We spent our last week in Bulgaria in the capital of Sofia and it was hard not to think about how our weeks in Romania compared with our weeks in Bulgaria. The countries are very similar. Both are struggling with high prices and low wages, high emigration, and trying to overcome the troubles of authoritarian regimes for 35 years. It is hard to understand a country in just a few weeks but we got the impression that Bulgaria is on a better track right now. Their economy is gaining steam and they plan to start using the Euro in just a few months. There seemed to be a bit more optimism in Bulgaria, but maybe that is because we were in Romania during election time. Sofia is a little bit gritty but still a fantastic city to visit. We stayed in another communist-era Airbnb apartment (very nice place, we’d recommend it) on the tram/pedestrian street that runs through the center of town. We saw lots of graffiti, which is common now in all cities in Europe, but we also saw a lot of fantastic architecture from the 1890’s-1930’s. Their monarchy era gave them a building boom that makes is a beautiful downtown to walk through. We appreciated the interesting blend and contrasts of western european and eastern-bloc architecture. Lots of cathedrals, churches, and mosques as well as a bunch of Roman ruins that were recently found when they were building their subway. There was also a lot of turn of the century government buildings that gave it a Western Europe capital feel downtown.
We haven’t seen too many UNESCO sites lately, so we booked a bus tour to visit two of them on one tour. We first went to the Rila Monastery up in the mountains and spent a few hours wandering through their museums and monastery grounds. It is still a working monastery but it felt more like a tourist attraction. But it was very scenic and I took a lot of pictures of the old buildings. We wandered through an art museum, the monk’s quarters, the kitchen, the church, and climbed the bell tower. After the monastery, we visited the Boyana church on the way back to Sofia. It was very old and very small, probably the smallest UNESCO site that we have visited. It contained some cool fresco paintings from the 13th century but they wouldn’t let us take pics.
Sofia had several small parks and squares that were packed with people on the days with good weather. The church courtyard near our house had a small playground but also benches around the outside filled with people of all ages just out to be social. They have a culture of “bench parties”. The young people would buy beer from the nearby “Kinky” store and push some benches together in the park just hang out all evening. Why can’t we do that in America?
We did have some tough weather this week. The average temperature in Sofia during May is usually in the mid-70’s. We had one day where it rained all day and had a high temperature of 48. It was tough to look at Seattle weather and see that it was in the 70’s back home…. We did have a whole week in Sofia and it was nice enough to wear shorts and sandals on some of the days. This in one of the benefits of staying a week in a location even though we could probably see the main attractions in 2 or 3 days. We have learned this over the years and always remember the time we only had 2 nights scheduled in the capital of Slovenia- Ljubljana. And it rained the entire time, we got soaked… so now we try for longer stays in most places. We had enough sunbreaks to walk through some of Sofia’s huge parks. They didn’t provide many views but had miles of trails to escape the noise of the city.
We love exploring the food of a country, and have been enjoying the meat and veggies of Bulgaria. My favorite has been the many plates of slow cooked pork ribs. Most of the restaurants have a few local dishes but many of the items are typical European food. Much like some american restaurants, we’ve found a few menus trying to do everything, from sushi to korean to mexican (we were dubious). We enjoyed the local salads including the Shopska salad that is super fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, red onion, covered with tangy local cheese instead of salad dressing. We also cooked a good meal of pasta and meatballs one night in our Airbnb. We do miss cooking sometimes…
Our time in Bulgaria is now over. We only had 3 stops, but liked our time in all of them. When we come back someday, we will probably want to see more of the smaller towns and the excellent nature of this country. Lots of hiking that we didn’t really get to on this trip. Our next stop is another new country for us – North Macedonia. Our first few days will be in the capital of Skopje.
Thanks!