Travel Guide - Bulgaria

30 November -0001

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In many ways, Bulgaria remains the unknown country of the Balkans. Less newsworthy than the former Yugoslavia, and less heavily touristed than neighbouring Greece and Turkey, it's a place that brings few distinct images to mind. Despite being the site of extensive Black Sea package resorts and the source of several good wines, it's all too often dismissed as the dour place it was before 1989, when it served as one of the Soviet Union's most loyal East European allies

As with many little-known destinations, however, there's a great deal to discover here: much of Bulgaria is like an open-air museum of Balkan culture, with beautifully decorated churches, fine mosques, wonderfully preserved rustic villages and a great deal of enduring folklore. The mountainous interior makes it one of the top hiking destinations of Europe, while over on the Black Sea coast, the white-sand beaches are just as magnificent in reality as they look in the tourist brochures.

Bulgarians are frustrated by their country's lack of a clearly defined image abroad. Heirs to one of Europe's great civilizations, and guardians of Balkan Christian traditions, they have a keen sense of national identity distilled by centuries of turbulent history. In a constantly repeating cycle of grandeur, decline and national rebirth, successive Bulgarian states have striven to dominate the Balkan peninsula before succumbing to defeat and foreign tutelage, only to be regenerated by patriotic resistance to outside control.

Bulgaria has a continental climate , with long, hot, dry summers and - in the interior at least - bitterly cold winters. July and August can be oppressively hot in the big cities, and a little crowded on the Black Sea coast - elsewhere, you won't have to worry about being swamped by fellow visitors. Using public transport is reasonably easy throughout the year, although the highest cross-mountain routes will be closed during the coldest months.

Bulgaria's most obvious urban attractions are Sofia , a set-piece capital city whose centre was laid out by successive regimes as an expression of political power; and the second city Plovdiv , home to what is arguably the finest collection of nineteenth-century architecture in the Balkans. Both are increasingly cosmopolitan places, offering a range of street cafés and nightlife opportunities in short supply elsewhere in the country. They each form important cultural centres, being well endowed with museums and galleries, and are good bases from which to visit the rest of the interior.

However, most foreign visitors still make a beeline for the Black Sea , formerly the summer playground of the entire Eastern bloc. That said, big purpose-built resorts like Sunny Beach and Golden Sands tend to be rather characterless and isolating: though package tours based at these resorts present a cheap and easy way of getting to Bulgaria, it's best to steer clear of them once you arrive. The main resort-city of Varna is the liveliest place along the coast, while small peninsula settlements like Nesebâr and Sozopol , though crowded in August, provide traditional fishing-village architecture as well as enticing stretches of sand. Indeed, beaches are on the whole magnificent, especially in the south, and private enterprise is more developed here than anywhere else in the country, ensuring a plentiful supply of private rooms and good seafood restaurants.

All visitors to Bulgaria require a full (not visitors') passport, although citizens of most Western countries no longer need a visa to enter the country. However, as the rules change every year, it's wise to check with a Bulgarian embassy or consulate, whatever your nationality.

Citizens of the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA are all allowed to enter the country for thirty days without a visa , while nationals of all EU countries (the UK and Ireland excepted) can remain in Bulgaria visa-free for ninety days. Once this period expires, you either have to leave Bulgaria, or apply for an extension visa at the local police station ( politseiski uchastâk , or Ministerstvo na vâtreshni raboti - MVR, The latter process involves lots of queuing, paperwork, misunderstandings (people in police stations rarely speak English) and a US$50 dollar fee. It's much easier to head for the nearest border post, leave Bulgaria for a few seconds (making sure that your passport is date-stamped on the way out) and walk back across the frontier again, thereby qualifying for another thirty or ninety days. Border guards are so used to seeing foreigners do this that they're unlikely to bat an eyelid.

Bulgaria is stuffed full of vegetable plots and orchards, and fresh fruit and vegetables are half the secret of Bulgarian food. In the villages, almost all the food comes straight from the land and is organic or free range, as few people can afford pesticides or chemical fertilizers. In the towns, however, 45 years of collectivized agriculture and catering have conspired to impose a certain conformity on restaurants, and the high quality and range of cooking you'll experience as a guest in a Bulgarian home is still rarely reflected in the country's eating establishments.

Private enterprise has vastly increased the number of places to drink , and all town centres now have a healthy sprinkling of kiosks serving coffee, soft drinks and basic snack food, usually with plastic chairs and tables on the adjoining pavement. Some of them serve beer, vodka, and other strong drinks, and stay open well after nightfall, but for the most part they're a daytime, fairweather phenomenon. A more traditional venue is the sladkarnitsa a Bulgarian version of the Central European café, many of which serve cakes as well as alcohol.

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