Bulgaria the Easy Way: Cruising with Uniworld

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

What do Americans know about Bulgaria? Not much. Some of the Dracula stories touch this country that lies across the Danube River south of Romania. We have tried some of its foods. Bulgarian caviar. Tarator, a Bulgarian cold soup or -- as friends of ours label it – “liquid salad.” A cheese called sirene and, of course, yoghurt – Bulgarians claim it originated in their country three thousand years ago and they have even named the organism lactobacillus bulgaricus. What else do we know? Well it has a warm friendly people who have celebrated a century of independence from the Ottoman Empire and it has a Cyrillic alphabet that defies understanding and surely hurts tourism more than the Western suspicion that undercover Bulgarian assassins go around London with the sharp end of their umbrellas laced with poison. Indeed the West has thought the whole Balkan Peninsula a hot bed of intrigue for centuries.

To get rid of clichés requires travel but Bulgaria is not the easiest country for Americans to travel around in, mostly because of the language. However, the river boats that ply the Danube are a great choice for visiting the northern part of the country. Many of those boats start in Vienna and go all the way through Eastern Europe until they sail into the Black Sea close to Varna.

Vidin, coming up first on the Bulgarian segment of our Uniworld River Countess cruise, shows us how little we know of this Eastern European country. Vidin’s long history both puzzles and fascinates us. A memorial to the victims of communism greets us we tie down on the south bank of the Danube. We know this country like most of Europe surely suffered over the centuries but during our lifetime was able to shrug off the Soviet influence. Yet at what cost? Records kept at the capital, Sofia, attempt to give the answer with details as a public acknowledgement. Priest Simeon Dankin, for example, in 1944 “was executed without a trial,” one of 6,385 names on record.

For more than two thousand years Vidin has been seen as an important port on the Danube, a prize to be captured on the whim of any neighbor. If we were to round up the usual suspects it would be Celts, Romans, Byzantines, Hungarians, Slavs, Ottomans and Serbs. Thus it’s no surprise to find a huge medieval fortress in the city, Baba Vida. Named after Vida, the eldest daughter of a renowned 10th century king, it is the only fully preserved castle in the country. “The name means ‘Granny Vida,’” says our guide, “Her two other sisters wasted their inheritance on drunkard husbands but Vida had the sense not to marry so she had the money to build a citadel.”

We are sitting in the courtyard of Baba Vida now watching young people perform Bulgarian folk dances. They are so charming it helps eradicate the memory of laments, words carved on the walls of the dungeons below by their prisoners over the centuries.

A 35 mile-drive south of Vidin we again stumble into history: the 4th century fortress of Belogradchik built on top of an earlier Roman settlement. Beyond the entrance lie the celebrated Belogradchik Rocks. Formed of multicolored eroded and strangely-shaped Triassic sandstone they are perhaps Bulgaria’s equivalent of our Bryce Canyon or Monument Valley. Whereas we name a conglomerate in Monument Valley “John Wayne’s Boot,” the Bulgarians are less into pop culture and call their shapes Adam and Eve, Sphinx and Nun, for example.

We continue downstream to Rouse then make the brief bus trip with Uniworld to the northern foothills of the Balkan Mountains, then on to the Yantra River and the medieval town of Veliko Turnovo (and yet another fortress!). This is our guide’s home town. “My Tarnovo, “she says, preferring that spelling, “has been dated by historians to the 4th century BC. In the 13th and 14th centuries the fortress here became our country’s capital.” We catch the eye of a British couple who had told us the story of their ABC tour of France; ABC meant Another Bloody Cathedral. We mouth ABF, Another Bloody Fortress and we smile like conspirators. The guide tells us about the Church of the Forty Holy Martyrs but that seems heavy then she mentions more stuff about the Second Bulgarian Kingdom. We don’t know the context within the country’s history so we accept the alternate free time and wander off with our cameras.

A forbidding figure looks down on us. We thought at first it was Lenin but the date of death 1895 didn’t work. We waited until a young man was walking past with a briefcase, held out a hand and said dobro utro, our only Bulgarian phrase. We were going to ask if he spoke English but he smiled and said, “That’s Good Morning but actually it’s now afternoon. How may I help you?”

He told us he’d learned English watching Hollywood films but had progressed since then. The statue was of Stefan Stambolov, he told us. “He was our prime minister – like your Winston Churchill.” (He thought we were English.) “In fact he was called ‘the Bulgarian Bismarck.’ Bismarck, however, lived to be twice Stambolov’s age when he died because this man (pointing at the statue) was assassinated at the age of 41. He was attacked by four men. Stambolov shot one but the other three stabbed him repeatedly. He died the next day.”

Ouch! We thank our helpful host as he walks away. We are impressed at his knowledge then muse a lot of people his age in our country surely would know our history if asked for information by foreigners. Maybe.

We drift back to our bus and make the brief trip to Arbanassi (sometimes spelled Arbanasi). This popular tourist village is more interested in selling us mementoes than scaring us with its history -- although it has its own stories from the past. “Many wealthy Bulgarians – aristocrats,” our guide says almost enviously, “had their homes here, 17 noble families in 1790, and their fortified homes today have become a great attraction for visitors.” The homes needed to be fortified, the village was pillaged by neighboring bandits as often as northern Scottish towns were ravaged by the Vikings.

The River Countess bears us on to Balchik and its botanic garden. We believe we can almost smell the Black Sea. Our days on the Danube are, unfortunately, numbered. Balchik is so beautiful a coastal resort that the Romanian Queen Maria built a summer palace there. The land became Bulgarian after 1940 when borders changed but the palace and the garden of Romania’s beloved queen is still open to visitors.

The palace interior seems spartan. Its decorations include faded photographs of the queen. Most of her personal effects have ended up in the Maryhill museum that sits on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River in Washington State.

Maria is an interesting story for historians. She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of what was called in those days Great Britain and the granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. She was gifted -- and beautiful despite all the inbreeding of Royalty. The future King George V of Great Britain fell in love with her but, at the age of 17, she married the nephew of the king of Romania for whom “her distaste grew to revulsion.” He became King Ferdinand. She took up art, writing -- and lovers -- and died at the age of 62 in 1938. She’s a most refreshing character: she even served as a Red Cross nurse during World War I.

A short drive leads to Varna, a city on the coast of the Black Sea with a population of about one third of a million. About 95 miles to the south lies Sozopol and, a mile offshore, the island of Sveti Ivan, the 5th century monastery where government archaeologists announced in August 2010 they had found the remains of John the Baptist. Varna has its famous Archaeological Museum that exhibits “The Gold of Varna.” This is thought to be the oldest gold treasure in the world even though it wasn’t discovered and dug up until 1972. It dates back to 4600 BC (or BCE as it is called now, to be politically correct). The museum has antique paintings, extensive coin collections and Thracian tombstones that date back 4-5 thousand years to the Bronze Age.

All this exploring is hungry work but fortunately next on the passengers’ itinerary is lunch and our crew has chosen Mr. Baba’s, a local tourist -- and touristy -- popular restaurant on a dry-docked sailing ship. It’s fun and creates a welcome release from some of the heavy stuff we’ve been listening to (and writing about).

Dinner that night on our river boat, as the day draws to a close, is equally pleasant. On a small ship passengers get to dine with the captain. We’ve sailed with Jord Zwaal before on the same ship and dining with him as our cruise reaches its destination reinforces our lazy pleasure, our contentment with river boat cruising on the ancient rivers of Europe.