WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?

by Stamen Manolov; photography by Anthony Georgieff

Water reservoirs are not typically on tourist bucket lists, but wait till you are well into this mountain range in southern Bulgaria

where in bulgaria are you.jpg

At least a dozen man-made lakes of various sizes attract many locals who come here for the serenity, the mountain air and for the angling and photography opportunities. In actual fact being by a lake, especially in summertime, in many ways outshines going to the seaside if only because there are no crowds and it gets cooler at night. Besides, the hiking and trekking options will keep you busy for days if not weeks.

  • COMMENTING RULES

    Commenting on www.vagabond.bg

    Vagabond Media Ltd requires you to submit a valid email to comment on www.vagabond.bg to secure that you are not a bot or a spammer. Learn more on how the company manages your personal information on our Privacy Policy. By filling the comment form you declare that you will not use www.vagabond.bg for the purpose of violating the laws of the Republic of Bulgaria. When commenting on www.vagabond.bg please observe some simple rules. You must avoid sexually explicit language and racist, vulgar, religiously intolerant or obscene comments aiming to insult Vagabond Media Ltd, other companies, countries, nationalities, confessions or authors of postings and/or other comments. Do not post spam. Write in English. Unsolicited commercial messages, obscene postings and personal attacks will be removed without notice. The comments will be moderated and may take some time to appear on www.vagabond.bg.

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.

Discover More

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Come Yuletide, and the streets swarm with adult men dressed in what appears to be a combination between early 20th century gendarme uniforms and traditionally embroidered white shirts.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
A bridge spanning over a turbulent whitewater river, which was constructed in such an incredible location that it was quick to gain notoriety for being otherworldly, a structure no human hand was able to accomplish without assistance from supernatural force

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Logically, every odd rock has a story attached to it. Most of them, predictably, are macabre but all are worth listening to as they bespeak folk dreams and memories through the centuries.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
It was destroyed by the invading Ottomans, reviving itself in 1660. The compound you see today is a fine example of Revival Period architecture with a 1844 church with a fine woodcarved iconostasis.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Many of its wooden houses are well preserved, some have been turned into museums, there are places to stay and places to eat, and the village is home to a couple of festivals one of which gathers an international crowd clad in traditional costu

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
First you see a pretty, almost fairy-tale, unmistakably Russian church. Soon you reach a larger-than-life equestrian statue representing a 19th century Russian monarch.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
In recent months the telltale Soviet soldier waving a submachine gun is gone and the whole compound has been fenced off. It is being protected round the clock by Bulgarian police.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
It tells of a boy who loved to dive, but a storm once trapped him to his death in a submarine cave just under the rocks.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
These are long extinct, but the lion has become so popular that Bulgaria has adopted it for its national coat-of-arms.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
At the same time it found itself facing with severe labour shortages. What they did was to convince young Bulgarians...

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
It produced some of the brightest minds of the time. Since independence in 1878, however, it has been going downhill as its citizens sought their fortunes elsewhere and emigrated en masse.

WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Perched on a rocky outcrop, it marks the easternmost point of Bulgaria. It was erected in the middle of the 19th century by a French company working on commission from the Ottoman sultan who was keen on modernising the outer reaches of his realm.