OBSERVATIONS on BULGARIA
1. The alphabet is Cyrillic, almost as indescipherable as Greek, but most everything is repeated in English.
2. The level of English is only fair, much better in tourist cities and Sofia and with young people. The dominant language is Russian.
3. The Black Sea has a huge number of resorts and hotels lining its shores.
4. Roads. The primary and secondary roads are great with smooth pavement and no tolls. But tertiary roads are a disaster with car-swallowing pot holes and so much patching that it is a rough ride.
5. Gas prices. Unusually diesel is more expensive than gas. Prices for diesel vary widely – up to 2.60 BGN but as low as 2.07 (in Varna). The north seems to have cheaper prices often in the 2.22 range.
6. There seems to be an inordinate number of casinos and betting parlours, sex shops and strip joints. I find the betting increases with poverty, which is unfortunate as it is a losing proposition in a get-rich mentality.
Currency. April 2019: xe.com 1.96 BGN (Bulgarian Lev) to the €. Exchange stores were offering 1.95 for €1.
Visas. Free for most Westerners.
BULGARIA – BLACK SEA COAST – Burgas, Varna, Dobrich April 28-30, 2019
The Turkey/Bulgaria border was painless. Both needed the car registration but neither asked to see the car insurance green card. There was a €3 charge at the Bulgarian border.
Strandzha Area. Strandzha Nature Park makes up most of the area. In the NM XL series, this reserve is 1,611 sq. km and the largest protected area in Bulgaria, and the largest oak forest on the continent. 80% is forested – 30% of which is old-growth forest with some trees 500 years old with 1.5-2m diameter trunks. The maximum altitude is on Ghadishle Peak (710m). It has huge biodiversity but bears and Eurasian lynx have been extinct here for many decades. It is the 2nd largest bird migration area in Europe. There are 21 settlements in the park with a total population of 6,200 and 425 monuments of culture including fire dancing.
Google Maps took me to an area in the geographic centre of the park – a very well-treed rural area with no visible towns. You couldn’t drive a very tall vehicle as the trees were so overhanging. The road was more potholes and broken pavement than the real road. So I returned 11 km to take another road to Burgas on the Black Sea coast hoping for a better road (it was). It was not necessary to drive to where I did as the main road goes through the park. I passed through the town of Mayor Vishnyaev with incredibly decrepit apartment buildings.
Brashlyan (pop 50). In the NM “small town” series, the name is translated as ‘Ivy’. In 1982, this village was declared an architectural reserve with 76-listed houses typical of Strandja architecture during the 18th and 19th centuries. The ground floors are stone and mud with 2 layers of wooden beams, The second, residential floor is made of wood planks. Many fo of the houses is open for tours offering rooms and regional meals.
Old Church of St. Domitar was built in the 17th century, restored as a church school in 1871, and is now an ethnographic museum.
SOZOPOL This seaside resort town is about 22kms south of Burgas.
Ravadinovo Castle is a modern ‘fairytale’ castle created as part of a theme park. The castle is quite spectacular with stone turrets and 4 steep spires. The attractions inside are a zoo, fountain of wishes, magic gazebo, chapel, pub, kinetic sculpture, magic fountain, winery, bronze and marble sculpture, restaurants, retro photos, horse riding, and a water park with many slides. It is a wedding venue. 20 BGN, 16 reduced
Oh joy, there was a Lidl in Sozopol so that I could finally stock up on inexpensive food I liked in a store I knew well. There are also McDonalds so I hope to have good wifi access for once.
BURGAS
Ethnographic Museum. In the lovely 1873 Brakalovs House (Brakalov was an ‘innovator’; the access to the 3rd story cupola if via a secret staircase hidden behind a cupboard. The museum has the usual: costumes and dress, farm implements, and jewelry. 6 BGN
Church of St. Cyril and Methodius. This Bulgarian Orthodox parish church was built between 1896-1907. It is lovely inside with wood-carved stands and frames for the many icons, pulpit and altar screen, intricately carved marble columns, nice stained glass, a tremendous brass chandelier under the dome, chandeliers in the 4-domed aisles, and most of the walls, dome (28m high, 6.65m diameter) and apse covered in faded frescoes.
I arrived for the start of mass. A priest at the front crossed people’s foreheads who then kissed a cross, many crossings and bowing, chanting from the invisible priest behind the altar screen and a third priest made a couple of circuits swinging a censor.
