Back to the 80's in Bulgaria

We had about a 100km drive from Nis to the Bulgarian Border. There must have been snowfall in the area the previous night. Crossing back into the Schengen Zone we had to show our passports, Lolly’s ownership papers and have our photos and fingerprints recorded again. While Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, and became part of the Schengen Zone from March 2024, it has only just adopted the Euro on 1st January this year.

We headed straight to the capital of Sophia. It can often be a bit challenging finding secure motor home parking in large cities, but strangely Sophia seemed to have numerous sites dotted around the city and we ended up in a motor home storage site that had a number of spaces for visitors. It wasn’t in the nicest of areas, but it was secure, had a fantastic hot powerful shower and was just a 10 minute walk to a Metro station that whisked us into central Sophia in 10 minutes.

We arrived late afternoon and as it was bitterly cold and misty we decided not to rush into the city in the dark, but had a chilled evening in Lolly enjoying the hot shower, I cooked a curry and we watched a film we’d downloaded.

We booked ourselves onto a ‘free’ walking tour the following morning. The BBC weather had promised a cold bright sunny day, but there was certainly no sign of sunshine with a freezing dark mist chilling us to the bone. The Metro was spotlessly clean and efficient. Public transport in Sofia is incredibly cheap - the maximum you pay for any type of travel and any number of individual rides on a day is 2 euros.

First impressions of Sophia were it’s not a pretty city, but nowhere looks good in this murky weather. We met our guide Ivo outside the Palace of Justice. He told us he had trained as a lawyer at University, but had worked as a tour guide since graduating. His two hour tour took us around the main sites of interest in the centre of the city. We came away with a much better appreciation of the history of Bulgaria and it’s diverse religions (Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim all getting along in the city). The new city is built on top of Roman ruins, much of which were only discovered in recent decades. Soviet control between 1944 and 1990 has left it’s impact on the city both architecturally and in peoples mindsets. The country went through a very torrid few years in the 1990’s while it tried to adjust to operating as a market economy, inflation was out of control and there were mass protests. Ivo, who was born in 1999, says things have very much stabilised in his life time, and while some of the older generation still hark back to Communist times being easier, the younger generation would be very much against this.

The tour ended at the impressive St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with its gold domes.

After the tour we had a look inside the cathedral which was very ornate.

We had a wander around the local area - we particularly liked the statue of the old Trabant. There was a nice old Market Hall building, but we were a bit disappointed to see it was just home to a fancy supermarket now rather than selling interesting local produce.

We were interested in life during the Communist regime, and visited The Red Flat, an interactive museum-like experience, taking us into a preserved Bulgarians flat from the 1980’s. An audioguide took us around each room in the flat with stories with what life was like for the parents and child living there. To be honest, a lot of it reminded us of our own homes in the 1970’s and 80’s. Young people today missed out on the old rotary dial phones, and phone books. The commentary mentioned that the son would like to open the phone book and select a random number to make a prank call to. Both Colin and I nodded appreciation at this, recollecting how we would say ‘you need to get off the line - a trains coming’ when the call was answered. Happy days….

It was still painfully cold outside, so we ended up finding a bar to sample some Bulgarian red wine (not bad) and then found a traditional Bulgarian restaurant for dinner.

The following day we joined an organised tour to Bulgaria’s second city, Plovdiv, which is also one of Europes oldest continuously inhabited cities with Roman and Ottoman history. We had planned to drive there ourselves, but as we would have had to return virtually back to Sophia to continue our journey towards Thessaloniki, we thought a guided tour made more sense.

There was just six of us on our tour, with our Bulgarian guide Maria who was quite a character. She guided us around the main central sites for two hours. It is an amazing place. We started at one of the city's Roman gates which was only discovered in recent times, and Maria said had been left as a rubbish dump until last year. The condition of the original road is mind blowing.

The old town is a protected area, filled with colourful 18th and 19th Century Renaissance houses, museums and cobbled streets. We climbed up a hill to what should be a great viewpoint out over the city and to the seven hills that the city is built on. Sadly the weather was still not being kind to us today, with more freezing mist.

Back in the old town we were treated to the incredible site of the ancient Roman theatre of Philippopolis - it is incredibly well preserved and still used for summer concerts. We finished our tour in the pedestrian shopping street where there was the remains of a Roman Stadium under it with just small sections exposed.

We then had a couple of hours to continue exploring ourselves, so we had a bite to eat (not at MacDonalds) and a wander up and down the 2km shopping street. There was an ice rink at the far end, next to the hideous Soviet Post Office building which is now largely redundant as, like in the UK, very few people post things nowadays.

The following day we set off in Lolly towards Greece. The route took us via two Bulgarian World Unesco Heritage sites. The first, the Boyana Church, is located in the outskirts of Sophia. The tiny church, part of which was built in the 10th century, contains some frescoes dating back to 1259, making them some of the most important collections of medieval paintings of their time. Unfortunately photography inside the church is not allowed. There were several layers of wall paintings dating from the 11th to the 19th centuries.

We continued on south from Sofia, with the places we passed through looking increasingly poor, with the snow capped Rila mountains as a backdrop. We left the main highway onto a road that climbed up to the Rila Monastery.

The Rila Monastery is a stunning place, situated in the middle of the forest and peaks of the Rila mountains. It was first built in the 10th century, but was reconstructed in the 19th century following a fire. It is the largest and most important Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria. The colourful paintings in the church are incredible and the size of the complex around it quite breathtaking.

The monastery bakery supplies delicious warm donuts and bread - just what was needed on a cold day.

It was mid-afternoon when we left to head back to the main road towards the Greek border, with just a brief stop in the small town of Rila to admire a large display of garden ornaments.

We had really enjoyed our brief jaunt through Bulgaria and would highly recommend it as a cheap and interesting country to visit - we suggest avoiding January which we now know is known for it's freezing mists, although there are ski resorts here too if you like the cold.