Pleasant Days in Plovdiv

Monday, June 25, 2007

Plovdiv was a lovely little town, far more user friendly than Sofia. The second largest city in Bulgaria at just under 400,000 people, it did not have Sofia’s display of wealth but nor did it have Sofia’s undercurrent of oppression. Not really oppression in the normal sense, but the simmering resentment beneath the surface by many who liked the responsibilities that communism lifted from the shoulders of man, even at the cost of their freedom, and resented having to pick up the yolk of simple everyday responsibilities once tended to by the government.

While the center of Sofia is beautiful – shiny bright with grand architecture and the gleaming yellow brick road that glistens in the sunlight, the city beyond the tiny nut of a center is a different picture entirely. Block houses line the busy thoroughfares or sit in clusters on side streets in a terrible state of disrepair. The city prides itself on the fact that there is little tenancy. Most people actually own their space in the communist concrete blocks spread from end to end of the city. But there are no condominium laws, no arrangements made for maintenance of the common areas, no specifications for building management. Where arrangements are made, there is no procedure in place to enforce them. Elevators are in various states of disrepair, paint is peeling everywhere, plaster chunks missing, buildings are cracked, nothing is clean, and trash lays in piles on the ground where residents have simply thrown it out their window rather than carrying it to a trash receptacle.

The principle of “someone else’s problem” thrives in Sofia and will, unfortunately, hold the city back from much of the economic potential it has as the country opens to the world via the European Union. Then again, I guess all cultures have their Achilles Heel when it comes to leaving a mess to others. Americans don’t throw trash out the window of their homes, but most sure don’t think for a second about the millions of individual plastic containers, cups, cans, bottles and silverware they add to Mother Earth everyday; much less the air that is continuously destroyed so we can keep up with our solo SUVs and shiny consumerism.

Plovdiv had its share of buildings in disrepair, particularly at the outskirts of town, but all in all the neighborhoods around the center felt more like the lovingly worn neighborhoods of Italy than the almost resentful disregard of Sofia neighborhoods. Rather than the pristine, pompous perfection of Sofia’s center town, Plovdiv had a simple, clean pedestrian walkway lined with pastel-painted shops, sprinkled with benches and trees, and punctuated by art sculptured fountains and squares. The mile or so long walkway is flanked at one end by the verdant, overflowing King Simeon’s Garden and at the other by the remains of the old Roman Stadium sitting aside the Jumaia Mosque built in the 15^th century after the Turks took over. At the mosque, the road turns and carries the avid walker up into the cobble-stoned streets of Old Town.

I walked the old town many times in my few days there, always barefoot in memory of my first stroll along the stones with Ralitza by my side. Ralitza and her husband Orlin hosted me in Sofia with their little boys Vladimir and Angel. Whatever ugliness lay in the city streets was more than made up for by the beauty in their home and the love and friendship they so graciously shared with me. Ralitza could not have become any closer to me as a sister in heart than when she leaned over to take her shoes off and walk the Plovdiv streets barefooted. For the years I lived in Charlotte, patrons of the local Starbucks always knew when spring arrived, not for the flowers on the trees, but because Sherry stopped wearing shoes. I have always loved the feeling of bare ground against my feet, be it grass or dirt, sand, cobblestones, or even concrete, but rarely do I meet others who will share that joy with me. One of my most treasured memories in life will be walking the cool cobble stones of Plovdiv, barefooted, sharing the gypsy spirit with the beautiful woman by my side, surrounded by the little family that came to be like my own in my too-short days with them. After Ralitza and Orlin returned to Sofia, I continued to walk the streets barefooted, alone, but always with Ralitza by my side in spirit.

Scaling the hill again and again, I would marvel at the Roman Amphitheatre that sits on a perch high above the town with a stunning sunset view of the valley below and surrounding hills. My children laugh at me that I am so taken with the concept of “old things” that are still here with us. They told me years later how on our trip to Italy when they were teenagers they used to stand behind me and silently mimic me – “Imagine! This painting was painted 500 years ago!” Or, “This building has been standing here 1,000 years! Can you believe!?” They would have really laughed at me as I stood, mouth agape, looking down on the Roman amphitheatre built around 115 AD. It is one of the best preserved and one of only a few still working amphitheatres in Europe. Imagine! Almost 2,000 years of performances!

They were performing an opera the first night I was there. I was enraptured, not just by the opera, but by the antiquity and modernity of it all, living side by side. The electrical wires of the lights and sound systems snaking their way across stones laid thousands of years ago, shining a brightness the Romans could not have imagined, filling the world with sound so rich they would have thought only the muses themselves could be singing. The second day I was there, it was too hot to move. I chose a table at the café above the amphitheatre and spent the day writing, glorying in the beauty of what was, and is.