St. Anastasia Island (formerly called Bolshevik Island) is a Bulgarian islet in the Black Sea. It is located 1.5 km off the coast near Chernomorets, at 12 metres above sea level, and covers a territory of one hectare. It is the only inhabited island off the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast.
The island is supplied with electricity and drinking water. It is named after the former St. Anastasia convent located on it. The convent had existed since the Middle Ages and was reconstructed during the 18th-19th century. It has been abandoned since 1923, when the island was transformed into a prison.
In 1925, a group of 43 political prisoners (communists and anti-fascists), led by Teohar Bakardzhiev, revolted and escaped from the island, subsequently fleeing to the Soviet Union. In their honour, the island was renamed Bolshevik Island when the communists came into power in 1945.
Desires to privatize the island in 2006 were objected to by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church which claims the island is its property.
Today, in addition to the monastery with its church, there is a lighthouse situated on the island, as well as a museum, a restaurant, a small quay, a conference hall and two guesthouses with a total of five rooms available to tourists. In the summer, the island is accessible from Burgas via boat services running back and forth multiple times a day.
No boats were running in April when I was in the area. I looked at the island through binoculars.
NESSEBAR (pop 11,700 2009) Nessebar is an ancient city and one of the major seaside resorts on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Often referred to as the “Pearl of the Black Sea“, Nesebar is a rich city museum defined by more than three millennia of ever-changing history. The small city exists in two parts separated by a narrow man-made isthmus with the ancient part of the settlement on the peninsula (previously an island), and the more modern section (i.e. hotels, later development) on the mainland side. The older part bears evidence of occupation by a variety of different civilizations over the course of its existence.
It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations and seaports on the Black Sea, in what has become a popular area with several large resorts—the largest, Sunny Beach, is situated immediately to the north of Nessebar.
Nesebar has on several occasions found itself on the frontier of a threatened empire, and as such it is a town with a rich history. Due to the city’s abundance of historic buildings, UNESCO came to include Nessebar in its list of World Heritage Sites in 1983.
History.
Antiquity. Originally a Thracian settlement, the town became a Greek colony when settled by Dorians at the beginning of the 6th century BC, and was an important trading centre from then on and a rival of Apollonia (Sozopol). It remained the only Dorian colony along the Black Sea coast, as the rest were typical Ionian colonies. In 425-424 BC, the town joined the Delian League, under the leadership of Athens. Remains date mostly from the Hellenistic period and include the acropolis, a temple of Apollo and an agora. A wall that formed part of the Thracian fortifications can still be seen on the north side of the peninsula. The town fell under Roman rule in 71 BC, yet continued to enjoy privileges such as the right to mint its own coinage.
Medieval era. It was one of the most important strongholds of the Eastern Roman Empire from the 5th century AD onwards and was fought over by Byzantines and Bulgars, being captured and incorporated in the lands of the First Bulgarian Empire in 812 by Khan Krum after a two-week siege only to be ceded back to Byzantium by Knyaz Boris I in 864 and reconquered by his son Tsar Simeon the Great. During the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, it was also contested by Bulgarian and Byzantine forces and enjoyed particular prosperity under Bulgarian tsar Ivan Alexander (1331–1371) until it was conquered by Crusaders led by Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy in 1366. The Bulgarian version of the name, Nesebar or Mesebar, has been attested since the 11th century.
Monuments from the Middle Ages include the 5–6th century Stara Mitropoliya (“old bishopric”; also St Sophia), a basilica without a transept; the 6th-century church of the Virgin; and the 11th century Nova Mitropoliya (“new bishopric”; also St Stephen) which continued to be embellished until the 18th century. In the 13th and 14th century, a remarkable series of churches were built: St Theodore, St Paraskeva, St Michael St Gabriel, and St John Aliturgetos.
Ottoman rule. The capture of the town by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 marked the start of its decline, but its architectural heritage remained and was enriched in the 19th century by the construction of wooden houses in a style typical for the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast during this period.
Third Bulgarian State. After the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878, Nesebar became part of the autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia in Burgaz department until it united with the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885. Around the end of the 19th century, Nesebar was a small town of Greek fishermen and vinegrowers. In the early 20th century, the total population increased to 1,870, but it remained a relatively empty town. It developed as a key Bulgarian seaside resort since the beginning of the 20th century. After 1925 a new town part was built and the historic Old Town was restored.
Whether built during the Byzantine, Bulgarian or Ottoman rule of the city, the churches of Nesebar represent the rich architectural heritage of the Eastern Orthodox world and illustrate the gradual development from Early Christian basilicas to medieval cross-domed churches.
