TRAVEL

The names of foreigners, mainly Russians, are common across the map of Sofia – from Alexandr Dondukov and Count Ignatieff to Alexey Tolstoy (a Communist-era Soviet writer not to be confused with Leo Tolstoy) who has a whole housing estate named after him. An understandable situation. After Bulgaria's Liberation as a result of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, the new nation was eager to express its gratitude to the Russian Empire, its diplomats and administrators who had laid the foundations of the modern Bulgarian state.

Picturesque old houses lining a narrow river and tiny shops selling hand-made sweets, knives and fabrics: The Etara open air museum recreates a charming, idealised version of mid-19th century Bulgaria.

Christ was an alien. Or if He was not, then four centuries ago there were UFOs hovering over what is now southwestern Bulgaria.

If you believe the hype, evidence that aliens visited us in the past, probably inspiring Christianity, exists hidden in plain sight. In a church. In Bulgaria. A fresco in a 17th century church in the Dobarsko village is said to represent Christ in a space rocket, in the Transfiguration scene.

Unlike other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, which removed, stashed away or demolished most remnants of their Communist past as early as the 1990s, Bulgaria is a curiosity. It continues to maintain at least a dozen monuments to the Red Army. Some are gargantuan and placed in various top locations in bigger cities, some are small and unobtrusive. Urbexers and lovers of quaint and bizarre trivia will be bemused to discover that none of these remnants of the Communist past in actual fact commemorate any... real-life story.

Agroup of friends meet each summer at the seaside, a small community who know one another so well that boredom becomes inevitable, and so do internal conflicts. And death. The script of The Big Night Swim, a movie that premiered in 1980, sums up what existential angst and ennui looked like in Communist Bulgaria, or at least in Communist Bulgaria's "intellectual elite." Significantly, the movie was shot at a relatively remote location the village of Varvara.

Descendants of millennia-old rites, the scary kukeri, or mummers, are the best known face of Bulgarian carnival tradition. Gabrovo's carnival is its modern face: fun, critical, and colourful.

It usually takes place in the third weekend of May and is a part of an international festival organised by the Gabrovo city council and the town's House of Humour and Satire, probably the only museum in the world dedicated to... fun.

Both high-end perfumes and more run-of-the-mill cosmetics would be impossible without a humble plant that thrives in a couple of pockets around the world, the oil-bearing rose. Bulgaria is one of these places. Here, in the so-called Valley of Roses, the pink, rather unremarkable Rosa damascena blooms in May and early June, filling the early morning air with its thick, dizzying aroma.

Organisers of the notorious Burning Man festival seem to have heeded the lessons of 2023 when festival-goers, paying uprwards of $500 for a ticket, had to wade, owing to torrential rains and flashfloods, through tons of mud in the northern Nevada desert. It has just been announecd that the next iteration of Larry Harvey and Jerry James's creation will be held in Novo Selo, in southern Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, nature has created a number of little wonders. They might not be spectacular or grandiose, but they constitute a vital part of the local wildlife, create a feeling of uniqueness and are sometimes the sole survivors of bygone geological epochs. Many of these are plants, and some are animals. Here is a list of our favourite little Bulgarian wonders of nature.

Haberlea rhodopensis

Next time you visit Sozopol, pay more attention not to the quaint houses in the Old Town, the beaches around or the quality of food and service in the restaurants. Instead, take a stroll by the sea and take in... the rocks.