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March 1998: South to the Border

Now it was time to travel south to the border with Greece where the Rozen Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin is located. The road passed through Blagoevgrad, a sprawling modern town, and followed the mighty Struma River south. To the East, the towering peaks of Pirin straddled the horizon with Vihren, the highest at nearly 10,000 ft, capped with a bonnet of snow. Soon, the river entered a twisting narrow limestone gorge where it quickened its pace like a mountain torrent before entering an expansive plain when it resumed its sedate journey to the sea.

The land here is rich but there was not a tractor in sight; just stables of small horses and donkeys. The first cypresses appeared on the road, hinting at warmer Mediterranean climes. Vineyards and pink almond trees were dotted across the landscape. We stopped and asked the way to Melnik from a shepherd with a shotgun strapped across his back, fierce but most friendly. Crossing a strange lunar landscape riven with deep sandstone gullies, the road became more and more desolate. Soon, it dipped down and entered one of the gullies; pale gold sandstone sculptures, neatly formed by centuries of erosion, reared up on each side.

Rozen lies just beyond the village of Melnik, famous for its role in the tobacco and wine trades in 17th and 18th centuries. It is hard to believe today that this town, the smallest in Bulgaria, once had a population of 17,000 and no less than 74 churches. One guidebook I read informed me that "there are impressive houses including one whose owner may invite you into his cellar, where his own red wine is an alternative to that sold at the cosy bar by the huge plane tree in the town centre". No such luck for us!

The monastery is perched alone on a small plateau, a dramatic and wild setting. The sign outside the walls reads No Smoking, No Videos, No Cameras and No Fires. It was hard to disagree with any of these instructions but the No Camera was a blow. Spotting a tall, tanned monk in the garden, we asked if he would waive the rule.

Dressed in a long flowing purple cloak, he replied:
"I am the Abbot and what I say goes round here. Of course you may take as many pictures as you wish – for you have asked the right person!"

The 16th century monastery is built around a four-sided courtyard or it could be described as three sided since the south wall curves in the middle. It is a perfect model of a small working monastery with space for animals and storerooms for wine and other agricultural products. The Church is hemmed in by the cloisters and offices with only about ten yards between it and the outside walls.

Rozen escaped the attention of the National Revival artists so its frescoes are all from before the nineteenth century – the Christ Pantocrator above the entrance gate is dated 1597. Particularly fine paintings are Jacobs's Ladder (1611) on the south wall – a clutch of aspirants are falling off it to an appalling fate of being devoured by a livid orange sea monster; a strange three-headed lady; and an old man whose beard appears to turn into his body. The little chapel of St Cosma and St Damian has a superb Virgin Eleusa. An interesting feature of the Church is the red and black design around the base of the walls and in the doorways – it uncannily akin to William Morris and his imitators.

Wandering round the wooden cloisters, it was easy to get an impression of what life must have been like before the monastery was abandoned. A bustling farm with cows, sheep, goats; plotting parishioners, winemaking and haymaking, and a busy church for there was space for maybe 50 monks round the long wooden refectory table.

As in most of the remoter monasteries, Rozen had a history of succouring the revolutionaries under Ottoman rule. Next to the church which lies just outside the monastery walls is buried the legendary Bulgarian freedom fighter, Yane Sandanski. A clump of trees surround his grave, watching over it like sentries.
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Across the valley from Melnik is the town of Petrich and about 10 kilometres out on the Sofia road, is the Church of Vanga. Hers is an extraordinary story. Aged 11, she lost her sight in a storm when she was flung to the ground by a violent gust of wind. From that moment onwards she had the gift of being able " to see beyond" and became an acknowledged clairvoyant. The last 27 years of her life she spent at Rupite, a place where she found she could recharge her psychic energy. She died in 1996 aged 85. Her last project was to build a small modern church next door to her modest cottage. It is a traditonal cruciform structure with modern murals on the front face and on the iconastasis. It is a peaceful, quiet place except for six very raucous guinea fowl who have appointed themselves church wardens. On the door of the church is the simple inscription: "She was given to you as a gift of God"

From Rupite, we retraced our steps, through roadside towns of endless sausage stalls and then turned off the Sofia Road towards Bansko. The drive through the beech and spruce forests of Vihren National Park with the peaks of the Pirin range watching over us was gloriously scenic. Bansko, according to its brochure, is "a unique town of great importance to world tourism due to the atmosphere of Bulgarian renaissance in its houses, the favourable mountain influence on people's health and the good range of modern facilities". Don't be put off! Bansko is a charming combination of a modern ski resort and Balkan mountain-farming town. Outside my hotel, I was nearly run over a herd of 200 goats driven by a jet-black Tsigane goatherd and then engaged from behind by two large cows with no one in charge of them. An old man sat on the corner, feeding his two goats out of his hat. Most gardens in the town had a donkey grazing in them. The skiing I was assured was super.

