Bulgaria
- Karen Darnell
- Jun 7, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 7, 2020
Ancient freedom fighters, vampire graves, and Iron Curtain drama aren’t the only options for virtual travel to Bulgaria. We can also travel to Bulgaria while staying at home through their literature, movies, and art.
Thracian Warriors
When I get the chance to go to Bulgaria, I will make sure to go to The Valley of the Thracian Kings. This link not only includes an article about it, but also pictures and a virtual tour of the museum: https://www.rosefestivalkazanlak.com/valley-thracian-kings-bulgarian-heritage/
The Thracians were ancient inhabitants of Bulgaria first mentioned in Homer’s Iliad. A captured Trojan betrays them to Ulysses and Diomed, allowing the Thracians to be slaughtered in their sleep to prevent their support of their Trojan allies. They have the finest and strongest horses, a chariot of silver and gold, and marvelous golden armor “of the rarest workmanship—too splendid for any mortal man to carry, and meet only for the gods.” Although you can read the Iliad free online through Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2199/2199-h/2199-h.htm, it’s probably not worth it to represent Bulgaria for the four paragraphs on the Thracians in Book X.
For more information on the Thracians, if you are willing to read English subtitles and click past all the ads, this YouTube video discusses these ancient inhabitants of Bulgaria and its northern neighbor Romania: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxjwMKqkeAM
The Thracian easiest to find in history and legend is Spartacus. Of the many, many Spartacus stories out there, I chose two. Kirk Douglas’ version of Spartacus in the 1960 movie surprised me. I had never considered watching it before because I assumed it was a gladiator movie. Instead I see scenes here that remind me of The Hunger Games series. It’s not so much about being a gladiator as about knowing what oppression is and how to stand against it. Yes, it is a 1960s version and, oh my goodness, it’s three hours long! If you want a shorter version and one more factual to history, The Real Spartacus is available on Amazon Prime and shows the Italian countryside where Spartacus fought.
Vampire Graves
Vampire graves, those where the buried have stakes through the heart, can be visited by tourists to Bulgaria. But the vampires of western literature have little in common with the dirty, bloated, zombie-like creatures that the past inhabitants of Bulgaria felt needed to be nailed to their graves to keep them down. If you want a more western style vampire story, Elizabeth Kostova’s novel The Shadow Land is available through Overdrive, Kindle, Audible, Audio CD, and paperback. Of the many, many vampire stories available, this is the only one I know with vampires from Bulgaria, but this is not my area of expertise. Someone could correct me.
The Struggle Under Communism
Bulgaria was invaded by Soviet forces in October, 1944. I read the introductory section and the chapter on Bulgaria in Daughters of the KGB by Douglas Boyd (I found it on Overdrive from the San Bernardino County Library). Communism was hard on Bulgaria. The book Tortured for His Faith by Haralan Popov is one of the better known testimonials that came out of Bulgaria at that time. Popov founded Door of Hope International with the purpose “to strengthen and build Christianity in countries where persecution and intolerance to Christianity exists and to raise awareness of the plight of persecuted and imprisoned Christians.” http://www.dohi.org/
More Literature, Movies, and Art
Other easily available literature by Bulgarian writers includes Street Without a Name by Kapka Kassabova (Audible, Kindle, hardcover, paperback), Is There Anybody to Love You? by Kalin Terziyski (paperback, this collection of stories won the European Union Prize for Literature), and The Tongue Set Free by Elias Canetti, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1981.
I wasn’t able to find the movie Levski, but I want to learn more about Bulgaria’s national hero, so I’ll keep an eye out for it in the future. Of the movies I found, my favorite was Losers. It reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite, so only watch it if you like that genre of movie and you are willing to read subtitles at the same time. If you want a movie in English that will get you close to Bulgaria, the protagonist in the movie The Terminal is from a fictional country, but Tom Hanks modeled him on Hanks’ Bulgarian father-in-law.
According to my mother, I’m saving the best for last as there are several virtual museum tours available in Sofia, Bulgaria and clicking around to see the art is her favorite part. Thanks to https://madamebulgaria.com/virtual-museum-tours-sofia-bulgaria/ I found the following five museums.
Bulgaria’s National History Museum – Were the gold items Thracian? I don’t know. Who is in the pictures? I can’t read Bulgarian and can’t even try to decipher anything with Cyrillic letters, but the instructions for clicking around are in English so I was able to find some things that interested me.
National Art Gallery – Nice! They kindly put the whole webpage in English with lots of explanations of what I am seeing.
Regional Historical Museum – this webpage doesn’t start out in English, but find the EN button near the upper right hand side of the screen and it switches over. I found the items most interesting to me by clicking on News and then scrolling to the bottom and clicking page by page through the news items.
National Museum of Natural History – this one works by clicking on a picture, then moving around the room shown by the arrows at the bottom of the picture. You can see explanations by clicking anything in a red box.
Earth and Man National Museum – this is a ten minute YouTube video.
Besides the five museums above, I also found information on Christo, a famous Bulgarian artist known for outdoor installations. This webpage has a bio and information on his major works: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/christo/
There is plenty to do in Bulgaria. They have eight galleries on TheCrazyTourist! https://www.thecrazytourist.com/?s=bulgaria. When this pandemic is over and the international borders are open, you might want to plan travel to any of these locations in Bulgaria using your local travel advisor. Shout out to my favorite travel advisor, Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive - may we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Bulgaria and throughout the world.
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