Ancient City of Nessebar. A World Heritage Site, the city sits on a peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. Inhabited since the 2nd millennium BC when it was controlled by the legendary Thracian leader Melia, it was inhabited by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans. Little older than the 17th century remains – some fortified walls at the entrance and a few remnants of the wall; the rough stone streets might be the most authentic. Most of the old stuff consists of 2 story homes with stone first floors and plank second floors, all renovated and occupied; some of the planks are restored, others unpainted.
Nessebar is a tourist magnet and the streets are one big knick-knack, clothing and jewelry store.
There are 6 churches that all charge a fee to visit (all but St Stephans are stone with brick layering, brick arches, and decorative pots in arches above the arches): Christ Pantocrator (1st half 11th century), St Pandskeva (13th century, used until 19th century), St John the Baptist (10th century,12 by 10m), Holy Savior (16th-century frescoes), St Stephan (the star, modern looking but completely painted inside, great chandeliers).
Church of St. Sophia (Old Metropolitan Church). The only church listed in NM, it is also the only ruin with no roof. The original church here was from the 5th century, the present shell is from the 9th century. It is a 3-nave basilica, 19 by 13m, big brick apse, and 2 stories of 6 intact arches per side.
Archaeological Museum. These are generally a waste of time with a huge variety of pots dating to the 6th century BC, Roman glass, a pile of stone fragments and carved gravestones. There was some nice gold jewelry dating from the 4th – 3rd century BC and wonderful brass jugs from the 4th century BC. 6 BGN with multiple combination tickets including museums and churches.
Nessebar windmills. On the middle of the causeway into Nessebar is a wonderful windmill: round stone base with a high square wood top and 16m vanes, a balcony and a door. The wood top appears to rotate. There are no signs. Free
On the north-central shore of the old town, there is a round stone ruin with no top or vanes that said “windmill under restoration”.
Sunny Beach. 5kms north of Nessebar, this is a huge expanse of fine golden sand. There is only one access (hotels and resorts block most access) and there is a short wharf extending out into the water. The area is very tacky: several casinos, strip clubs, a few shops, a McDonalds, and a Subway, but most everything else is boarded up. Many stores have paper covering the inside – maybe it is out of season. A sign on the beach says “Swimming forbidden, no lifeguard”.
VARNA
Naval Museum. Outside there are two torpedo boats, helicopters, torpedoes, mines and several anchors. Inside are a lot of ship models, portraits, and naval paraphernalia detailing Bulgaria at war particularly in the Black Sea. 6 BGN, 3 reduced.
Drazki. In the NM “Ship Museums” series, in the Balkan War of Nov 1912, a detachment of 4 torpedo boats successfully attacked the Turkish cruiser Hanidia. The accurate shot of Drazki was the first Bulgarian naval victory. Since 1957, it has been a ship museum.
Part of the Naval Museum, it sits high above the water and doesn’t look like it gets many visits. 2 BGN
Varna Aquarium. Sitting high above the water in an incongruous 2 story building, it is dated with small tanks showcasing marine and freshwater fauna of the Black Sea. In the same building is the Institute of Fish Resources Varna. 4 BGN
Archaeological Museum Varna. In a grand stone building, has the usual prehistory through Stone Age, Bronze Age, Hellenistic and especially Roman artifacts, again the usual large number of pots. The highlight is the reconstructed dwellings. 6 BGN
Varna Cathedral. Based on a square, the walls and ceilings are covered in still-bright frescoes and acanthus leaves. There are 9 domes with the central one supported by 4 massive columns. There are intricately carved wood icon stands an altar screen and 3 nice black chandeliers. Free
Retro Museum. In the Grand Shopping Mall (third level), Google Maps was very confusing. This has an extensive display of stuff from the 60s, 70s and 1980s, with almost all East European products all attractively displayed and with digital labels in four languages including a huge number of cars that all looked alike. Some of the more interesting exhibits were politicians (Marx, Engles, Mao, Lenin, Stalin), washing machines, snow cones, toys, bicycles, motorcycles, soap, sleighs, cosmetics, clothes, cigarettes, cameras, phones, typewriters, radios and TVs. 10 BGN, 5 reduced
Bulgaria-Soviet Friendship Monument. This memorial is to Russia’s support of Bulgaria during the 1828-29 Russo-Turkish War. During that conflict, the Siege of Varna had lasted for two months. After landing on the coast north of the city, Russian forces established their camp on a nearby hill named Turna Tepe, as they battled the Ottoman forces who held the city.
