Updated and expanded February 2020
A City Break in one of Europe's Less Well Known Capitals
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| Bulgaria |
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| Sofia |
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| Sofia, Goddess of Wisdom, Sofia |
Goodwill and the words for ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are enough for survival, and that was all we knew. I am not proud of my ignorance - we have (as of 2020), successfully practised illiteracy in Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Armenian, Georgian and five Indian alphabets – but we made an effort with Cyrillic. Reading was (and remains) slow and painful. Sounding out words letter by letter was an experience I had not enjoyed since Miss Morgan’s class in 1956 but it is enormously pleasing when sense suddenly emerges (like sounding out кафе еспресо and getting café espresso). Being barely literate was an improvement on our situation in some countries, but the Bulgarians throw in a unique confusion by nodding for ‘no’ and shaking their heads for ‘yes’. Aware that they are out of step, some Bulgarians helpfully revert to European standard when dealing with foreigners. At that point you are truly lost.
Sofia: First Impressions
We stayed in a ‘boutique’ hotel near the centre. We were unaware when we booked that it was a gay hotel, but their policy was to welcome everybody, regardless of orientation, and the staff were unfailingly friendly and helpful.
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| Scotty's Boutique Hotel, Sofia |
Sofia looked in good repair, with the assortment of boulevards, parks and fountains that are mandatory for a capital city. I hesitate to comment on fashion - with good reason - but even I noticed that much clothing looked cheap and poorly made, some young women adopting a style best described as 'streetwalker chic'. We saw the same in Russia when travelling the trans-Siberian railway a few months later. Traffic was orderly, though cars tended towards the venerable; Bulgarian registration plates often stuck over German or Austrian plates, suggesting the cars had been imported second hand.
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| Bulevard Vitosha, Sofia |
Mount Vitosha, still snow covered in late April, could be seen from almost everywhere, bringing a sense of openness to the city.
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| The church of Sveta Nedelya with Mt Vitosha in the background, Sofia |
Sofia: The last 150 years
Alexander and Louis Battenberg
In the latter half of the 19th century the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire was spawning new countries in need of rulers. At the same time a uniting Germany had an abundant supply of underemployed princelings. The Great Powers (Great Britain, France and Russia) wanted stability and at a series of conferences they fixed the borders of several new (or reborn) states and nominated spare German princelings as monarch.
In 1879, Bulgaria became a semi-independent protectorate of the Ottoman empire and the Great Powers decided 22-year-old Alexander of Battenberg would be the ideal ruler. He turned out not to be, but still sits on his horse outside the unassuming parliament building.
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| Prince Alexander I outside the parliament building, sofia |
Despite being a nephew of Tsar Alexander II, he displeased the Russians and was deposed in 1886. Alexander spent the rest of his short life in Austria, dying in 1893. He is buried in the Battenberg Mausoleum just round the corner from his statue. I was disappointed to find it is not covered in marzipan.
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| Battenberg Memorial, Sofia |
[An irrelevant but interesting interlude: Alexander’s older brother Prince Louis of Battenberg was born in Austria, spent his early years in Italy and Germany, but joined the British Royal Navy at the age of 14. In 1883 he married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and by 1912 was the First Sea Lord. As war with Germany approached, he renounced his German titles (he was made Marquis of Milford Haven in recompense) and changed the family name to Mountbatten. His eldest daughter became Queen of Sweden, his second daughter, Alice, married a younger son of the King of Greece (a Danish princeling, the Greeks had tried a German one but without success) and became the mother of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh. Louis’ son Lord Louis Mountbatten also became First Sea Lord, was the last Viceroy of India and an early mentor of Prince Charles. He was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979.]
Back to Sofia:
Tsar Simeon
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| Simeon before ascending the throne |
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| Simeon Sakskoburggotski as prime minister photo by Grey Geezer - Wikipedia |
The Former Communist Party Headquarters
Now a member of the EU and NATO, Bulgaria is busy forgetting its recent history. The Communist Party headquarters were formerly described as ‘forbidding’ but today look harmless enough in spring sunshine.
