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March 1998: Sofia, the chestnut city

Sofia was sleeping quietly on a Sunday afternoon when I arrived in late March. My hotel looked onto Vitosha Mountain, which is one of the most dramatic backcloths of any capital city in the world. Swathed in woods on its foothills, it rises up to 8000 feet, its snow-covered ridge filling the horizon to the West of the city. Clouds were swirling over the tops and great rays of sunlight beamed down through the gaps in the clouds, picking out the shepherds and goatherds grazing their flocks on Sofia's suburban scrublands.

Efrem had met me at the airport and we now sat down together to finalise our plans. Our conversation was punctuated by the raucous industry of a large magpie, which was busily building a nest in the tree outside the coffee room. We agreed to devote a day to getting organised in Sofia and planned to leave on the Tuesday morning. Efrem's taxi had been a pleasant surprise, clean with a confident purr. Lada or no Lada, it was my passport to the monasteries.

Bulgaria's monasteries are deeply intertwined with Bulgarian history. As one guidebook says: "Ever since they came into existence, monasteries were something more than just ecclesiastical formations or sheltered places for escaping from worldly life and for religious ecstasy". The establishment of Christianity in Bulgaria during the 9th century was the establishment of Bulgaria herself as a nation. A whole culture was forged behind the monastery walls, so strong that it survived five centuries of cruel foreign rule under the Ottoman Turks.

As Jasper Moore wrote: "The Bulgarian Church has for four hundred years, without external sympathy, made a stand for the religion of Christ, amidst unknown persecutions and martyrdoms incidental to the hostility of the conquering fanatical race around them"

Not just the Turks were beastly to the Bulgarians. In 1014, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II defeated Tsar Samuel's army at the battle of Strumitza River in what is today Macedonia. The Emperor ordered ninety-nine out of every hundred prisoners to be blinded, leaving the hundredth with one eye to guide them back. The appalling sight of this pathetic army of 15,000 blind, miserable wretches staggering back gave Samuel apoplexy and he was dead within two days.

Starting with their struggle to establish the Slavic script, then their role as fortresses against Byzantine rule and ending with their valiant resistance in the wars of liberation – ten were reduced to piles of ashes – the story of the monasteries is the story of Bulgaria. They became centres of learning and of the arts, totally embedded in the national conscience.

By Monday morning, Sofia had woken up and was full of that Balkan bussle which gives it such character. It is a small and intimate place; one often passes the same faces in the street after a day of walking about. Boulevards lined with chestnut trees lead off into small garden squares where old men and families sit and bask in the spring sun. It was a glorious day without a cloud in the sky, the flower stalls incandescent with brightly coloured roses, chrysthaneums and carnations.

Efrem dropped me off at the bank where, after interminable queuing, in exchange for eight traveler's cheques, I was presented with such an enormous pile of notes that I virtually needed a wheelbarrow.

"Have you got any larger denominations, like 50,000 notes, please?" I asked politely.
"Not on my till"
"Well, could you try another till?"
"No, only possible my till"
"Is this a bank?"
"It is the biggest bank in Bulgaria"
"With no 50,000 lev notes?"
"Only me does not have these notes"

I gave up feebly and stuffed every pocket on my person with rolls of greasy notes, hoping that I would merely look fat to any passing mugger.

Right in the middle of the city is the Cathedral of Sveta Nedelya, which is the landmark from which all directions are given. On a dreadful day in 1925 – April 26th – it was packed with worshippers when an enormous bomb went off in the roof. The target of this atrocity was King Boris 111; he walked out shaken but unscathed. Over 120 others were killed. The plaque on the wall outside the main entrance refers to certain communists as being responsible for " this act of terrorism which took the lives of numerous innocent people". Matins was in progress as I entered the dark candlelit knave with the responses sung by an invisible choir of trebles, which had the effect of an angelic host singing from behind a black cloud.

Incidentally, someone got Boris in the end. He was the last European monarch to have supposedly been poisoned, a truly Byzantine death.

From the Cathedral it is a short walk to the National Library where I was booked in to do some last minute research. The road passes by the Russian Church of Saint Nicholas, now part of the Moscow Patriarchy. Its octagonal shape is roofed with blue and green tiles, splashed with purple, which contrasts dramatically with its golden cupola. A few hundred yards away is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, also Russian built, and the two sets of cupolas were competing as to who could sparkle most brightly in the blazing spring sunshine.

When the Saxe-Coburgs arrived in Sofia in 1887 as the new monarchy, they built themselves the requisite Royal Palace, which now houses the National Art Collection and the Ethnographic Museum. The Museum has an excellent shop where I picked up a handbook on the monasteries. Pausing in the park by the University, I listened to a piper and an accompanying drummer play some folk tunes. The bagpipes were simpler that their Scottish cousins, having only a chanter and one pipe attached to a large sheep's bladder. There was something so universal about his music, sounds of India mixed with Middle Eastern dance music and Celtic laments.

For visiting art lovers, the Union of Bulgarian Artists behind the University of St Cyril and St Methodius is always full of surprises. Last time I was there, they had an exhibition of a pre war cartoonist who signed himself FUCK in capital letters. With the bullyboy tactics of the local fascists and random mayhem by the communists, it must have been an apt sign off at the time. On this occasion, all four floors were devoted to paintings by contemporary Bulgarian artists. I admired a self-portrait by Marina Kuseva, a striking blond with twinkling eyes and a self-deprecatory sense of humour wearing a garland of autumn leaves in her hair.

With my last minute research completed – and well worth it since I discovered a spectacular monastery not on my original itinerary – Efrem drove me to the tiny church of St. Panteleimon in Boyana, perched on the slopes of Mount Vitosha. Begun in 11th century, its frescoes stem from 1259, making it one of the best-preserved examples of Eastern European medieval art. "Closed till April" read the sign on the gate. It was not a good start but fortunately I had been there before on a previous visit. It has a wonderful fresco of the donors, Kaleyan and his wife Dessislava, dressed in the richly ornamented robes of the nobility of the 13th century. Their long fur coats and gold embroidered gowns advertise an era of great prosperity.

The church also has portraits of the Bulgarian King, Konstantin Assen the Quiet (1257-1277) and his wife Ofrina which are the only surviving images of Bulgarian rulers of that time. Poor Konstantin had a lot to be quiet about. He lost Macedonia to the Byzantines, sat it out through various Tartar invasions and eventually was "forcibly dethroned" by the peasant Tsar Ivailo

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