BULGARIA - Rila Monastery

It's a couple of hours drive south of Sofia on the road to Greece to get up into the Rila Mountains to visit the Rila Monastery, but it is well worth it. I went on a formal day tour but we were given 2.5 hours at the Monastery after having had a quick 30 minute introduction to the site by the guide.

Its the largest and most well known Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria and was founded by St Ivan of Rila during the 900's. The current buildings date from the 19th century and the church houses not only the relics of St Ivan of Rila, but is also the last resting place of Bulgaria's last king, Boris III. Whilst Builgaria aligned itself with Germany in WW2, Boris was not cooperative with many of the demands from Germany, including the deportation of Bulgaria Jews. Boris died after visit to Germany in 1943 and it is widely believed he was posioned whilst there.

The monastary buildings cover a large site up in the mountains, unfortunately low cloud and rain meant that I did not get the big green mountain backdrops to my pictures, but here is a selection.

 

BULGARIA - Serdika

After the strangeness of Bucharest, it is nice to be back to just wandering around a vibrant European city - Sofia (incidentally pronounced Sof-ia not So-fia). Serdika is the Roman name for Sofia and this becomes very apparent around the Serdika metro station, which is right in the city centre. Like Athens and Thessaloniki digging down just a few metres reveals a lot about the city's past and like those two cities, Sofia has had to build its metro system around the archaeological remains. Serdika metro station is a station cum museum with a large area that is just part of the commuters daily journey and an area which is a paid for museum.

This is just outside the station

Yes this is part of the metro station

The statue of St Sofia herself stands on a pedestal in the city centre that once held a statue of Lenin. The guide that led the walking tour this morning, said the statue is very controversial not least because the Orthodox church complained she shows too much cleavage!

The city is heavy on churches ranging from the oldest St George's which is surrounded by large government buildings as the Communists wanted to hide it from view - to the massive St Alexander Nevesky Cathedral

St George's

St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

The government buildings are nowhere near as brutal as in Bucharest. The Bulgarian parliament building now flies a flag from where historically there would have been a red star. I was also relieved to find the uniformed National Guard outside the presidential palace as we haven't had any men in funny clothes yet this trip.

Parliament Building

Presidential Palace

Sofia is unusual in European capitals in that it has no river running through it. The Romans built the original Sedika on this site because of the hot mineral springs, The water still bubbles up through public fountains in the city and for a hot spring it is pleasantly tasteless without the usual sulpherous odour and taste.

All in all Sofia is a very pleasant, walkable city with lots of well maintained parks and squares and a lively atmosphere in the evenings. Very a enjoyable place I would highly recommend.

ROMANIA/BULGARIA - Does it get any better ?

Today has been a great day during which I undertook the 10.5 hour journey from Bucharest to Sofia and its what travel is all about.

The 1011 departure from Bucuresti Nord is an unusual and interesting train. It consists of just 3 coaches, the three coaches belong to three different operators and they go to three different destinations.

The rear most is from CFR Calatori the Romanian State Railway and is taking mainly Romanian holidaymakers to the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast resort of Varna. In the middle is an air conditioned sleeper belonging to TCDD the Turkish State Railway which runs to Istanbul.

The last coach is a rather run down, graffiti covered coach belonging to the Bulgarian State Railway which runs through to Sofia. I joke with people that the graffiti is an integral part of the construction because it helps hold the rust together.

Actually despite the outward appearance of almost all Bulgarian railway stock, the insides are really very comfortable. We won't talk about the toilets though!!

I was sharing a 6 seat compartment with a couple from the Netherlands and a couple from France, the French couple having met whilst at university in Exeter. We chatted, exchanged travel stories, moaned about our respective governments and reminisced about the Olympics in both Paris and London.

The Dutch couple surprised me by saying "We love Phil and Kirsty, we watch them every week". The French couple were really up to speed on our Post Office trauma, with "Mr Bates V The Post Office" having been broadcast in France.

They were great people to spend a day with and in the great tradition of travel, people I have shared a day of my life with but will probably never see again. I would also add that the scenery during the last couple of hours of the journey as the train worked its way through the Balkan mountains was also amazing.

