How to make it interesting?

We had never planned to visit the Bulgarian Black Sea, but we are now.

At this stage we have formed our impressions of Bulgaria (but we will leave them for the last post). We were going to go straight to Romania after Sofia, but we have decided to give the country a second chance and head off to the Black Sea coast. Here we will cross the border and continue to Romania from there.

But before that, we will stop in a few places recommended in our guide: the first one we have just been, Plovdiv, which didn’t impress us at all. The second one is Veliko Turnovo.

Veliko Turnovo used to be the medieval capital of the tsars. It is also, “evocative, sublime, dramatically set on forested hills, with a vibrant nightlife”, we’ve heard it all before. So, we will stop here to confirm whether if these things are actually true .

We park Dora in the centre, for €0.80 per hour.

The sights on offer are; a castle, a few churches, an Archaeological Museum, and a wander around the town.

The town has been paved with cobbled streets, Dora wouldn’t have liked it here.

Straight away, we start to breath the atmosphere of this place: highly touristic. It is not long till we start seeing tat shops, lined up along the streets.

The houses are fake, made to look old, nicely decorated for the tourist, making them believe that this was what the houses used to be like, and how the people used really to live.

These houses have now been converted into hotels and B&Bs.

We are already seen quite a few places like this and I still don’t know how I feel about them. Veliko Turnovo is cute, but it is a town that could be in any country: Romania, Greece, Albania, Macedonia… it would fit anywhere. It has been transformed to such an extent that it no longer represents a country. It has lost its identity.

However, we still come and see these places. Because, whether we like it or not, we are still tourists, and because most of the times, we simply want to know whether all the marvellous things that the guide says about them are actually true. To me, using public transport, visiting the deep countryside, eating at local restaurants, are the best ways to know a country. Places like Veliko Turnovo  are just a stopover.

Surprisingly, although this is an affluent town in deepest Bulgaria, the houses are still pretty affordable, at least to West Europeans citizens.

The cheapest we found, €6000 for a three bed and half a hectare of land, we are moving to Bulgaria. GDR

To spice up our visit around Veliko Turnovo, we will not visit any of the highlighted sights. We will go off-piste.

We come across a museum: Constituent Assembly. It is not in our guide, we pop in.

The ticket officer is leaning on the back of her chair, quite relaxed, having an early lunch or a late breakfast. She has to open the museum for us, it is not worth keeping it open, not for just a few visitors.

She unlocks the galleries and turns on the lights. From nowhere two others appear and sit down in the galleries, making sure we don’t steal any of the priceless artefacts! GDR

Apparently, this building was where Bulgaria’s first National Assembly was held to write the country’s first constitution. Would this appeal to you? I am, so I am glad we chose it.

However, before we get to see the political rooms, we have to go through a religious temporary exhibition. Not sure why this has currently been displayed.

It shouldn’t have been that hard to be an artist working for the church in that era. All images had the same face.

Also, god, prophets and apostles had pretty scary faces, always angry. This is no difference from the catholic church images: the more scared you get of god, the better. It used to work with us, when we were children.

Again, age has not been taking into consideration here. Mother and child look from the same generation. It must be a miracle.

We have noticed a tendency. Jesus’ right hand is always drawn upwards, with straight fingers, except for the ring finger, it always touches the thumb.

Very strange, and not just jesus, most of the men are in this pose, like some weird masonic handshake. What is it all about? GDR

Can you find any maternal signs in these pictures? I can’t. They are rather creepy if you ask me.

Also the so called virgin mary gives birth to a child with adult features, really weird. But there is another thing about these paintings, most of them are really bad; compositionally cluttered, cartoon like in features, oversized limbs, especially the hands, gaudy colours and just a generally poor technique. They are however religious, so they should be respected! No they should not, they may be religious but they are poor art and should be consigned to the dustbin or over-painted, this is a waste of canvas. GDR

Finally we get to the interesting stuff, the history of how the country gained independence from the Turks and the Russians. Sadly, it didn’t last long.

The Assembly looks pretty impressive. What was it like? When did they meet? What issues were discussed and approved? Most of the narrative is written in Bulgarian. Obviously, they haven’t found the demand for English language yet.

But they have lots of pictures. We just need to use our imagination.

The constitution, kept here.

We finish our tour in an hour. The ticket officer’s farewell is overwhelming, she is happy she can lock the museum again and get back to her lunch.

A sign outside points to the Prison museum. It is not in our guide. We pop in.

It looks closed. Someone approaches us from behind, the ticket officer. She was talking with next door neighbour.

Us: Sorry to disturb you, could we have two tickets, please?

She opens a room for us, literally a room. This is nothing like a prison. Army uniforms,

pictures of WWII battles,

and cartography of the time cover the walls.

Our comments make her realise we are disappointed with the so-called ‘prison’.  She suddenly realises: “Oh, prison” She asks us to follow her.

She goes to next door building, gets another set of keys and opens the proper ‘prison’. Now we are talking.

We don’t know whether we went into the wrong building, we don’t know what we have just seen, and  we will probably never find out! At least we didn’t have to pay again.

I look at her closely. She looks like the prison guard of the time, with her grey uniform and a large set of keys hanging from her belt. Who knows, she may be looking after most of the museums of the area. Maybe she used to work here as jailer.

Again, it is all written in Bulgarian. But we can guess that this used to be a political prison, for the dissidents of the communist regime, the ‘lucky’ ones that they were not sent to the Gulag, in Siberia.

This is where they used to sleep.

Some used to get beds and clothes.

It seemed they used to spend their time playing chess and draughts.

We are pretty satisfied with our chosen sights, very quirky, very weird, very bleak.

We continue to wander around the pretty bits of the town, where most people are.

We come across the castle, it is in our guide, we don’t pop in.

Great views of the gorge. The village in the background is Arbanasi, 4kms from here. Our guide strongly recommends to walk up there. This is a tough decision: we don’t want to follow the guide, but we are talking walking, what to do!!

But then again this is the guide, so any walk is bound to be pretty lame, pretty average. Anything they say you can take with a pinch of salt; dramatic views, amazing landscape, best walk in the world…yeah, yeah, yeah. What we long to see is a guide that is honest, maybe using words like; a bit grotty, only if you are really bored or have a particular interest, an ok landscape, pretty poor views. They all seem to think they are working for the relevant tourist boards of the countries they are reviewing. This is a shame, it is bordering on the dishonest and there are only so many superlatives the English language can muster GDR

Beautiful views of the gorge.

We start heading towards Dora, the parking time is about to run out. A brown sign points to the direction of “ul Gurko”, Veliko Turnovo’s oldest street.

It is indeed the Veliko Turnovo’s oldest street, no one has been here for a while to renovate its houses,

or the pavement. Everything is decaying, dying. It is sad, but at least it is honest. Interestingly, not many people are wandering around this bit.

Twisted trunks of many vines planted in the same pot have formed lovely patterns over the years.

The modern bit of the town looks very removed, very different, very distant from its old sister. We will pop in there to get bread for lunch and head off.

 

Next destination, Varna, on the coast.

We end up driving to Arbanasi to have lunch. It has a great view back. GDR

Last overview of the town when driving off.

We won’t probably get to Varna today, especially if we keep encountering dodgy tracks carrying heart-shaped bushes at the back of their trailers, driving at 20 kmph.

I won’t get very close to him, he looks unstable. Overtaking him from so far behind will be a challenge. I am finally able to.

And another one. Great!

It is 18.00 and we are half way to Varna. We choose a town called Shumen for our overnight sleep.

After driving around the town for 10 minutes, we find the best and quiet spot: the cemetery car park. No one will disturb us tonight.

SM.