Tourism in Bulgaria
Why Bulgaria?
Bulgaria is
one of the most visited tourist destinations in Southeast Europe
famous with its inexpensive, good food, friendly people and beautiful nature!
General Information
Religion: Orthodox
Language: Bulgarian
The weather in Bulgaria is not too extreme. Unless you visit for skiing, summer is the most
comfortable time in Bulgaria, with low humidity and temperatures averaging 75°F
(24°C); winter temperatures average around 32°F (0°C).
Airports Sofia, Varna, Bourgas
Harbours on the Black Sea - Varna, Bourgas, Balchick,
Nessebur;
on the Danube - Vidin, Lom, Oriakhovo, Nickopol, Svishtov, Rousse,
Toutrackan, Sillistra
Monetary unit: LEV (BGL) (1 BGL = 0.5 EURO), with bank-notes
(bills) of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 50 and 100
leva
Explore
Sofia
Most popular
places in Sofia
Vitosha
mountain, located only few kilometers from the center of Sofia is a natural decor of the city.
Its stone river, and numerous of ski tracks chalets, hotels, picnic places,
cable lines and the highest peak Black Peak (290m) makes the mountain a
favorite place for many people from Sofia or other tourists and an attraction
for its visitors. At tre area of the mountain is the Nature Park Vitosha - the 1st Nature Park in Bulgaria and some
nature reserves. The mountain is very popular destination for ski or walking
tourism.
Vitosha
Everybody in Sofia knows Eagle’s bridge. It is a starting point
of many explanations how to reach a place in Sofia. Probably the reason is
because many public transport buses have a stop there. The bridge is built in
1891. It is a symbol of freedom because at that place for the first time in 1888
the prisoners from Diarbekir are welcomed (in that Turkish town figures from
the Bulgarian National Freedom Movement of the 19th century have been sent in
exile).
Eagle’s Bridge
The Neo-Byzantine-style Alexander Nevski Cathedral is one of the most famous monuments in Sofia and is named after the Russian
saint Alexander
Nevsky who became famous by the expulsion of German knight
orders of Russian territory in the 13th century.
In the crypt of the cathedral is an exhibition space
where icons are displayed in the ninth to the nineteenth century.
The architect of the cathedral, Pomerantsev, at the
building include Italian marble, Brazilian onyx, African carvings and alabast
of Bulgarian and Russian masters of
that time, was used. The building covers 3170 square meters, is 75 meters long,
50 meters wide and 50 meters high.
Alexander Nevski Cathedral
Nightlife in Sofia is something that everyone should experience! After ten o’clock at night, the streets of Sofia become alive.
Groups of young people go out to have fun in dance clubs. It is popular to
start night in one club, after that to go to another and at five in the morning
to have a late dinner (or early breakfast) in one of many nonstop pizza
restaurants. Sofia is full of young
people, especially in the Students’
town – which is a Sofia district
with hostels for students. Most of the Universities in Sofia are located in the Sudents’ town, which is calm only in the
morning when all students are still asleep after regular partying.
Student’s town
Bulgarian
women are beautiful. I
like very much to sit in a café, drinking cocktails and enjoying nice view of
girls walking down the main street of Burgas (my native city). Especially in
the summer you can see tanned shoulders, legs and smiling teenagers who fill
the main street with laugh and hubbub – a very inspiring and recharging view.
Restaurants and Cuisine
Dinner is a social
occasion, with traditional music and dancing in many restaurants, especially in
resorts and in some Sofia eateries. Food is hearty and good. Meals usually
start with a salad, from which there are many to choose from on the menu.
There is a wide
variety of national dishes, as well as Western European standard dishes, which
can be chosen on the spot at any restaurant. All good hotels have restaurants and
there are many attractive folk-style restaurants and cafés throughout the
country.
National
specialties:
• Tarator (cold soup
made from cucumber, walnuts and yogurt).
• Shopska salata (huge salad starter with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers
and white cheese).
• Kavarma (individual casseroles of pork or veal, onions and mushrooms).