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| The former Communist Party Headquarters, Sofia |
Monument of the Soviet Liberators
The monument of the Soviet liberators stands in a park. With the impressive backdrop of Mt Vitosha, a soviet soldier heroically protects a peasant, a woman and a child. Skateboarders weave across the surrounding flagstones, and part of the park has been boarded off, leaving ample scope for charmless graffiti. It has a sad, neglected air.
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| Monument to the Soviet Liberators, Sofia |
The Presidential Palace
The current presidential palace is modest, more a presidential apartment. The two guards, dressed in the sort of uniforms favoured for such tasks,….
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| The Presidential Palace, Sofia |
….are changed hourly in a goose-stepping display that sometimes has to weave between passers-by.
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| Changing the presidential guard, Sofia |
One Museum, two Churches, a Mosque and a Synagogue
National Archaeological Museum
First settled by the Thracian Serdi tribe, the city became Serdica under the Romans, Triaditsa when part of the Byzantine Empire and then Sredets under the Slavs who renamed it Sofia in the fourteenth century. The National Archaeological Museum opposite the Presidential Palace covers all these eras and has a fine and varied collection of Thracian and Roman treasure, including 6th century bronze figurines, Greek and Roman Stelae and frescoes rescued from dilapidated churches.
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| The National Museum of Archaeology, Sofia |
Rotunda of St George
The Roman Rotunda of St George is the oldest church in Sofia and contains some interesting and ancient icons. It is a lovely if over-enthusiastically restored little building.
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| Rotunda of St George |
Cathedral of Aleksandar Nevski
If St George’s is the oldest, the cathedral of Aleksandar Nevski, completed in 1924, is the largest. Squatting like an enormous toad, it dominates its eponymous square and the surrounding gardens. According to some it is the finest building in the Balkans, though I found it difficult to like. Inside it is dark and sombre. The large pew-less space - Orthodox congregations stand or kneel - is sufficient for 5000 worshippers, though the only activity we witnessed was an old man vigorously pushing a broom.
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| Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia |
Banya Bashi Mosque and Baths
Other religions have equally monumental accommodation. After five hundred years of Ottoman rule, it unsurprising that the Banya Bashi (Big Bath) Mosque is large and prominent. It is still used by today’s much smaller Muslim community.
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| Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia |
It stands in front of the thermal baths, the Banya Bashi themselves, which were closed for renovation. The warm, brackish water is available from taps in the square. Locals cart it away in buckets, but I contented myself with washing my hands.
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| Checking out the thermal springs, Banya Bashi, Sofia |
Central Synagogue
Opposite our hotel was the solid bulk of Sofia’s central synagogue. For good reasons synagogues are not usually built to stand out, but this is a statement of confidence and permanence. Sofia’s Jews were an important and well-accepted part of the community but Bulgaria backed the wrong side in 1939, more out of geo-political necessity than conviction. Asked to round up their Jewish citizens for mass-murder the Bulgarian authorities procrastinated and kept procrastinating until the war ended. Most of Bulgaria’s Jewish population survived, but subsequent emigration to Israel means the community is now too small to keep the synagogue functioning.
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| Sofia Central Synagogue |
I wrote that up as good news in the original version of this post. I have since learned that saving lives from the Nazis was a zero-sum game. They had quotas and they had to fill them and if not from Bulgaria then somewhere else. The consequence of saving the Bulgarian Jewish community was the annihilation of the Macedonian Jewish community. There are times and places when good news stories are hard to find.
Eating in Sofia
Bulgarians are grazers and street food is available in quantity, if not always quality. The best, a full range of the baklava-like filo pastry, nut and honey desserts normally associated with Greece or Turkey, we found in the Halite market near our hotel. The worst, the flaccid slices of something sold as pizza, is best avoided. Doner Kebabs (another reminder that the Eastern Mediterranean is not far away) were ubiquitous.