The Bulgarian way of mourning is in evidence in all towns and villages. When a death occurs in a house, a large black ribbon is tied to the wall where it remains, often turning grey over the months. Posters of photographs of the deceased are then stuck up in public places – bus stops, walls, and doorways –and there seems to be a strict timetable. Some are marked 40 days, others a year, and some ten years. Wherever one turns, one is reminded of death but in the context of 'life goes on'.

Bansko had a reputation for being hot bed of opposition to Ottoman rule. The 19th century monk, Paissi of Hilandar, was born here and his "History of Bulgaria" did much to fan the flames of nationalism. The houses are rumoured to have hiding places made of stone blocks reached only through the upper floors via narrow corridors. Small doors, almost invisible, lead in to the next door house. Both the outside walls and hiding places had embrasures targeted onto the entrances to the house and yard. There was a splendid picture in the hotel of a group of Bansko men circa 1910; all wore warlike moustaches and glowered with a threatening arrogance at the camera, Turkish fezes and fancy waistcoats giving them an air of prosperity.

Leaving early the next morning, my long-standing fear came true: Breakdown! We were in the middle of the Rhodope Mountains, on the edge of a forest of oak and hornbeam, when the Lada's distributor went. After much tinkering under the bonnet, Efrem pronounced that it was fatalino and our only hope was to find a new one. So the last I saw of him was hitching a ride on a horse and cart and giving me the thumbs up with a cheery smile as he disappeared round the corner, shouting 'Nyama problemi' .

Now was a golden opportunity to study the farmers as they worked in the fields. The majority of labour was provided by sturdy middle aged women, their hair tucked into neat kerchiefs as they broke up the clods of thick earth with heavy hoes. Grannies were also much in evidence for there is no retirement in the countryside. Small children were out helping as it was the school holidays. The men appeared to have the best job, driving the horses and carts. At this time of year, the main task was muck spreading and burning up the debris of winter. It looked backbreaking work; a style of farming that has hardly changed over the centuries. Their silent routine was punctuated with the occasional sound of a hawfinch cracking a hornbeam nut and chaffinches flying noisily about.

I was getting distinctly edgy at the non-appearance of Efrem. What was an anglichanin doing in the middle of nowhere in Bulgaria in a broken down Sofia taxi? It was a relief to see him hurtling towards me in a car driven by the most enormous Bulgarian 'body-builder', gleefully waving a new distributor out of the window. We exchanged news in our mutually appalling German and, hey presto, after five minutes of frantic activity with spanners and screwdrivers, the Lada burst into life and we set off for Plovdiv. Many of the villages we now passed had mosques, the practice of Islam being inherited by the villagers from Ottoman occupation for these were Bulgarian, not ethnic Turkish people.

We took the road from Jundola to Belovo, which ran through a steep wooded rocky canyon, home of firecrests with their high-pitched song and noisy crossbills feeding on pinecones, as it followed the River Jadenica. These woodlands harbour brown bears, wolves and wild boar. A pair of golden orioles swooped in front of us. Not a journey to be undertaken by those suffering from car sickness – there must have been over 500 precipitous bends but the wild and craggy countryside compensated, conjuring up tales of Rhodope brigands and fierce mountain men. The contrast when one hits the Marica plain is extreme; it is like arriving in Lombardy from the Alps in the space of an hour. All around was a flat endless landscape of fertile fields and grazing sheep. The latter have no idea of the highway code nor do their shepherds, so great anticipation is required to avoid a premature Sunday roast leg of lamb.

Yet our journey had been but nothing compared to that experienced by Jasper Moore 120 years ago. Taking two extracts from his book, the first covers his journey to Batak, the scene of some of the worst massacres of the 1875 uprising. Setting out on horseback, the party found " it difficult to estimate the height of the cliffs on either side of the track, as their summits were enveloped in mists and clouds, but they could not have been in some places less than from 1000 to 2000 feet almost perpendicular. For wild, rugged grandeur, this gorge equalled in scenic effect and picturesqueness anything we had seen before. The track was often a mere ledge, scarped out of the verge of precipitate crags, whilst at other times it was over and amongst the large boulders in the riverbed". It took them seven hours to travel five miles.

Not deterred , the party set off again in November to Panagurishte. He notes " not only were the vehicles, brought with us for conveying our stores and other baggage, deeply and firmly rooted in muddy quagmires or in the bed of the numerous flooded rivers we had to ford, and from which they were with difficulty extricated, but in descending the steep banks one deep rut was so much lower that the other that it required all the available force of a number of peasants who accompanied us, some heaving against the under while others counterbalance the upper side , to prevent an upset, which in spite of all efforts would nevertheless occur." Drawing breath to congratulate himself on what must be one of the longest sentences ever written in the English language, Moore continued that 'the drenching rains then gave way to driving snowstorms of sleet'.

There is a painting by Veshin in the National Art Gallery in Sofia which depicts three smugglers on heavily ladened horses making their way along a perilous path in the high Balkans. Two of the three are looking nervously down at the sheer drop below them. It catches the mood of excitement and fear which travellers must have experienced in equal doses before the arrival of roads. Despite its mechanical lapse that day, I was happy to stick with the Lada!

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