Stay long enough and you might start to like the place…

80 days, 2760 miles

With all my usual bicycling tactics proving useless in Bulgaria, I’ve developed a new playbook. My favorite new tactic: semi-abandoned roads. They show up on the map, but before the trip I was confused as to why google maps wouldn’t let me plot a route using them. In person, they do exist, and for all purposes they are open, with no signs to indicate otherwise. But they’ve been intentionally sabotaged, usually with a trench dug down the middle every 1000 feet or something.

It’s rather odd, Bulgaria doesn’t have many roads, so destroying roads is an interesting approach. With overgrown vegetation, and just a few cars, still managing to fly along at 60mph, I plodded along parallel to the main road.

The whole road network is rather dis-functional; along the abandoned road there are all these brand new overpasses across the railroad tracks, but they are not connected to anything, so you have to detour off the abandoned road and onto the abandoned road detour to go over the tracks, and then rejoin the abandoned road on the other side. It’s all absurd, but I was having a much more enjoyable ride.

Halfway between cities, the rural airport hanger was the lone accomodation in the area.

It had superior bicycle parking…

And first class linens!

The outskirts of Plovdiv is an ugly mess of half finished concrete towers and bizarre communist space-age monuments, and of course, an absolute traffic nightmare to bicycle through.

But central Plovdiv is a different story altogther, a pedestrian zone of 8000 years of layered history.

19th century houses incorporating 15th century walls, built on Roman stone blocks, under which are Thracian settlements on top of iron-age mounds.

Hills encircle the central town, a fortress on one hill, a clock tower on the next, a statue on another. It made for good walks in the evening.

The main shopping boulevard lies directly on top of the Roman stadium, such that you have to go into the department store and then down two flights of stairs to reach the level where they ran the 100-yard dash in antiquity.

The underground city is replete with remarkable mosiacs in churches and residences.

The main economic drivers in central Bulgaria seem to be crushing big rocks into tiny rocks, burning trash, and driving around junk cars that burn a quart of motor oil per mile. The net result is rural air quality that gives downtown Beijing a run for its money.

Coughing, I opted out of the valley and headed for higher ground; running from the Bulgarian capitalists…

Following the footsteps of the communists after their failed first attempt to overthrow the govertment in 1923. A near deserted villiage in the mountains, a forgotten memorial in the woods, it was a bit eerie, but it was quiet and rather scenic.

The WWII memorials to the Red army are more prominent, in every town square…

They all look rather the same, hopeless scenes of soliders in heavy trench coats solemnley heading towards their doom..

And then there was this monument, in the otherwise unremarkable town of Chirpan…it was full of motion, and hope! It really broke the mold, I don’t know how this got approved by the central committee?

Between Plovdiv and the lovely hills, I had started to take a real liking to Bulgaria. Well, like is such a strong word, but Bulgaria was definitly growing on me.

But, those feelings were fleeting, disappearing quickly every time I had to bicycle a stretch of the main road….oh that’s right, I remember why I hate Bulgaria! I’ll forever have dreams of a car overtaking a truck overtaking me while a truck heads right at all of us from the other direction….

But, that’s all in the past now, I don’t have to come back, and I can enjoy the final miles to the Sea.

And it was a spendid Sea, the Black Sea, on a splendid day, sunny and warm.

Circumventing Old Nessebar on foot was thoroughly enjoyable, so I took several laps, seeing a different medieval church on each loop.

It was a rough go at times, but Bulgaria at least managed to finish on a positive note.

Farewell Bulgaria!