General: Bulgaria

Bulgaria; land of errant waiters, too much cucumber, and an awfully over-developed holiday coast. What on earth would attract the likes of theed and his mother?

Well, the need to tick it off, as looking east it was about the nearest large country they hadn't been to. More importantly, the opportunity to see a lot more of the country, its sites and people etc, than those who go on bucket trips to Golden Sands do.

So please ...
...but these competition things are supposed to stimulate a more competitive running list of latest ops. As regards his latest op, it is hoped the Sofia one is still fresh in the reader's memory, as this category has been taken to include some info and opinions about the rest of the country.

The good things about Sofia, now, you can repeat for many of the Bulgarian cities - they are by no means earth-shatteringly great, but they are really ... more

Bulgaria; land of errant waiters, too much cucumber, and an awfully over-developed holiday coast. What on earth would attract the likes of theed and his mother?

Well, the need to tick it off, as looking east it was about the nearest large country they hadn't been to. More importantly, the opportunity to see a lot more of the country, its sites and people etc, than those who go on bucket trips to Golden Sands do.

So please forgive theed for overburdening the site with ops about Bulgaria, but these competition things are supposed to stimulate a more competitive running list of latest ops. As regards his latest op, it is hoped the Sofia one is still fresh in the reader's memory, as this category has been taken to include some info and opinions about the rest of the country.

The good things about Sofia, now, you can repeat for many of the Bulgarian cities - they are by no means earth-shatteringly great, but they are really nice, pleasant large towns, and with you looking around the centre where the famed buildings and sites of interest are, you can cover them in a long afternoon if time is short. There are lots of pockets of park or square, so plenty of opportunity to take a breather.

And so we ought to have a look at the other cities (alright, towns) in more detail. Second on the list, for being the second visited, the second biggest, the second most important anyway - and the second best - is Plovdiv.

They talk about Plovdiv as being built on seven hills. There are four, in truth. There is a great old town on one, which is where to start, although if you want proper directions, you're not going to get them, for it is a minor maze of up-hill-and-down-dale streets, many in much need of repair. The guide books will go some way to point you to the more pretty houses, built in the local 19th renaissance style (yes, they were a bit late, hence the small 'r'). Some are regular museums, some are just left to show furniture as local big wig businessmen might have lived, and it's the latter you should head for, however briefly.

You can amble in the sun (at least when it shines) past the run-down buildings, and the ones done up with "Red Mafia" money, and within luck you might find yourself at the southern foot of the hill, where a huge Roman theatre has been cut. It's a great locale, with a cafe at the top, and the ability to scramble over the very steep seats, and check the acoustics ("pardon?!"). The views are nice too, over a section of the modern town. It's still a working venue.

The modern areas again have fancy park bits - the larger one in the SW corner has a very large but rather naff musical fountain affair - and as you'd expect the modern shops. If they succeed in repaving the main pedestrian street it'll be a delight - modern boutiques and shops of all kinds, with more roman remains (part of the arena) at the top end - and another mosque to visit.

Harder to get to - there's no international airport - Plovdiv is also worth a good look as a weekend break, with the cultural rambles and just getting lost pleasures of the old town hill, and the spend spend spend of the new town. Should you wish, there's the Roman forum, and thousands of years of history to gen up on while you're there.

(As for the other hills, they feature a modern comms mast and ancient clock tower, huge Soviet monuments and a Park to the Youth, looking out from within. They weren't explored.)

However the city most British tourists will spend most time in is some way away, Varna, on the Black Sea coast. In times past the bay just to the north of Varna was a glorious spread of miles of pure pale sand, with a safe swim for all, and a few hotels poking their way from the trees. Now, having been nicknamed Golden Sands for the Brits, it is a horror of kiosks, bars and stalls, and a promenade, all built over the beach of course, shielded from the sea by miles upon miles of private beaches, and municipal ones where one pays 3 levs for this, one lev for that, and probably 40 stotinki for breathing.