Arriving in Sofia we all went our separate ways - although the other four were heading to Istanbul later in the week - I am jealous now!

It was around 9pm when I arrived at my hotel, so nothing to report on Sofia so far except it was buzzing when I went out to find something to eat and look at this Metro pic - looks very smart.

We do have the funny letters here though - the Cyrillic script will be a challenge, but like everything else that is one of the joys of travel. More from Sofia tomorrow.

ROMANIA - Odd

Today you find me in Bucharest and the only word I have been able to find all day to describe it is odd. Wierd would be too strong a term, it's just different - odd.

It's dirty, pigeon ridden, judging by the number of bait boxes in the streets - rat infested, unkempt and I would even go so far as to say a bit seedy but by the end of today I have started to develop a liking of it. And lets get the big thing out of the way too - its hard on the eye. The government buildings are grand brutal, the domestic architecture is just plain brutal. There are some nice buildings but they are few and far between.

One of the nicer buildings. The statue of Kings Carol I on a horse, used to be a statue of Lenin

But mainly its this!

But I would also stress that whilst the description above is not glowing no one should get the impression that its not safe - quite the opposite. Bucharest is a city, like Berlin, that has had a difficult recent past but has not had the vast amounts of money thrown at it to manage that history. Prague, Budapest and Krakow see large amounts of tourists and if anything have been Disneyfied. I have never heard of anyone booking their stag weekend in Bucharest, there is little tourism here, people fly in to the airport but immediately transfer straight to Transylvania.

The big ticket item to see the Ceausescu's Palace of the Parliament. The second largest administrative building on Earth after the Pentagon and the heaviest building in the world which is sinking 2mm per a year as a result. It dominates the city, its an all roads lead to it sort of building. Like Prora in Germany, the Romanians are stuck with it, as it is just simply too big to demolish. The creation of one odd, megalomanic, dictator. Acres and acres of marble built at a time when the government could not provide enough food for its people.

You can of course take a tour inside, its well worth it and the guide was excellent, but it is so overwelming that the end result, is that you keep coming back to that word odd.

It contains an opera house type theatre

Miles of Corridors

The Pink Room is used for enteraining foreign dignatories. Its pink because pink does not appear on anyones flag so doesn't show favouritism to any one country

You will see from these pictures that not all the lights are on, many chandeliers are not lit. The guide said that a) The goverment simply can't afford to switch them on but also b) if everything in the building was switched on at the same time the lights in the rest of Bucharest would probably go out!

Ironically when Ceausescu was overthrown the building was only 70% complete so he never got to use it. He gave that final infamous speech from the balcony of the Minstry of the Interior at which the assembled crowd instead of cheering, laughed and the end was then nigh. After escaping  by helicopter both Nicolae and his wife Elena were captured, tried and executed. The execution was broadcast on TV on Christmas Day 1989 - I think the BBC would probably implode if they had to do that instead of showing the Sound of Music!

Ministry of the Interior Balcony

This beautiful little Orthadox church is a symbol against the destruction of Ceausescu. Huge areas of central Bucharest were demolished to allow the construction of of the state's new buuldings, around 30,000 lost their homes but a man called Eugeniu Iordachrscu developed a way of moving buildings and had this church moved 245 metres to safety. It's small, a quiet oasis in a busy city, and perfect.

The avenue running up to the Palace of the Parliament is based on the Champs-Elysees in Paris but of course for Ceausescu had to be slightly longer and slighly wider. On the central reservation is a long row of dancing fountains

I went on a walking tour yesterday evening and the guide said that statistically foreigners only visit Bucharest once. I've only been here a day and a half, there are a couple of other things maybe I would have liked to see here but i can live with out doing. So yes it is highly unlikely that I will return, but I am glad I visited.

ROMANIA - The City That Thinks its Hollywood

One of the first things you see when you arrive in Brasov is a big "Hollywood" style sign on the hill above the old town. Its certainly a good reference point when moving around the city.

