Europe's Cultural Landscapes: Bulgaria

Our agency has an office in Sofia so I took a few days to go down for some meetings and a quick exploration of the countryside. It is yet another one of those places that never appeared on my radar. Then an opportunity pops up.

Like most of Europe, it is only two hours and a 50 Euro roundtrip plane fare from Berlin. Then the research starts, followed by deepening fascination of a place you know NOTHING about, and soon here I am publishing another installment of my ill-defined, yet wide-ranging, European cultural history project.

Sofia: Sunday

One way to characterize Sofia, the capital, is through the architecture. Flying in over the city you first notice the vast "Plattenbau," these old Soviet-style block apartment buildings. Something about the construction makes them difficult to renovate, so when they start ageing you only have so many options to rehabilitate them. Many thousands of Sofia's residents live in these things, so it is a huge impending problem.

2018 Sofia population: 1.2M. 

Alongside these sad-looking blocks sits the other story of Sofia's emergence as a regional hub: modern glass skyscrapers and an Autobahn-level highway system.

And lots of construction cranes in evidence.

And then you yo-yo back to the dark side: a 15 story hotel complex that ran out of money and is just sitting there while the elements ruin it. The prevalence of these buildings, plus the enduring and vast Soviet architecture projects lend a bit of a rough edge to the city that is palpable from the moment you leave the airport.

Abandoned projects and apartment blocks (in distance)

I stayed in the Festa Sofia, a newer hotel located on the perimeter road around the city. A new hotel was going up next door. Traffic is bad, but the taxis are cheap.

Expansive view from my room at the Festa Sofia.

Bringing your gaze down to the street level, you then perceive all the stuff happening down below: Anytime they dig into Sofia's soil to build a new train station, hotel or office park, they run into ancient Thracian, Greek or Roman ruins. Several hotel lobbies downtown incorporated ancient stone benches into their lobby areas.

An ordinance requires the developer to either fund a museum around the old stuff or at least protect the site. These are foundations and an ancient market street near the Serdika subway station.

In the background is the Banya Bashi mosque. While the Turks have been gone for 150 years, there are still some mosques around.

Christian Orthodoxy got its start in Bulgaria, as the young country bargained with Rome and Constantinople to grant it its own bishopric in the early Middle Ages. From here, the Orthodox church (and the Cyrillic language) spread to Russia after the Schism split the church in 1054 into the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East. Orthodox Churches are noted by the onion domes and the unique crosses they incorporate into the architecture.

The Russian Church with characteristic onion domes built for Sofia's Russian community.

The Christian Orthodox cross has three crossbars instead of one in the Roman Catholic version. The top one is for the inscription, the middle one for the arms, and the bottom one for the feet. Behind, the Iconostasis separates the congregation from the altar, symbolising the split between Earth and the Divine.

The Aleksandur Nevsky Church is one of the prime landmarks in Sofia. It is the seat of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and one of the most distinctive structures in town. Inside, you find it fairly low-lit, since Orthodox churches rely more on candles than electric lights for illumination. Here are a few of the atmospheric corridors next to the main apse:

The Arts Center anchors one end of a giant mall of fountains. Soviet construction.

Sandwiched in between the ancient churches, archeological digs, tenement flats and high rise construction sites are the Soviet-style public ministry buildings, like the former state offices of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

Former Communist Party Headquarters. There used to be a massive red star affixed on top, until it was taken down after a mob attacked the building in the days after the fall of the Communist authorities in 1990. The star is still visible at a city museum.

My contact in Sofia through work is a Berlin guy who became disillusioned with Berlin in the early 2000's as he perceived the city becoming flooded with foreigners after the Wall came down. He saw in Sofia what he remembered about Berlin in the old days: slightly ramshackle, gritty, risky, and dragging tremendous historical baggage in the still-obvious vestiges of Soviet domination. He moved here in 2003 to start this agency.