A little research made me appreciate this little, seemingly unpretentious, town all the more. According to Lucian the Greek, Plovdiv was the largest and most beautiful town in all of Thrace. Remember the “Thracians” from your Greek and Roman mythology or history course? The Plovdivians of today were the Thracians of yesteryear. Plovdiv was a contemporary city of Troy, mentioned by both Homer and Herodotus. It was built upon one of three hills that made a triangle in the Valley of Thrace, and its people, the Thracians, are considered the oldest population on the Balkans. In 342 BC, Phillip II conquered the settlement, surrounded it with walls, and called it Philippopolis, the city of Phillip. The Romans recognized its strategic value, given its location, and spent two centuries trying to conquer it. In 72 BC they succeeded, changing the name to Trimontium. Over the centuries that followed, Trimontium became the center of the Roman Province of Thrace. The city had a golden age during the second and third centuries. It earned the right to collect taxes and mint coins. Roads were built giving it an enviable access infrastructure that would continue through modern day. The city was adorned with lavish buildings, public baths, not one but two amphitheatres, stadiums and all the accoutrements of a thriving Roman center, including an impressive aqueduct system, all of which contributed to make it a world centre for the Sacred Games.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire, it became part of Byzantium and was completely rebuilt by Emperor Justinian the Great. The Slavs settled there in the middle of the sixth century, changing the ethnic image of the region, and adopting the name Pulpudeva, which eventually became Plovdiv. After the establishment of the First Bulgarian Kingdom, Plovdiv became a border city of exceptional importance in the struggle between Byzantium and young Bulgaria. Passed back and forth several times, it was officially included in Bulgaria in 834.

Plovdiv was located on the main military route on the Balkan Peninsula and was one of the stops on the way of the crusaders. During the 14^th century the Turks invaded, making Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and, in 1364, seized Plovdiv. The mosque next to the Roman Stadium at the end of the pedestrian walkway was the first sign of distinct Ottoman type planning. The Turks ruled Plovdiv, as they did all of Bulgaria, until the Russians helped to free the country from Turk rule at the end of the 19^th century. Today, lovely stone-foundationed, wooden-overhang houses built during the Bulgarian Revival press the cobblestone streets, creating a delightful dance of architectural history spanning more than 2,000 years.

Interestingly, it continues to be Plovdiv’s location, those good old Roman roads, that make it a city of prime importance today. It will soon be the intersection point of a major new highway system that will link Bulgaria with its neighbors Turkey and Greece. With several schools and universities, the town is filled with the vibrancy of youth. Saturday night thousands of teenagers and young adults turned out for the Preslava concert at the beer festival. They stood on the benches stomping their feet and singing in time with the pop-folk singer. Her music was actually quite good – an interesting mix of American pop influences with a Turkish sounding rhythm sung in, of course, Bulgarian. One of the lovely girls who worked at the Hikers Hostel, which is, by the way, one of the best hostels I’ve ever stayed at, was kind enough to burn a CD of Preslava’s music for me and I have been listening to it ever since.

One of Plovdiv’s sights that you won’t find mentioned in the guidebooks would be its eye-candy. Yes, I’m talking girls. Apparently the city has outlawed fat cells and passed some legislation requiring that all women dress as if they are going to the disco. I have never seen a larger collection of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition bodies in one place in my life; all scantily clad, and all parading the streets in heels, little skirts flipping back and forth with a Shakira-style hook of the hips. I don’t know how men even concentrate. Standing out on my balcony at 8am Monday morning, I watched a striking blonde prance down the street. She was wearing stiletto white heels, a backless white dress that plunged in the front to her navel with one of those undercut skirts popular today bouncing so high as it swung back and forth you could almost make out the ‘smile’ that separated her butt cheeks from her thighs. I guess she was on her way to work at a dentist’s office, dressed in white as she was. I’ve truly never seen anything like it. The entire town is a catwalk.

My days in Plovdiv were pleasant and meandering. Sunday I spent just hanging out with Emma and Mark, other travelers I had met at the hostel. I rarely have “hang out” days while traveling but I happily set aside the guilt that follows me if I am not either writing or exploring and just enjoyed their company, splitting delectable ice-cream desserts that could feed an army, drinking beers and eating cold chips at the concert, guessing which Cyrillic entry on the menu matched which picture of food, and chatting about life and travel and, of course, Couchsurfing. They both signed up profiles in our days together and are hopefully on their way now to amazing new couchsurfing experiences like mine with Orlin and Ralitza.

My last night in Plovdiv, I climbed to the top of the Hill of the Liberators. The local girl at the hostel had explained to me that it was tradition every year after secondary school graduation, and a night of drinking and dancing at the discos, to climb the hill in the morning to watch the sunrise. She laughed, recounting how many people passed out on the side of the hill, never making it to the top. The hill was blessedly abandoned the night I climbed it, though I kept imagining the trees rustling with the sound of drunken laughter and the paths strewn with passed out adolescents celebrating their single moment at the top of the hill of life before plunging down to find their path into the future.

It was an apropos ending, standing upon the hill looking out on the city below, layered with the passage of time, in the place where the young look forward into tomorrow. Time rolls on, as must I….

Comments

[Albert]

Hey, you!
You didn't say goodbye!

I'm going to Iceland next month. Then maybe Finland. From there I'll stop over in England before going back to the States.

Albert

[Sherry]

Actually, your perception is probably a result of the spin in OUR history books against Russia. EVERY Bulgarian I spoke with about their history viewed it as Russia helping them to overthrow the Ottoman rule and most seemed to view it as a favorable thing even if communism itself later created issues.

[Jerry]

An interesting piece, but there is an historical inaccuracy (probably a result of the traditions of soviet domination of the history books). The Russians most certainly did not seek to liberate the balkans (including Bulgaria) from the (then) declining Ottoman empire in the latter part of the 19th century. Rather, the goal of the Russo-Turk (Ottoman) war was to gain access to the Mediterrean by the Russians (i.e. one empire to another). The "Great Powers" ultimately intervened.
jsg