Saturday, March 31, 2012

Tourism in Bulgaria


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

Time - Bulgaria is +2 hours GMT. Get the time in Bulgaria now.

History - read about the long and rich history of Bulgaria:



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








Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 15th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.2 million people.

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).






Kavarma



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.

Facilities

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








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.