I thought about my perceptions of Berlin upon arrival in 2015 and how crazy and stimulating I found it for similar reasons. Then I thought about what Sofia must have been like in 2003 and I gained a newfound respect for my friend. Here's what the current office looks like:

The agency in Sofia.

My hotel, the Festa Sofia, lobby.

Once you get beyond the living architecture, you come into contact with monuments and other quirky aspects. One of those is the storied Yellow Brick Road: A large swath of downtown is paved with yellow bricks. This is the result of a decree from an early 20th century Bulgarian Tsar who got married and wanted to have his wedding procession on "streets made of gold."

 It looks nice I guess, but locals told me that when it rains, these particular bricks become very slippery unlike the original grey ones. Everyone curses them then.

Russian Tsar Alexander II, holding the declaration of war against Turkey in his hand. Seeking to gain territorial advantages as the Ottoman Empire declined, Russia invaded Ottoman-administered Bulgaria in 1877 to help Bulgarian rebels force out the Turks. Bulgarian independence soon followed.

Another time the Russians came in handy: Soviet monument to the fighters against Fascism that drove the Nazis out of Bulgaria in the Second World War.

Sofia: Monday

After work on Monday a small crew went out to dinner. We shared plates and the food was a mix of meat dishes (roasted lamb, chicken and liver), vegetables (stuffed peppers, olives) and bean spreads (hummus variations) with a big basket of toasted bread and refills on small glasses of Rakia, the local brandy.

The food was wonderful, but the conversations were even better. Chatting with people like this always is: over the course of the night we ranged from anti-Walloon political advertising in the Brussels local elections to Pan-Slavic resurgence in the Balkans to travel experiences in the occupied West Bank.

Who was there? Nico, Martin and Marian. Nico is the Berliner who went searching for new horizons, married a Bulgarian woman and now has a kid and speaks the local dialect. Martin is a Bulgarian guy who grew up in Sofia under Communism, then went abroad to the US for his Masters, then returned to Sofia.

Marian works for the company that makes the software tool we use. She's Belgian, but spent most of her twenties in Israel with her Orthodox Greek Cypriot Palestinian boyfriend, shuttling between Israel and the West Bank four times a year. Later on she'd ended up in London, and was two weeks away from closing on a house when the Brexit vote happened, forcing her to pull the plug on that and move back to the Continent.

I keep seeing evidence of the reaction of people to the rise of populist movements in governments over the last few years. In Europe this mostly means the UK Brexit vote, and to a lesser degree Hungary which is ruled by an autocrat.

Many smart and motivated people leave when you pull back from trade liberalization and put up isolationist policies. They take their skills and drive and establish new companies somewhere else, leaving you (Britain) chasing some elusive past ideal while you sacrifice your future as a destination for talent.

The start-up scene in Berlin is a huge beneficiary of the UK's Brexit vote. The restrictions are about to clamp down on labor and money flows between the island and its most traditional and important trading partners in the EU. As a result, I keep meeting these people who decided the UK is too risky of a bet for their futures, which for a European is a little bit shocking.

A similar brain drain occurred in Bulgaria right after the fall of Communism. Nearly 1 million Bulgarians, many of them smart and young, left. The governments were corrupt, gangsterism was rampant, and the countryside was hugely unemployed. They've since got a handle on things and people like my friend Martin are moving back, but the country lost a couple decades in that whole process.

Obviously, comparing 1990s Bulgaria and 2018 Britain is not going to be anything close to apples to apples. This is clear. But the number of times I hear smart people abandoning Britain and the US as a result of these ill-considered populist approaches is always surprising. It is starting to be less surprising, the more often I encounter it.

After the second bar Nico went home and Marian back to the Intercontinental Hotel in order to get some sleep before a 7 am flight out to her next appointment, in France, the following day. Martin and I continued down the street to see a couple more places.

We were heading for a speakeasy when we ran across two guys sitting on stools on the sidewalk in front of a coffee bar. Martin stopped abruptly.