Construction of the monument commenced in late 1974, and 27,000 volunteer workers toiled for four years to create the structure and the 400 square metre platform on which it stands. More than 10,000 tonnes of concrete and 1,000 tonnes of armature iron were used to create the monument. A large bronze cube was constructed in front of the structure, burning with an eternal flame fed by pipes hidden in the concrete platform beneath. A total of 180 floodlights were positioned to illuminate the monument at night so that it would be visible even by ships far out in the Black Sea.
The monument fell into disuse after the political changes of 1989. Today, it is heavily vandalized and has been stripped bare, leaving little more than graffitied concrete and rebar.
The Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship represents a gesture of comradeship between two countries, and it was designed to resemble a bird of peace facing out across the sea towards the USSR (at least, in symbolic terms; in reality it is angled more towards Ankara in Turkey). The figures at the front of the monument show four Russian soldiers, on the right, coming to the rescue of three Bulgarian women on the left. The women hold gifts of bread and salt, as well as Bulgaria’s national flower, the rose. These seven statues positioned on the wings measure 11m in height. Metal letters on the front of the Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, now heavily decayed and partially missing, once read: “Friendship for centuries throughout centuries.” The 15-metre wide ‘Staircase of Victors’ includes a total of 305 steps up to the monument itself, and in the surrounding park more than 20,000 decorative trees were planted to represent fallen Soviet soldiers.
Inside, it is deceptively spacious – the interior consists of numerous passages and chambers which originally served memorial and museum purposes. The largest space, inside the right-hand wing and with an indented star formed in its end wall, once contained a museum dedicated to the Russo-Turkish War. Inside the left-hand wing, a space with tiered seating served as a small hall for meetings. A monumental plaque, positioned above the entry staircase and now decayed almost beyond legibility, featured a quote from Georgi Dimitrov, Bulgaria’s first communist leader: “Friendship with the Soviet Union is as essential as is the sun, air and water for the living creature.”
A series of chambers on the ground floor of the Monument to the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship contained a bookshop and library, while a wide staircase beneath the structure leads down into the hill itself. A large bomb shelter, now abandoned, was constructed inside the base of the hill.
Evxinograd. 8 km east of Varna on 90 hectares, this was initially a summer residence for the first Bulgarian Prince Alexander Battenberg. Construction started in 1882 but he abdicated in 1886 and construction was suspended. The newly elected Prince Ferdinand I of Saxe-Coberg and Gothe resumed construction displaying his interest n ornithology, entomology and botany. There is a large park, palace, residence, winery, sports complex, indoor swimming pool, several villas, church, hotel, restaurant and 3 gardens (French, English and Greek). Visit by reservation only by emailing euxinograde@government.bg or phone +359 52 393140.
BALCHIK
On a weekday, this was a very busy place. Park on the street as the road leading down to the gardens was a gauntlet of knick-knack and clothing shops and is pedestrian only. To visit Bilchek Palace, you must pass through the University Botanical Gardens. Each is a separate ticket sold at different ticket counters close together.
Balchik Botanical Garden (University Botanical Gardens Balchik). This garden was quite spectacular with two large flowerbeds, all in active bloom: tulips, geraniums, iris, forget-me-nots and several others. The greenhouse is full of succulents and cacti with hundreds (thousands?) of varieties. Many are in tiny pots with 100 to a display case. Outside there is a large group of more cactus, some of it very woody. There are also some nice water features. All labels are by scientific name. 8 BGN, 3 reduced
Balchik Palace. This small residence was built in 1931 for Romanian royalty. The storyboards are very wordy and one gets lost in all the intrigue. Pass a wine shop with free tastings. Don’t bother climbing all the way up to the Queen’s residence as it is not open to the public. The house itself has a lovely 2nd floor but most of the rooms are small and uninteresting. There is some furniture and a small art show was exhibited. It is all kind of confusing.
The gardens were not so spectacular (they are not botanical gardens but simply the grounds of the palace) – most were roses not yet in bloom in beds lining the wall separating the grounds from the beach. There were some small flowerbeds. The water features were quite nice, with a waterfall, a water cascade down a high rock wall and several small fountains. Don’t continue past the chapel (tiny but with nice frescoes covering all the walls and ceiling) as there is no exit this way and you have to climb back up past the wall cascade. 6 BGN, no reduction
Kaliakra Lighthouse. It was a 33km drive under chalk cliffs from Balchik out to the end of the Kaliakra peninsula. The peninsula juts out 2km on the north shore of the Black Sea and is lined by nice red/brown cliffs.