First impressions of Brasov were not good I'm afraid. I got off the train in the middle of a summer thunderstorm with torrential rain. The station is in the newer "Communist" part of town and you have to get a bus to the old town where the tourist action is and of course my contactless card chose that moment on the bus not to work properly! Then of course when it's chucking down it proves almost impossible to fiind your hotel amongst the maze of narrow streets even though it was actually on the main road and I was just being wet and irritable!

Anyway I have been here four days now and from previous posts you can see I have done a lot and really like it.

The old town is centred around the main square and the nearby Black Church. This is a Lutheran building. We are still in Transylvania, historically this had an Orthodox local population but was settled by Protestant Saxon Germans.

There are several legends as how the Black Church got its name the most common referring to a great city fire in 1689 which seems to have the same legendary status in Brasov as London's fire in 1666. 

Inside the church is adorned with many Transylvanian Islamic rugs which were donated by local merchants trading with the Otttoman Empire in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. You hung an expensive rug in your pew to show wealth and status. Not too sure how the vicar at home would react if I rocked up with an offcut of shagpile next Sunday!

Some VERY old pews - signed as now to be used!

The Town Hall is in the market square and there are loads and loads of restaurants in the surrounding streets giving the town a real buzz in the evening. Its a great place to stroll.

The old town has remains of walls so there are gates

The hill above Brasov is called Tampa and there is a cable car which takes you up so you can stand by that "Hollywood" sign and get a good view of the town. Fortunately it is currently undergoing a comple rebuild so is not operating. Great thats one less of of those things to go in!!

What I found really interesting - because only I would - was the huge drum of cable by the bottom station waiting to be installed.

ROMANIA - If You Go Down To The Woods Today ............

Most of you have already seen some pictures of my encounters with brown bears yesterday so I will use this post just to tell you a little bit about what happened yesterday evening. 

I booked a bear watching excursion with a company here in Brasov. They are obviously very popular so you do need to book in advance. I therefore joined 7 other people in a minibus for a journey of about 40 minutes out of Brasov up into the forested hills. There were actually two minibuses going to different places.

There are populations of European Brown Bears in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria and at the moment they are thriving mainly because neither of these countries are particularly densely populated and therefore habitat loss is relative slow.

Although protected by EU law, in Romania hunting is allowed on a quota system to manage the population, which of course, is a very contentious issue and the main focus of the efforts in the forest we visited was to reduce unintentional contact between man and beast.

Once the minibus had parked up we walked for about 15 minutes into the forest and were then ushered into a hide near a small clearing. Almost as soon as we were inside a bear appeared. Obviously I was in the hide and my phone is not a flashy one, so enlarging the images, reduces the quality somewhat but you can get the gist of what we saw.

They have an amazing sense of smell so would have been aware quite quickly that we were about. The clearing was set up as one of six feeding stations in the forest hence why they could put a hide there and be relatively sure the bears would show up for tourists. The purpose of the feeding stations was not to feed the bears per se, that would make them dependant on human contact which is not the object of the exercise - they are wild animals. It is to supplement their hunted and foraged diet so that they do not feel the need to leave the forest and stray into populated areas or on to busy roads looking for food. The guide was saying that so far the programme had been sucessful and that he wished it would be replicated in areas of Romania where bears are becoming problematic for farmers.

We learnt that when hiking in Romania you should always stick to open tracks and not walk through undergrowth - they are lazy animals and sleep during the heat of the day pretty much almost anywhere shaded. They grow to between 200 and 250 kgs. And most importantly they will chase you obviously, and can out run you, but will never attack you from behind. The guide said they are very gentlemanly in combat as they want to be facing you when they strike.

Just as we were getting ready to leave the hide a bear suddenly came out of the bushes - we saw 4 different ones at various time while we were there. This meant that we had to remain in the hide until it had moved on in the other direction to that which we wanted to go in. The result was that when we did eventually make the 15 minute walk through the forest back to the minibus there was a very uncomfortable tension in the air amongst the group!!

All in all a very good excursion and one I would recommend, but Romania is not a place to just go out into the woods on your own for us non local folk. When I did the 7 Ladders Canyon hike earlier in the week, I can now reveal that the guide had a canister of bear spray in a pouch on the strap of his backpack.