"Oh we have to have this guy make us a mojito. He makes the best mojito in the city." We stopped and chatted over the drinks about the growing "hipsterism" of Sofia: this international class of iPhone-toting young techies who are moving in. A whole new crop of cafes and bars sprang up on this street just in the past year. People are even starting to use the term "gentrification" which is a sure sign of economic progress for a city.

As we left, Martin told the owner that he's always wanted to come by for the espresso but apologized since he never had. I said I'd try to come by tomorrow morning. Since I've had the mojito I might as well try the coffee too.

From there we continued on to the "Speakeasy," a recessed door in a dirty alley. The door was notable in that it had thirty one keys hanging in a cluster from the iron door pull. Each key had a number on it. We found the key with the number "17" since that was the day of the month, and the key opened the lock and in we went. I found it interesting they would somehow change the lock every single day, but this was the gimmick.

We walked into a dimly-lit corridor lined with books and dusty typewriters. Suddenly a guy in a necktie and cuff links appeared and ushered us around a corner to the basement bar area in a flagstone-lined grotto lit by candles and backlit bottles of alcohol. We each had a Prohibition Sour, a mix of Scotch, lemon juice, bitters and black pepper. Martin told me his story of living in Seattle, his career twists and turns of media analytics, and why Sofia is a better bet than other Slavic capitals such as Belgrade or Kiev.

It mostly comes down to the fact that the Communists centralised their IT capacities in Bulgaria during the Cold War years. They also relentlessly pushed the importance of education, and languages specifically. This created a tech-savvy, multilingual labor force that one day would encourage Western companies to establish vast call center operations in Sofia.

That an international agency as ours would establish a 50 person office in Sofia is also evidence of something going on. That office is twice as big as the one in Berlin!

We tipped back the rest of the Sours and suddenly I felt completely exhausted. My head was swimming from the conversations of the night so he grabbed me a cab.


Cultural Moments: Bulgarian cultural dances and songs have various channels on the hotel TV. Very rousing stuff.





Sofia/Kazanluk: Tuesday

The next day I worked all morning then grabbed the rental car and went downtown to do a quick church and monument tour in late afternoon. Along the way I stopped back into the coffee shop with the Mojitos Man from the night before. He was slightly impressed to see me, I think many people say they will come back and then never do. We talked a little bit more about the street, "Tsar Shishman," which is reflecting the newfound growth of the city. He said he sees a lot more diplomats from conventions now, since Bulgaria hosts the 2018 rotating EU presidency.

I asked if he thought he would be there in ten years and he said he hoped the coffee shop/bar would still be going. But, he said, life also happens, so you never know. Then he taught me a term:

"Do skoro" which means 'see you soon.' We'll be back here in July when the kids go on summer break, so there is a chance we'll see him again.

Tuesday afternoon I left town to drive three hours into the interior to the small town of Kazanluk, situated in the middle of Bulgaria's Rose Valley. Apparently Bulgaria is a major exporter of Rose Oil and it all comes from this valley.

The first hour was on the new highway and the second got me onto the smaller roads through the scenic stuff. The idea of going to Kazanluk was that two points of interest sit practically next to each other and the town is the only jump-off point.

The first item was "Buzludzha," the former headquarters of the Bulgarian Communist Party. a gigantic Brutalist architecture creation, the thing resembles a huge spaceship perched on top of a mountain ridge. The other item is Shipka Pass, where a pivotal battle was fought against the Ottoman Turks that resulted in the end of Ottoman domination of Bulgaria.

Cyrillic Text is just so deliciously foreign and mysterious isn't it!

Horse-drawn carts are still commonplace in the countryside.

Oh yes.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a tailfin sticking up over some trees: then down a bumpy and dusty access road I found an old airport with this MIG-21 parked in front.

Shipka Pass: Wednesday

Wednesday morning I was on the road by 7:45, winding around switchbacks on a curvy ribbon that carried me up from the Rose Valley to the mountaintop ridge where Buzludzha sits. It was windy and you can hear the whistling through the roof of the structure, which is decaying and falling apart. The size of it impresses - it can be seen from miles away across the valley.

