20.4.2007

Bulgaria in a new light

This medieval and mountainous country is poised to be the latest tourist hot spot from the former Soviet bloc -- a place that mixes old world and new, offers great bargains and seems still undiscovered.

The Tsarevets fortress looms over the tidy medieval city of Veliko Turnovo like an image from a fairy tale. Its crenellated stone walls and turrets, ideal for damsels in distress, crown a steep hill. But instead of heading up toward that restored beauty, the city's largest tourist attraction, my Bulgarian friends drove down toward the river at its feet. They were intent on a different destination.
I looked longingly at the fortress as we parked in a dirt lot. We walked under an archway into an unimpressive scene. Piles of rubble lay on the ground. A stone church was attractive in the October sunshine with its series of arches and a red-tiled roof, but I had seen others far grander in Bulgaria.
My friends, though, were eager to take a look. I wondered why, until Raissa Yordanova explained that this was the Forty Martyrs church and monastery, a linchpin of Bulgarian identity and history. The complex was built in 1280 and destroyed during centuries of Turkish Ottoman rule. A prophecy proclaimed that Bulgaria would return to prosperity only after the church was restored.
Those piles, I realized, weren't random, but delineated the outlines of the monastery as it once was, with tiny monks' cells and larger worship spaces. It was reopened to the public last summer.
Inside the church, some of the murals of bearded saints glow brightly, while others, unrepaired, are chipped and barely visible. The restoration of the monastery and church is hauntingly beautiful, but unfinished -- much like the former Soviet-bloc country itself.

Focus on the future

Last fall was my second visit to Bulgaria and to Veliko Turnovo, a charming old city that was once the capital of Bulgaria and is now one of the country's more popular tourist magnets. One guidebook calls the well-preserved town "the next Prague," which got a laugh from the Bulgarians I was traveling with when I read it aloud.
I understand the skepticism. The year before, when a friend invited me to join her for a media conference, I admit that I had to look up Bulgaria on a map. Last year, my return felt like a chance to spend time with old friends.
We began with a few days in Sofia, the capital, moved on to Rousse in the north, swung back in a loop through the tourist town of Turnovo, as the locals refer to it, and returned to Sofia. Even though just a year had passed, these towns, like the whole country, are in an energizing state of flux.

Bulgaria joined the European Union in January, becoming a more modern nation amid a wealth of history.
The Archeological Museum in Sofia houses hundreds of pre-Christian artifacts from the Thracians and the Greeks. Forts, statues and other remains of the Roman Empire are being dug up and restored -- or plowed under for new development. Ottoman Turks overran the country at the end of the 14th century and held on until the early 1900s. Then came the world wars and Soviet oversight, which ended in 1989.

Despite earlier domination by Turkey and the Soviet Union, the only heated talk I heard about either country concerned the best places to vacation in Turkey. I found it odd that a Balkan country with such a history holds so few grudges. As we drove around the countryside, I asked a Bulgarian friend about it. He shrugged.
"That's past," he said. "We are thinking about the future."

Signs of change

Rousse sits along the Danube River on Bulgaria's border with Romania. The city was once a Roman fortress and later considered the cultural center of the region, partly because of its close ties to Vienna. The Austrian Hapsburg Empire influence is obvious in the architecture, with baroque curlicues and curious stone faces.
Change is obvious, too.

The year before, an ornate building across the street from my hotel had been crumbling and shrouded in scaffolding. This year, it was brilliantly restored, with pink and blue lights showing off the gleaming white facade every evening.
In Sofia, when a Bulgarian journalist gave me a tour, he was dismissive of the massive marble and granite Soviet architecture, some of which struck me as quite impressive.

By Regina McCombs, Star Tribune
Last update: April 20, 2007 – 11:42 PM
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