peasants listening... It was remarkably effective.

EUROPE 2018 - HELSINKI

Here we are in Helsinki in the northern summer, with a very short night. We fell into bed after midnight, after the very long journey from Chile. Even so I took a while to get to sleep with a seven hour time change. A good breakfast set us up for a day visiting the city. We started in the old centre round the original port, where the traditional market on the quayside has been tarted up into “boutiquey” little shops. Helsinki was founded further west by the King of Sweden in 1550, but moved to its present location a few years later. ‘Finland’ did not exist when the Swedes took control of this sparsely inhabited coastal area around the 13th century; they held it until the Russians attacked (not for the first time) in 1808. It then remained Russian - as a semi-autonomous Imperial Grand Duchy - until 1917, when the Finns took advantage of the Revolutionary chaos to declare independence. Around 1812, the Russians built a monumental square to form the administrative heart of their new city, still called Senate Square. On a mound overlooking the square, but built only in 1852, stands the sober, white, classical Lutheran cathedral; it is light and airy, and boasts a splendid organ. On another hill half a mile further east is the Orthodox Uspensky cathedral; brick outside with shining onion domes, dark grey marble within, it forms a heavy contrast. By chance, when we visited on 15th August (Assumption of the BVM - surely not a coincidence), we found it full of Russians, many in traditional costume, for the 150th anniversary of its inauguration in 1868. Priests were chanting, everyone crossing themselves, some of the women in headscarves - back to Russia, which after all is not far away. We saw the lights of Petersburg in the distance as our flight approached Helsinki. We went next to a midday concert of Sibelius’ music - piano and violin. It was organised by an ex professional horn-player, full of information and stories in at least four languages. The final piece was Finlandia, which he analysed as having 5 “Leitmotifs”: evil, prayer, aggression, battle and freedom. He claimed that the idea is original and becoming accepted in Finland... The concert was given in the (ex-?) Kamp Hotel with stone carvings on the facade and wood carving inside representing elements of Finnish folklore. In the afternoon we went to an open air museum on Seurasaari (island) with over 80 houses and other structures brought from all over Finland. All of wood, naturally. In the sea were a pair of great crested grebes... On the way home we stopped at the Sibelius monument, a structure of pipes with a metal mould of the composer’s face. Before dinner we went to the roof-top bar of the 1930s Torni Hotel for the view over the city. The second day in Helsinki we visitedthe excellent City Museum andthe Ateneum art gallery. No photos until I solve the technological difficulties!