You might enjoy a week here, bombing around in Jeepnies, getting sloshed at the bars that offer free welcome drinks, followed by free staying drinks, followed by free getting-rid-of-you-at-8am drinks. You might gather that this writer would rather impale himself with a sharpened Lenin statue.

Varna as such hasn't exactly retained any of its charms, although as it is one of the two main ports of the country it might never have had any. A brief stroll away from the horrible hoards thronging the pedestrian areas revealed several Roman ruins - the baths are recommended for fans of that sort of thing, some churches, and an archeological museum that is the best in the country, with clear and basic displays of 6,000 years of history. Thankfully none of the displays have been made touchy-feely, hands-on, sit and wait for the video experiences. Instead ancient tombs swarming in rich ancient gold are represented to tell their own story, next door to galleries of Roman funerary statuary arranged so you can really explore them.

Shumen is another town in the east of the country, although there's little there, apparently. The discerning party had it and its peculiar time-warp Socialist hotel as a stopover, and saw the mosque, one of the country's finest, most liberal, and most run-down. Most were mothballed as museums by the Soviets, as they did to most religious buildings throughout their empire.

Veliko Tarnovo in the centre of the country was another highlight. Taken to a small square just off the edge of the town, at night, the idea was to see a son et lumiere show that is sometimes held there. What wasn't known was just how immense the site was - a whole hilltop fortress, with hundreds of lanterns, pulsated in time to strange music, before throbbing with a red pulse once the lasers etc had finished strobing away. Those who had seen the Cairo and Luxor sound and light shows were still highly impressed by this one.

In the daytime the town turned out to be a very nice mix of old and new, swooping vertiginously round a ridiculous amount of curving river - think Luxembourg City, then add a dash of Cuenca in Spain, and double it. This is a good town for the traditional shops, as well as the modern, and with several multi-lingual estate agents around, it seems a good place to get that little country hideaway to start renovating. Starting price, £8,000.

However a good tour, such as the one experienced, will not just concentrate on the towns and cities. The countryside is very nice to look at too, and an effort should be made to see the rolling hills that are everywhere. Any drive will take you seemingly at random past a modern Soviet monument or six, sited just in the middle of nowhere for very little reason. There are ranges of larger hills, or small mountains if you wish, and the Shipka pass through the central one has a historical site and monuments to explore. It's a nice drive, and the views can be fabulous if the weather's good.

In this region is Kazanlak, not a fabulous centre, but the place to stop off to see the prehistoric highlights of the country - the Thracian tombs. They're more than your usual huge earthen mounds, with fabulous stone constructions within, which started as temples before becoming mausolea for the local deity/kings - they're also remnants of one of Europe's oldest civilisations. Some people say the gold artifacts in the tombs are the oldest worked gold in the world.

And some of the sites are away from the major towns - and many are worth investigating. Rila Monastery is on *all* the tourist brochures and so on, and deservedly so. It's a great place, with mountains peeking above the galleries of monks' cells, with a fabulous church, and oddly Venetian tower next to that, in the courtyard. Bachkovo monastery is second best by a long way, but still deserves a mention.

However this op isn't going to go into all the sites seen, and worth thinking about - Stara Zagora, and so on. There are also a whole host of ancient sites and geological oddities throughout.

A lot of the countryside is farmland, and depending on area or season, you can see miles of sunflowers; vegetables; grass meadows as your parents might remember, with real shepherds and cowherds by the side of the road, staff at knee and fag in mouth; or in a lot of areas, tobacco fields. Enter villages and while very few houses look exactly rich - and a great majority are just small bungalows - you will soon see the chickens and goats in the yards, and the self-sustaining vegetable lots everyone has.