The city has very few restaurants for its size (that was 2007, has it changed?). It is possible that we ate in some of the best though prices were modest by Western standards. Bulgaria has no great culinary tradition, but we were impressed by simple cooking that respected the high quality and freshness of the ingredients. Once or twice we encountered bilingual menus, which caused the usual amusement. Lynne ordered a dish of ‘lambkin’ mainly because of the translation, and was rewarded with a pile of small and deliciously tender lamb chops.
Bulgarian wines, once apparently set to dominate the British market but now all but disappeared, combined high quality with minimal cost. As aniseed lovers we also enjoyed mastika, which looks like ouzo but tastes more like pastis. Salad is the universal first course, and with that it is customary to drink a colourless brandy. All restaurants offer a range, based on grape variety, and served in a tulip glass on a tall thin stem. It seemed an unusual way to start a meal, but the Bulgarians having been doing this for generations, and a little experimentation suggested they know a thing or two.
The Master of Boyana
I have left the best to last. The tiny church of Boyana is not only a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is an unexpected gem that left me slack jawed with amazement.
Boyana is theoretically a suburb of Sofia, but we had left the city streets for country lanes across the wooded slopes of Mount Vitosha before the taxi dropped us outside the entrance to a small churchyard. A little concerned as to how we might get back, we bought tickets and collected an elderly guide who seemed delighted by an opportunity to practice his English.
The eastern part of the church is a tiny tenth century chapel. The larger central part was added in similar style three hundred years later and in the nineteenth century, an even larger lobby was built on the west end. I cannot imagine who thought that was a good idea, it ruins the church from the outside but fortunately the glory of Boyana lies within.
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| The Church of Boyana, from left to right oldest, old, execrable |
We entered the darkened lobby and waited for our eyes to adjust. Then the main church was unlocked and we stepped into an interior completely covered in frescoes. Some of the work in the older chapel is rustic, to put it kindly, but it is the extension, painted in 1279, that takes away the breath. The chapel is circular and we stood in the centre, turning slowly to absorb the wealth of detail. The work of a man known, until recently, only as the ‘Master of Boyana’, it represents a break with the flat-faced icons of Byzantine orthodoxy and forms a stepping-stone between medieval art and the Italian renaissance. Recent renovation has revealed that the painter’s name was probably Vasiliy, but I think he should still be known as the Master of Boyana, because that is what he was.
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| The Crucifiction and Last Super, Boyana, borrowed from ArchaeologyinBulgaria.com |
Biblical characters are depicted in medieval dress, the last supper is Bulgarian peasant fair of radishes, garlic and bread. The figures are so lifelike you expect them to move, and each has a real face, probably recognisable to the people of the time, that would pass unremarked in the streets of Sofia today. The king and queen are shown with haloes, and Boyana’s patrons, the Sebastocrator Kaloyan and his wife Desislava hold the church in their hands. ‘Sebastocrator’ is a Byzantine designation meaning ‘venerable ruler’. Kaloyan is the only Bulgarian known to have used the title, which I find strange. If I had been a medieval Bulgarian nobleman, I would have fought anybody and everybody to be able to style myself ‘sebastocrator’.
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| The Sebastocrator Kaloyan and Desislava, Boyana Church Borrowed from ArchaeologyinBulgaria.com |
For conservation purpose, the lighting is dim. the temperature and humidity controlled, and our visit limited to a frustrating 10 minutes. Photography was not permitted,
Visitors are limited in number as well as time; if it was anywhere else you would have had to buy a timed ticket on-line, but we had the place to ourselves, a privilege you won’t get in the Sistine Chapel.
The Bulgarian National History Musuem
As we left, a taxi drew up bringing the next two visitors and conveniently solving our transport problem. We did not go far, the National History Museum, is only a couple of kilometres, technically also in Boyana, but the width of a ring road from urban Sofia.
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| Bulgarian National History Museum, Boyana |
Housed in a former palace for the communist leaders, it contains everything that is too big or too good or too modern for the Archeological Museum. Its five halls contain treasures, icons and frescoes; photographs from the 19th century Bulgarian National Revival, military uniforms, theatre posters, costumes for operas...something to interest almost anyone. It is Bulgaria's most important museum, but its location means a small proportion of Sofia's small number of visitors get to see it.
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