Day 55: Sofia and it’s Past, featuring a Guest Writer

Today is our second day in Bulgaria, and we wanted to know more about it’s past. We took our time getting up in the morning and meandered on down to the Bulgarian Army Museum. The walk was a little farther than we had walked the day before, and it allowed us to see more of the residential side of Sofia. We were still surprised at the amount of stray animals that wander the streets, and when you stop to look at them, they will come up to you expecting a hand out. It was a little creepy.

Anyway, we made it to the museum without any major incident, and when we got there I was actually a little in awe of the veritable military machine graveyard that greeted us. Tanks, trucks, planes, amphibious vehicles, guns, canons, missiles, mines… it was all there. Just sitting there, like they were parked years ago and just left there… When we got to the inner courtyard, we found the much nicer machinery. It was being kept up very well, and there were information plaques there to tell viewers about each piece.

Inside the museum, we followed the military history of Bulgaria, which served as a basic whats-what on how the country became what it is today. Bulgaria has a rich history of war. They’ve fought with pretty much everyone from themselves as tribe back in 600’s AD, the Byzantines in the 1000’s, the Greeks, the Servians and the Hungarians in the 1200’s, the Ottomans between the 14th and 19th centuries, First (1912) and Second (1913) Balkan Wars, and sided with the Central Powers, and later the Axis Powers, during the two World Wars. Although allied with Germany during World War II, Bulgaria never declared war on Russia, although Russia took them over after WWII.

I guess I feel like that’s a lot of war for one country… maybe I’m just biased because I’m from Canada and we’ve had very little internal war there. I found it all quite interesting, however, since I didn’t really know much about Bulgaria as a country until now. I mean, we learn about English and French history because it’s a part of Canadian heritage, and enough about Italy, Spain, Scotland and Ireland because of their relationships with those countries, but Bulgaria? Not really. It was a great museum, with a lot of information in both Bulgarian and English. It was definitely worth the time.



Now I have a special guest section written by Rob. I figured he was more interested in this next section than I was, so he should write it:

“After visiting the military museum, we made our way to the Serdika Centre, one of the newest and largest shopping Malls in Sofia. In many ways, it could have been the Eatons Centre or Yorkdale; the brands were the same, the fast food was the same, even many of the stores were the same. What wasn’t the same was the special F1 exhibition going on at the mall, until October 3rd. We had seen posters, advertisements, even large billboards around the city showing some kind of racing car, and mentioning this Mall. I googled it last night, and discovered that they had brought some special Formula 1 cars into the mall for display. Of course, we didn’t know exactly what cars were there, but highlights included

• 2010 Sauber F1Car, driven by Pedro De La Rosa
• 1995 Beneton B195, driven by World Champion Michael Schumacher
• 2002 Jaguar R3, driven by Eddie Irvine
• 2001 Williams FW23, driven by Ralf Schumacher
• 1998 Jordan GP 198, driven by Damon Hill



The absolute highlight, however, came from two pieces commemorating the career of Ayrton Senna. As you saw the colour scheme of the helmet, you knew exactly who it belonged to. Seeing the bag, with his name written on it, brought back the idea of his racing days. What came next was absolutely incredible, however. They had the 1986, Renault Engine, Turbo Powered, John Player Special Lotus 98T, driven by none other than Ayrton Senna. Of course, the black and gold colour scheme of the Lotus may be one of the most recognized in motorsports, and although the team (and Senna) didn’t do so well that season, there were questions about the legality of the car. It’s estimated that the car had between 1200 and 1300 BHP (that’s brake horsepower for you non gear-heads out there), and this is in the era before traction control and paddle shifts. You can read more about it at Wikipedia.“

Thanks Rob!

On our way back from the mall, Rob told me that we had missed a crucial part of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral when we were there yesterday. Apparently there is a crypt, and although it cost money, it was supposed to be quite worth it. Ok, so I was definitely interested! We arrived there and found the crypt entrance, and what we found down there was NOT what I had expected. I thought it was going to be some kind of shrine to a few notable dead people. I was expecting a dark, cramped corridor, air thick with incense, and candle light illuminating icons on the wall. I was right about the icons… but I was so wrong about everything else! It was bright, with white walls and bright lighting, and a beautiful collection of Byzantine-style icon art ranging the entire history of this form of art from various different churches. The collection showed me something about artistic styles that I’ve never really been struck by. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to find pictures of the art they had there, and photography is not allowed… I wish I could have taken some pictures because the style struck me as a wonderful modern style combining graphic shape and colours and lines with extremely stylized but wonderfully rendered faces and forms. The design and layout of some of these were marvelous, and I was VERY inspired to try my hand at a modern interpretation of this style. I found a few pictures on the internet, but not of the pieces I loved.



For dinner we finally found Pastorant, which was a little disappointing after all of the stress in trying to find the establishment in the first place. The woman who served us didn’t have very good English, which would have been fine if she had bothered to write down our orders… which she hadn’t. Our salads were tasty, and when our pasta’s arrived, I was looking forward to chowing down. I felt like something was off as I ate, however, and then realized that I had ordered something entirely different than what I had been served. I felt bad, but Rob insisted that I send it back and ask for the correct dish. After a little discussion with the server, she had the kitchen make me a new pasta and it was okay, but I had kind of lost my appetite by that point. I didn’t want to be the guest who sends back food, gets more food and then doesn’t eat it, so I polished it off as best I could and we beat a hasty retreat (after a small problem with the VISA payment methods). I don’t think they liked us very much, but that’s okay, it was kind of mutual.

Tomorrow we go to the legendary Rila Monastery. We’ve hired a tour guide so it should be grand!