Whether they live in muddy countryside or the garish Soviet blocks of prefab flats, the natives really are friendly. Ignore the beggars, and there really aren't that many yet, ignore the polyglot money changers in Varna hustling you with their illegality and tricks, and everyone is decent, polite, and perhaps while not fluent in British outside the major tourist areas, easy to get on with with a smile and non-verbal communication. Whatever the poverty of the country - and a large majority of Bulgaria does live below even its own poverty line - they all appear well-dressed. The discerning pair never felt threatened, although the gardens next to the sea in Varna are a bit risky, and derby days for Sofia football fans might be different.

So with some of the areas to think of including on your itinerary looked at, what does the country mean for the tourist at the moment? Well, once you've got there, it's the budget that springs to mind. It would be a struggle to eat out and pay more than a tenner, in any city. Instead the two people concerned often had two-course meals, with three large beers, and the general total was £7 - including tip. Supermarkets are hard to find, but it is assumed that prices are ridiculous. In petrol station kiosks western products - crisps, Kitkats, etc, were half their customary price, beers and other drinks regularly 40p, and 60p got you 200ml of vodka.

Most sites to see are just three or five leva - the current exchange rate to the £ is 2.8. Public transport is mostly bus - train for going intercity, of course - and cheap by our standards. Postcards are 50 or 60 stotinki, so 20p, but the towns and sites you go to with probably have pictorial guides, leaflets etc, that add up to good cheap mementos. It should go on record too that many places you go into will not like you taking photos - even digital, flash-free ones. If there isn't a sign against photography, and there probably is, someone will shove you out and advise you carefully in the art of taking photos through the front doorway, or charge you double entrance for the privilege of taking your own snaps.

Other things to bring back - traditional costumes, if one desires, lace and other handicrafts, turned wood, great value pottery products, CDs of artists you've never heard of with track titles in Cyrillic you will never understand... Or you could bring back something with rose essence in - back near Kazanlak, a huge valley provides a lot of the world's rose oil, and they hence put it in honey, all kinds of cosmetics and health oils, brandy, and a very medicinal-tasting liquor, like drinking turkish delight. This is found all round the country, and is mostly the one price everywhere.

The food and drink while there is not just fabulous because it's cheap. Their wine is a bit hit or miss, but the beer palateable, and their brandy and spirits recommended. The cuisine is a bit of a mishmash, but it's never difficult to get what you might want. For a light snack, what they call a kebab, which is a beefburger patty basically, or a salad - and there are a hundred varieties of salad to try. For a main meal, you can try the mixed grills, or a "gyuvech" - a small ceramic pot with meat stew in, which is served blindingly hot. Despite the exotic influence, spice and the other definition of hot is easy to avoid, and the most recognisable of the 'exotic' dishes are a cold cucumber soup, tarator, and their versions of feta cheese. Vegetarians had better like aubergine.

The climate is a point of interest. The Black Sea coast has a firm and long season, and that and the fact that Greece and Turkey are in the vicinity give hints that the summers can be warm. They are. They are also very changeable - while the discerning duo moved east, torrential floods hit the west of the country, making a mockery of five years planning for their biggest folk arts/dance festival, and wiping out any rail link with Turkey and Asia for the next six months.

The winter can be pretty cold, depending on where you are and what luck you have, but remember Sofia is trying to host the 2012 Winter Olympics, just miles from their doorsteps.

Other types of holiday you can have - there are bird-watching delights galore, apparently, especially around the Danube delta, and various mountainous regions. Hiking must be fun, although what sort of mapping and marking system there is cannot be said.

So there's little to really stop you from grabbing the passport, getting on that plane to Sofia airport, which is on the small side, expensive for souvenirs but cheap at the duty free, and a lot freer than western airports regarding security, and having rather a good time in Bulgaria. And of course, when you get back, you can go on e-bay and buy a holiday cottage there...

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For further reading, and for essential help while there, the best guide book is, as usual, The Rough Guide. Theediscerning was unfortunately unable to road-test the 2005 edition, out September. 

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