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  • Evelyn Weliver

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May 30, 2009

Bulgaria's place in history is firm

Art, metals and architecture are still honored

By EVELYN WELIVER

Editor's note: This is the second of a three-part series by Evelyn Weliver, retired director of the Academic Library at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, who recently traveled to Bulgaria with her husband Del. Her previous installment can be found at www.record-eagle.com.

In the middle part of our trip, our group of eight climbed into our silver van and went south into the Rhodope Mountains to the Bachkova Monastery.

It was founded in 1083, restored in the 20th century and is now on the list to become an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the old dining room, richly painted biblical scenes cover the low curved ceiling and damp walls.

We sat around a rough, white, 20-foot-long marble table with a raised edge to prevent the blessed food from dropping on the floor.

There is a small church across the courtyard. A wooden door inside has a deep carving of two eagles, back to back, with a crown over their heads. This is a symbol for the pope of Constantinople. People stood in a line winding out the front door, waiting to pray in front of the Virgin Mary's icon of vivid blues and silver with a golden halo.

We had lunch by a sparkling river -- grilled vegetables and mushroom tops with herbs, mixed bean salad, cold meats, cheeses and toasted bakery bread.

Driving on to Plovdiv we visited a Roman theater from the second century A.D. The steeply tiered marble benches made a semi-circle around the outdoor stage. Distant mountains formed a backdrop.

We walked on very rough and uneven cobblestones past restored 19th-century houses painted deep green, blue and fuchsia.

Near the shops, a young man in folk costume of dark trousers and embroidered shirt played small goatskin bagpipes.

In the morning we visited a museum that was built to cover and preserve the clay remains of the Neolithic village Stara Zagora, dating from the 6th millennium B.C. Two small houses shared a middle wall. Some of the first farmers in Europe lived here. They ground their grain in an oval clay basin with an outside channel for the grain to slide down.

There were pottery vessels of unusual shapes and copper implements. The oldest copper mine in Europe was just five miles away.

After they mined the ore with fire and cold water, they filled the holes with earth.

Later in the tour we visited Varna on the Black Sea. The Archeological Museum has amazing displays of gold artifacts.

Three thousand pieces of gold were found in the nearby Varna Necropolis dating to 4400 B.C. Nowhere else in the world has this much gold been found from this era. The museum states that this area was the "cradle of the earliest metal-production and processing in the Ancient World."

We stayed in Kazanluk, then had a full day in the wide, flat Valley of the Thracian Kings where we saw many grass-covered mounds that hide burial chambers.

The tomb of King Seuthes III, dating from the fourth century B.C., has never been robbed and yielded intricate gold jewelry, cups and bowls. One of the men who helped open the tomb in 2005 said the feeling of finding it was indescribable. They washed one of the gold cups they had found, poured a type of old Thracian wine and shared it to give respect to the grave. Small rooms were carved from huge slabs of stone, filled with treasures and buried in the mounds of earth. The nearby Kazanluk Tomb has well preserved paintings of daily life. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Thracian Rose, a strongly scented rose with 60 petals, is grown in this same valley. The rose bushes were carried by settlers from Asia about the first century A.D. Sixty percent of the world's rose oil is produced here. The soil and climate are perfect for roses. The Balkan Mountains block the cold air from the north; then the warm Mediterranean air from the south provides a February start to a new season of growth.

We visited the Museum of Rose Oil and saw copper distilling equipment and baskets for picking the roses by hand. Workers pick the blossoms in the early morning before the sun evaporates the aroma. There is a rose festival that takes place during the harvest in late May and early June.

The next installment will cover Nesebar on the Black Sea and Veliko Tarnovo Shumen's largest mosque outside of Turkey.

Evelyn Weliver can be reached at weliverer@gmail.com.

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