• Surmi (stuffed vine or cabbage leaves stuffed with meat).
• Kebapche (small, strongly spiced, minced meat rolls).
Traditional salads
National
drinks:
• Coffee, served espresso
style, is particularly popular.
• Drinks made from infusions of mountain herbs and dried leaves, particularly
lime.
• White wines include Evksinograde, Karlouski Misket and Tamianka.
• Heavy red wines include Mavroud and Trakia.
• Liquors include mastika (aniseed spirit, usually diluted) and rakia
(local brandy).
Legal drinking age:
18.
Rakia
Airlines and terminals in Sofia
Make
sure you check the terminal that you are arriving at or departing from
carefully.
Terminal 1 (T1) is used by budget airlines like EasyJet,
Germanwings and Wizz Air; and by charter flight operators.
Terminal 2 (T2) handles all 'traditional' carriers, and
serves as a hub to Bulgaria Air, the national carrier.
Terminal
1 (T1) has postal and banking services, a news stand, two coffee shops and one
duty-free shop.
Terminal
2 (T2) is larger and has more duty-free shops, three coffee shops with some
food offers. Before passport control there is only one coffee shop and a news
stand.
Airport in Bulgaria
By car
All highways in Bulgaria are often under construction.
Access to Bulgaria's Capital is via several entry
points:
1. From the North
& South via E79/A6
2. From the East -
via Thrace Highway E80/A1-A3 or from the old road paralelling the E80 Highway -
Zlatitza - Pirdop - Pazardzhik route.
3. From the West -
via A1/E80 Liking the city and the Bulgarian-Serbian Border point of Kalotina.
A1 is planned to be from Sofia to Burgas, but ends at
the outskirts of Stara Zagora.
A2 is planned to be from Sofia to Varna, but ends
around Pravets and continues from Shumen to Varna.
A3 is planned to be from Varna to Burgas, but
currently has only a few kilometers built.
Otherwise coming
from Greece the road E79/A6 is in very good shape, so the 300 km from
Thessaloniki are done fairly fast if you don't happen to fall into
Friday/Sunday traffic jams in the area of Sofia or Pernik.
Other place to visit in
Bulgaria
Summer Resorts
- Albena, Ahtopol, Balchik, Dyuni, Elenite, Golden Sands, Kiten, Lozenets, Nessebar, Obzor, Pomorie, Primorsko, Riviera, Rusalka, Sinemorets, Sozopol, St. Constantine, St. Vlas, Sunny Beach, Tsarevo
- Rural tourism
- Elena, Arbanasi,
Ribaritsa, Bozhentsi, Kumani, Ethnographic museum Etara, Shiroka Laka, Tryavna, Zheravna, Orehovo, Madzharovo, Dragoynovo
Protection of Nature Protection
of the natural world is one of the country’s major concerns.
àThe protected territories are 49,
àthe biospherical reserves - 17
(the greatest recorded number in Europe),
àthe national parks - 7,
àthe reserves - 82,
àthe protected
natural sites - 3055,
àthe protected
plants - 63 and
àthe protected
animals - 419.
àThe air and water resources of the country are some of the purest in Europe.
The wonders of Bulgaria
Foreigners usually
associate the word Bulgaria with the
beaches on the Black Sea or with the ski runs in the high Bulgarian mountains
Rila, Pirin and Vitosha. However, the country’s real charm is in its millennial
cultural and historical heritage.
1.One of the
World’s Heritage Sites, a Wonder of Nature, the complex of Belogradchik Rocks is situated in Bulgaria, close to Danube River.
The complex consists of several 200 meters high reddish rocks and about 100
different caves. The legend tells that the rocks are connected. The Horseman’s
name was Anton (Anthony). He was a poor shepherd. The Madonna (the lady with
child in hands) bore the name of Vitinya. She was very beautiful and belonged
to a rich family. The two of them fell in love, but Vitinya’s father didn’t
allow them to marry and sent his daughter into the Nunnery on the mountain’s
slope. Nevertheless, the two beloved continued to meet in secret and soon
conceived a child. The nuns ousted Vitinya with her child and Anton came,
riding a horse, and rescued them. In this moment a storm aroused, one thunder
stroke, the earth shook and everything around turned into stone!