There's no real reason for anyone to come here anymore, so the road isn't maintained. But even so, it was relatively straightforward to arrive at the parking lot where Bulgaria's Finest Communist Comrades would have their meetings.

Buzludzha.

Water drips out of decaying structure, pooling on the ground below.

The doors are barred, since people of course want to get inside and be mischievious. A security company is now employed to keep people from trespassing on the site, but being there early I saw no one.

Names of Communist Heroes line the front entrance structure.

Getting inside Buzludzha requires some effort and risk-taking. This hole in the ground near the back of the complex seemed to be the only way. I lowered myself down into it and crouched on a ledge. With my phone flashlight I could make out a ten-foot drop into a large room with water on the dark floor. At the far extent of my light a gaping black hole opened up in the wall with pipes coming coming out of it.

If I had better equipment and some friends, it would have been quite the adventure to find our way through the bowels of this place in the hopes of emerging into the main auditorium room. But just getting here in the first place was enough of an adventure, so I decided not to risk it.

One possible entrance.

The structure is literally crumbling, with parts of it scattered around the site.

However, it still makes a tasty hamburger-like treat.

Giant hands holding torches light the way to truth on the hill.

Here is the road between Buzludzha and Shipka Pass. Perfectly fine in spite of all the things locals had told me about it. (Common occurrence while travelling)



From there I bounced over to nearby Shipka Pass, where Russian and Bulgarian allies fought the Ottoman Turks in a series of key battles in 1877-78 that resulted in Turkish defeat. Shortly thereafter, the Turks withdrew from Bulgaria and the country re-established itself as a sovereign nation. In the cultural geography of modern Bulgaria, Shipka Pass features prominently.

Quick History: Russia saw the decline of the Ottomans in late 1800's as an opportunity to extend its influence South into the Balkans. An existing Bulgarian independence movement was being brutally crushed by the Ottomans, and there was European sympathy for someone to do something about it. Russia was the only one positioned to act.

In 1877 a Russian army crossed the Danube and invested the mountains overlooking the central plains of Bulgaria, nudging an Ottoman force off of the key Shipka Pass area. Bulgarian militias joined the Russians on the pass and fought off four determined Turkish attacks over the next year. With the final defeat the Turks withdrew South and the way was paved for Bulgarian independence.

Russia went back home, happy that it now had strong buddies on its southern border and that the historic Ottoman foe was pushed back to Istanbul.

During the battle the Bulgarians ran out of ammunition and threw rocks down on the Turks advancing up the steep hills.

Heroic painting of the action. Lots of rock-throwing. In fact, anytime you see a picture of someone heaving a rock in Bulgaria, it is referencing this Shipka Pass battle.

In the 1920's they built the hilltop memorial look-out tower. Lots of cannons scattered around.

Jay attempting to temper this history-heavy entry with some nice pretty flowers.

Stone blocks mark the location of the former defensive trenchlines along the ridge.

Central mountains to the West.

You get a nice workout climbing the stairs up to the tower.

Here is Jay trying out his newfound career as a travel history show commentator:
(In which he channels comedian Daniel Ryan Spaulding's ongoing video series making fun of Berlin and its various quirks). This one.





Back down another winding road into the valley brought me to the tiny town of Shipka, where there is a wonderful Bulgarian Orthodox church. Also built in the 1920's to the defenders of Shipka, the whole thing looks like it was scrubbed clean with a toothbrush. The detail on these places is mind-blowing.

Jay's new favorite church: Shipka.

From Shipka, it was a three hour drive back to Sofia to catch my flight out. I took the back roads, because that's where the scenery is.

A bit of unfinished dreams

Old Ed and his cart-wagon!

A Russian-built Mi-8 spotted while flying out Wednesday night.

Once again, I feel lucky to have the opportunity to explore and go deep into such random stuff. It tends to be a little intoxicating when you just need 50 Euros and a weekend to turn around an experience like this.