From Icon To Iconstasis

Written Tuesday 17 July, around 12 noon EET

I had forgotten the delight of backpacking around Europe on bus. The people you meet, the scenery you witness and the experiences you share all make bus travel an excellent and more environmentally friendly alternative to constant flying.

I left Skopje on the Monday (9 July) morning, checking out of the wonderful Hotel Anja with its amusing and friendly English speaking staff. My bus bound for Sofia was leaving the central bus station at 8am so it was a reasonably early start but I managed to drag myself to it, helped by the beautiful sunshine which always makes getting out of bed so much more agreeable.

There were only seven people travelling to Bulgaria and one of them happened to be sat in my reserved seat. Not knowing where the bus would stop en route, I asked her to move and discovered she was from London, touring around Eastern Europe before meeting her friend and her kid for a beach holiday in Croatia. She was travelling alone, around 40 years old, and full of fascinating stories about her life on the road and her job as a turtle conservationist in Zanzibar. We hit it off immediately and spent nearly all of the five hour journey conversing about our relative experiences, with her insisting I should visit China as the people there are exceptionally friendly, if not slightly blunt when stating clear facts such as pointing out people's weight ("you're very fat, you have a nice face but you're very fat"). Ah the joys of cultural differences.

The border crossing was relatively painless, although I did have to inform everyone on the bus of the one hour time difference between the two countries as no signs were forthcoming with this information, and once we arrived in Bulgaria, we stopped at a roadside cafe called Cafe Madonnas which seemed to be staffed by a seven-year-old. With breakfast bought, we chatted to a couple from New Zealand about the nightmare that is getting a visa for the UK before getting back on the bus and completing our journey.

The main road into Sofia from the west is inconveniently cobbled, following the number 5 tram route for some considerable distance. We were already one hour later than advertised and I had asked my friend Kiril to meet me at the main bus station which like all bus and rail stations here are inconveniently miles away from the centre of places. He was still there to greet me though, along with his fiancé, who was very charming and great to meet for the first time.

With car loaded, we headed off and promptly got stuck in a traffic jam. On our way into the centre of the city, bizarrely via the outskirts, we saw a lot of concrete Communist tower blocks which were looking particularly drab despite the searing sun. We found the right road though and were soon parked up next to a giant shopping mall where we had a light snack from a popular Bulgarian canteen style food chain. I had dubious looking sausages and a smingy salad, all of which tasted quite poor in all honesty. The local beer they served though, Kamenitza, was a revelation as it was so velvety and sweet. A definite winner with me.

With a couple of hours to kill before we were due in Kiril's town of Blagoevgrad, we wandered around Sofia a while, checking the sites. Party House was one of the highlights, not a tribute to the rave scene but the former headquarters of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Built in 1954, it has a Greek-style frontage (Neo-Classical I believe is the architectural term) with a tower atop with two wings sweeping back diagonally. It dominates the main Ploshtad Nezavisimost and was even more daunting with a huge red star affixed to the spire during the Communist era. In November 1989, it was advised the red star be taken down but this was unheeded. Anti-Communist forces ransacked the building the following year, setting fire to the lower floors. Now restored, its role is one of providing offices for MPs.

Immediately opposite the Party House is the Presidency, guarded by two soldiers who guard it night and day while wearing 19th century style red-and-white parade uniforms. Like the Party House, it was built in the 20th century out of grey stone.

Another architectural highlight is the orange Archaeological Museum. Many exhibits from Bulgaria's Thracian, Roman and medieval past are displayed here but alas we did not have time to investigate it.

Further down and in another major square, we literally saw the yellow brick road as the area was completely paved in yellow bricks which glistened majestically in the summer light. This was near the Aleksandur Nevski Memorial Church, a huge imposing structure with a cluster of golden gilt domes snuggled around its main atrium. It was built in stages between 1882 and 1924 to commemorate Russia's role in liberating Bulgaria from the Ottomans in the 1877-78 War of Liberation. As it was late, we couldn't get inside so settled on a beer in the evening sun before heading south to Blagoevgrad.

Blagoevgrad, some 100km south of Sofia, is principally a student town as it is home to the American University in Bulgaria and the South-West Neofit Rilski University. A triumph of Communist urban planning, particularly the seating area with metal arches towering over it, the city has a large range of bars and kebab houses, all sadly redundant during the summer months in the absence of students. The town was renamed in 1950 after Dimitur Blagoev, founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party, but the local springs and mountain setting attracted the Thracians, Romans and Ottomans to its environs. The city is centered around Ploshtad Georgi Izmirliev, a pleasant pedestrianized area of bubbling fountains. Here we saw the brother of Manchester United striker Dimitar Berbatov, who hails from this area. On one side of this square is the AUB building which was the headquarters of the Communist Party up until 1989. The building still holds an awesome presence over the town.

We walked around the old town of Blagoevgrad, which is on the other side of the river to the city centre, on the Wednesday morning. I was staying in a quaint little guest house in this area, right next to the beautiful little church - The Church of the Annunciation - with its unique exterior painting and delightful interior frescos. Their iconostasis is a real delight, with intricate carvings of angels, birds, flowers and fruit by master-craftsmen from nearby Bansko and Samokov. The buildings in this area were decked out in National Revival style and the cobbled streets and lush greenery added an air of authenticity to the scene. We stopped off in a restaurant soon after to try some local cuisine ahead of my trip to Svilengrad and this didn't disappoint, although we did cut it fine to catch my bus back to Sofia for me to catch a subsequent bus to SE Bulgaria.

The food in Blagoevgrad was particularly tasty, particularly the kebab we had on Monday night. This area has a high Turkish influence so the toasted pitta-wrapped offering was one of the highlights of my trip. Served with salad, chips and sauce all wrapped up inside the bread, it was a tasty and relatively low fat snack as the chicken meat used on the rotating spit seemed to be far less fatty than the donner meat back home. We sat and ate our fare amongst the Communist architecture before retiring for the night after a long day traveling.

The guest house was particularly nice here, with its own bathroom and kitchenette. The door didn't lock from the inside though which concerned me a bit although it was impossible to open it from the outside without the key, which I had. I also saw a disturbing infomercial for a product called 'Male Edge' which you strap to your penis and it makes it grow by an average of 4cm. This advert went on for about an hour and it became quite hypnotic until it was time to advertise a vibrating male dildo strap-on and some dubious scents which make you attractive to the opposite (or indeed the same depending on which ones you use I guess) sex. I've never been convinced those really work.

I also caught the Bulgarian version of Deal or No Deal - that show seems to be everywhere. The top prize is 100,000 lev (about £40,000) and the boxes seem to be blue shoeboxes. Aside from that the format is identical from what I can tell but it's sometimes hard to follow as dubbing rather than subtitles seem to be king here. Indeed I watched Jurassic Park on Sunday evening with Miroslav dubbed into Bulgarian and all this meant there was little for me to watch that I could understand (unlike in Macedonia). So I largely stuck to CNN, cartoons and porn which sums me up pretty well really.

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