Belogradchik Rocks
Architectural reserve, part of
the UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage list, the ancient city of Nessebar stands on a small peninsula on Bulgarian
Black Sea coast.
People say that about 5500
years ago the miniature piece of land was an island but Ancient Thracians
turned it into a peninsula, mounding a road to carry the wheat easier from
their fields on the continent to the fishermen’s settlement. 2300 years later
the settlement was a city-state, named Melsabria after its governor – the
Thracian ruler Melsa. Its fortress walls were so fearful and strong that no one
could take the city over during the next 500 years. Its government was arranged
the same way as nowadays democratic countries are.
Nesebar
In the middle of a
sheer cliff in the Еastern end of the Balkan Mountain Range, close to the Danube River -
Black Sea Road, the oldest stone relief in Europe – the Madara Horseman
was carved. It is one of the most enigmatic monuments in UNESCO’s World
Heritage List. May
be the suggestion that the relief is a stone horoscope of Bulgaria is closest
to the truth. This theory states that the relief shows the exact position of
stars and planets (depicted as a human figure, a lion and a dog) on the sky in
the very moment of Bulgaria’s establishment in Europe: April 8, 165 AD. The
Madara Horseman, according to this statement, is the way Proto-Bulgarians
marked their ownership of the near lands and predicted many years of
superiority over the territories on the south of the Danube River.
The rock relief “Madara Rider” is an unusual and the only one of its kind
in Europe monument dated to the early Middle Ages.
Rocks Madara Rider
One of UNESCO’s World Heritage List sites, the severe
and magnificent Rila Monastery,
towers in Rila Mountain, only 35 km away from Transeuropean corridor No. 4
(North-South). About 1100 years ago a young man, an orphan, came to
Rila. He had given all his properties to the poor, had taken monastic vows and
chose to hide away from the world’s vanity in the deep woods. His name was
Ioan.
The legend tells that some of
his fellow-villagers went hunting and saw by chance the only thing Yoan had
left for himself - a cow with a calf. The villagers slaughtered the animals and
put the meat into their bags.
Afterwards they found Ioan who
was eating some dry bread and water. He invited them to join. Villagers ate
much but the piece of bread on the stone table did not lessen. When they went
home the meat in their bags started smelling bad. They threw it into a bush but
snakes came out and chased them to the very village.
Rila Monastery
People started
living on the small Black Sea
peninsula, where nowadays the famous city of Sozopol stands, about 7500 years ago. In Greek, the word Sozopol
means “The saved city”, probably because it has survived devastating barbarian
attacks in the first centuries after Christ. Nowadays, the ancient city-port’s
citizens walk along the same streets and catch fish in their wooden boats the
same way as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. When they try to build
something, they find past ages’ remnants (pottery, timber pieces, copper ore,
gods’ statuettes, even a skull full of coins) in their excavations. The
majority of findings are dated back to Antiquity when Sozopol, bearing the name
of Apolonia Pontica, was a flourishing polis, a colony of Ancient Greek city of
Millet in Asia Minor.
Sozopol
Tatul , Thracian Shrine
According to the Ancient
Greeks, to the North of their territory, there was a Land of Happiness, where
Gods lived. This was the magic Rodopi Mountain, in the Southern part of
nowadays Bulgaria. Today, one of the most enigmatic ancient sanctuaries rests
in ruins there. It is named after the nearby Village of Tatul (Thorn Apple).
In the middle of a sunny
broad-leaved trees forest, between the Earth and the Sky (on top of a truncated
pyramid rock) a stone grave has been carved. The scholars presume that once the
remnants of Orpheus – the great Thracian ruler, philosopher, poet, and singer –
had been laid there. Thus, even after his death, he could fulfill his role -
being the mediator between the people and the Gods.
