We stopped at a small village beside a river called Bozhentsy. All the old houses had huge slabs of rock on the rooves and in the winter they turn a green colour from the moss that covers them. The area is preserved as a historical area and some of the families visit in the summer while others live there all year. A few shops sold wooden items while others sold glazed dishes and pottery with traditional patterns.
We strolled around the village and helped ourselves to any ripe plums and apples that were hanging over the path. We also manged to have a great feast of blackberries. We needn't have got the pastries after all.
George likes to ride mountain bikes and he often takes guests on bike trips through the hills in the area so he knows that place well.
After driving through the narrow lanes and valleys we headed for Etara, an outdoor museum, where some old buildings were relocated and the government paid local crafts people to continue to keep their crafts alive by working at the complex.
There was a herbalist who sold Jana some dried herbs from which she could make tea and they were guaranteed to make people love her!
There were lots of water wheels to power a carpet washer, a saw mill, grind wheat, pound woollen fibre to make cloth and to supply water for the village needs.
We watched the bagpipe maker construct his Bulgarian bagpipes from goat skins he had tanned and were drying in the sun. Near him was the knife maker with his glistening blades fitted into deer antlers and goat horns. Across the road was a leather maker with a display of belts and handbags.
From the village we climbed to Shipka Pass (about 1326m above sea level) where we visited the Freedom Monument from the battle in 1880 where the Bulgarians and the Russians defeated the Turks. We walked along the top of the rocky ridge where George said the Bulgarians and the Russians ran out of ammunition and rocks to throw so they threw the dead bodies onto the Turks below them. 200,000 people were killed and many bones from that time are buried beneath the monument.
In the distance on another ridge top was an enormous building that looked like a spaceship on a wide base. We headed across there and it was the Creators of Bulgarian State Monument which means it was the headquarters for the Communist party, built in 1981 to commemorate Bulgaria's 1300th birthday. When it was used for party meetings there was not enough electricity to power the village below as well as the building with its huge red star on top so the village had no power for as long as the meetings lasted. The members were helicoptered in from all over the country.
Now the building is a ruin. The Gypsies took all the metal they could from the roof, and ceilings and sold it. People who hated the communists have vandalised the beautiful mosaic work inside the main hall. It would have been a magnificent place with its red carpet and huge tiered meeting hall. Now the rain drives in and more people take bits from the mosaics.
One of these 3 leaders had his face chipped off.
We drove along through the plains and through the Valley of Roses. There were several conical shaped mounds that George said were Thracian tombs. We visited the tomb of King Seuthes 111, discovered in 2004, but it had closed early so we could only look through the glass front and read the information on the walls. The mask, from the 5th century, is a replica of one found at the foot of the tomb.The Thracians moved here in the 4th millenium BC.
The next stop was the Shipka Monastery where we visited a Russian Orthodox Church built by the Russians to thank the Bulgarians for their support in the war against the Turks. The gold coloured domes glistened in the setting sun and looked spectacular against a conifer background.
The Cyrillic alphabet was invented by a Bulgarian monk and luckily I did a class in Russian before we left NZ because we have had to read this alphabet in many East European countries.
We rolled into Plovdiv after a great tour with George, and Tara, Jana and the two of us shared a 4 bed dormitory in a guest house near the main walking street.