History. A Thracian town was established in the 4th century BC. The Romans took over in the 1st century and called it Acros Castellion (“fortified cape”). A Roman bath and many of the building foundations date from then. In the 7th century, it reached its zenith as a Bulgarian port and commercial town that ended with the Ottomans in the 14th century. The successful 1791 naval battle between the Russian Black Sea fleet and the Ottomans is the subject of a large memorial and bas-relief on a cliff. Pass several ruins and park 750m from the peninsula tip (3 BGN). Pass 2 sets of fortification walls (the last a nice tower/gate and walls on the narrowest part), 2 wells, a 14th-century Bulgarian church ruins and then bypass the military installation with several communication towers on one side. Pass through the lovely restaurant with a museum in a natural sea cave to access the very tip with a minute chapel and nice limestone erosions. I had to look hard for the lighthouse stuck among the military installation.
Shabla Lighthouse Located 5 kilometres east of the town of Shabla, it was built in 1856 by the Ottoman Empire and is the oldest lighthouse in Bulgaria and the Black Sea. It warns the sea vessels about an underwater reef and shallows between Tyulenovo and Cape Shabla.
The base of the unit is a square with a width of 8.80 m and a height of almost 10 meters. It rises to a tower-shaped eight-sided truncated pyramid. The wall thickness of one meter and a half. The total height is 32 meters above the ground, and above 36 meters the sea.
Offshore the lighthouse signal is observed at a distance of about 31 km, and in clear weather even further. In the past, it was known that if you glimpse the lights of the lighthouse, you have gone half the distance between the mouth of the Danube and the Bosphorus. It is in a military zone and can’t be accessed. 
More interesting than the lighthouse are three unusual cultish “pyramid sculptures” next to the parking area: four inverted glass pyramids with a metal border under canopies with a pyramid on top; a square marble plaque with carved symbols under a pyramid metal frame with glass balls suspended on wires; and 3 cement columns each with a different capital. There is a sign explaining this but it was in Bulgarian.
I looked in Google to try to find more information on these but could find nothing.
DOBRICH A NM “European City”, Dobrich is a singularly unattractive city of Soviet era with grey apartment buildings. Enter the Open Air Ethnographic Museum of attractive single-story white buildings with brown trim and terracotta roofs (various shops) that end at a large stone-based clock tower.
Regional Historical Museum (Museum Old Dobrich). The museum has 200,000 local artifacts from Prehistory, Thracian, Roman, and the Bulgarian Kingdom (7th-10th century) eras. Lots of pots, skeletons, and Roman items are displayed in large glass showcases. Closed Saturday/Sunday. Free
Pobiti Kamani Natural Monument (the Stone Forest). A tentative WHS (10/10/2011), this is a very unusual natural formation of possibly 100 eroded limestone columns, the largest 5m high and 1.5-2m in diameter, distributed along a very sandy area 800m long. They are 50 million years old and I presume are petrified trees on a sandy beach. Many have which look like large burls and fungi at the bases. It is 20 km west of Varna. Free
Pass under a long cable car system with large buckets carrying white ore (limestone). The only factory visible is a cement plant.
The Devnya Industrial Complex consists of several important factories and companies in the chemical industry sector of Bulgaria. The reason Devnya has become the host of this cluster is that the region is relatively rich in raw materials like water, rock salt, silica, marl, and limestone. Some of the largest companies based here are: Solvay-Sodi (Солвей-Соди), part of Solvay, Agropolichim (Агрополихим), part of the Acid & Fertilizers Group, Polimeri (Полимери АД), part of AKB Fores, Devnya-Cement (Девня-Цимент), part of Italcementi, Thermal Power Plant Deven (Девен АД), part of Solvay, Thermal Power Plant Varna (ТЕЦ Варна, (1260 MW), part of the ČEZ Group.
Museum of Mosaics, Devnya. The Roman town of Marcionopolis was excavated and a 3rd – 4th-century building with 21 rooms was discovered. Five of the rooms had floor mosaics and 3 are displayed in situ in the museum and two were transferred here. They are all poor – very fragmented and faded. There are also small displays of Roman artifacts and an archaeological dig outside. This is not really worth coming to and it appears to have few visitors. 4 BGN