Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria, Tuesday June 10th

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Filled with a hot breakfast and perfectly on time, we took a taxi to the bus station. Natasha had helped us in every way and had been great to talk to and to develop our understanding with. She had taken us in at a time of personal stress and had still been able to be a very good friend and host. I knew that I would miss her company in the coming days and we hope to keep in touch.

There is no doubt about it, Bulgaria is beautiful. As green as can be and with lots of villages nestling between forested mountains. We passed roadsides like gardens, with plumes of flowers in yellows and blues, smoke bushes and wild roses arching alone or over other plants. Some vineyards had been let go, but others were models of orderly growth. Fields of lavender being tended by women bending from the waist cast a blue haze. One forest hid a church whose spires and dome of gold shone above the trees.

Of course there were also the areas with drab and run down blocks of flats, which looked strange since they were sometimes in areas where there would have been no worry about plenty of land for everyone. Perhaps they are a cheap housing option and even the simplest house on land would cost more.

We arrived at the Veliko Turnovo bus station and took a taxi to the tourist information centre. Natasha had found them on the internet and they fulfilled all our hopes for finding cheap accommodation. As soon as out host arrived to drive us to our hostel, and we turned down into the oldest of areas, we were entranced. This city was very big in medieval times, and no wonder. The Yantra River has a double loop in it that surrounds the old part of the town, with the arms of the loop each lying in a ravine. The water is way down below steep cliffs in some parts, and flanked by steep hillsides in others. A castle and fortifications were built on the Tsarevets Hill in the centre of the loop when Veliko Turnovo was the Bulgarian capital, Turnovgrad, in the 12^th to 14^th centuries. There the tsars lived and the Bulgarian Patriarch church was built on the very top. The hill was inhabited much earlier, from the Iron Age, by the usual run of Romans and Byzantines and in the 8^th and 9^th centuries by an influx of Slavs and ancient Bulgarians.

We settled in at a lovely hostel with a kitchen and went off to explore. The map in the booklet we had purchased had no key for the sites, only one that indicated footpaths, industry zones, petrol stations, nebulous monuments, anonymous churches, gas stations, etc. It did contain some information about some major sites, but we were on our own in finding them. We found other places that were not mentioned and which we could only guess about. One such case was a spectacular church whose name we couldn’t read. It had soft paintings throughout and beautiful carvings. Our search for museums was hindered until some German men, who had found them by chance, guided us.

It was very hot, more than thirty degrees, for our exploration of Tsaravets Hill. We crossed the drawbridge over the rocky isthmus and entered through the fortified gate where suddenly there was a burst of music and English as a human sized puppet show sprang into life for our benefit. The man running it worked a box connected to the characters’ mouths in the manner of Mr Ed, the talking horse. It was hard to concentrate on the story because a fake horse was neighing and we were being offered the opportunity to have our photos taken in dress ups or armour, mounted on a plaster horse. We were also conscious of being caught in a situation of having to pay for a show we hadn’t asked for but neither had we hurried on. I gathered that someone called Baldwin had come to visit and the queen had taken a fancy to him. She made approaches and he rebuffed her. Piqued, she told her husband that Baldwin had offered to take her away with him and make her the queen of Istanbul. Rather put out, the king had thrown Baldwin head first from the tower that now bears his name, down into the river to his death. I know that a slave was involved somehow and an idiotic court jester was laughing a lot over goodness knows what.
On the strength of this partial understanding of history, we headed for the Baldwin tower. There is a warning about dangerous areas and reptiles, the first warranted because of the enormous drops from the walls to the river bed and down holes and off buildings, but the second seemed extreme for the many small lizards frequenting the site. There has been a lot of archaeological work done, with the footings or partial walls of lots of dwellings, workshops, churches and monasteries ringing the hill inside the walls. The Baldwin Tower was at the end of the wall, looking out in two directions across the land. Keith went right up to the top but I had the creeps after two landings and could see myself falling into the river pushed simply by the strength of my imagination.

In the other direction from the entrance we passed so many dwellings and churches that it seemed as if the medieval residents were obsessed, requiring one church between every ten families. It is possible that people in surrounding areas used the churches too, but that they were built inside the walls to be close to monasteries and protection. The history seems to have been one of regular battles and assertion of power. The ‘rock of execution’ was a natural point butting out over the ravine and would have required no fancy infrastructure to be effective. It had a church handy to it. Up from there we came to the Royal Palace, which has been restored to a certain point so that it is easy to imagine the rest, Knossos style. Actually we were so hot that we had to sit in the shade for a while; a taste of the heat of summer to come and the way it saps energy. The throne room, now like a large terrace, was surrounded by beginnings of walls of royal residential rooms at the level of the first floor. We went down ancient steps and could see a small bat hanging in a partially excavated area.

Finally we visited the Ascension of Christ Church - the church of the Bulgarian Patriarch. The Bulgarian Patriarch Church was proclaimed in 1235 and this church was considered to be the mother of all Bulgarian churches. It is restored and painted throughout with gruesome and bloodthirsty modern paintings of events from medieval times. One looks like poor Baldwin being thrown over, with his hands and feet bound just for good measure. You can pay to go up the tower in an elevator but we didn’t, the view from the top of the hill being plenty good enough. No-one was taking the ride, so someone’s great tourist idea was stalling today.

Apart from our very friendly host and his wife, we had noticed that people avoided making eye contact, not only with us but with each other. Our tickets had been passed to us as if we were interruptions or an inconvenience, when really we are a ticket seller’s raison d’etre. The ultimate came when we asked the lady in the ticket office at the castle when the sound and light show for the castle would be on. She didn’t look up from her book and said she didn’t know, before we finished the question. I asked where the museum was and she just waved me away. Pretty off-putting. The seating for the sound and light show was only twenty metres from her booth and the museum turned out to be visible from it.

We wandered around like headless chooks for while before we met the kind Germans and located the museum. It was not closing time but the archaeological museum’s gate was closed. Perhaps so few go there (because it’s hard to find) that they can close early. Our faith in the friendliness of people was restored by the man in the local shop who sold us what we needed for our cooking and was very helpful.

We cooked, then read and typed in our pretty room, which had real roses in a vase in it. An early night was dictated by our weary legs and heads.