August 12, 1996

The restaurant we sat down at looked inviting. How inviting is directly proportional to how hungry we are. I call it the hunger function. When we arrived in Veliko Tarnovo we were starving. We looked at the menu in cryptic Bulgarian letters and frowned. The waiter saw us and rescued us with a German menu. "Champaignons - mushrooms - yes, paprika - peppers - yes, kase - cheese - yes, tomatoes. We'll take two." We sat under an umbrella and waited.

Ten minutes later they came. Well something came. Our meals bore only the slightest resemblance to pizza. What we got were round and made of bread; there the similarities ended. Atop our thin crusts were layers of warm sliced pickles (the kind that come in jars, pre-wilted). In the center of those green-grey discs were the four quarters of a cold tomato and around those, five blobs of cheese. Hmmmm? Ok why not, we'll bite. "Oooow, salty!!" I looked at the other customers and considered ourselves lucky, their's were all smothered in ketchup. Orange soda washed it all down; we made a vow to have dinner somewhere else.

It was time to explore (and walk off the pickles). We headed up the winding streets into a town full of history, scenery and atmosphere. Veliko Tarnovo got the Lonely Planet's vote for one of the top ten places to visit in Eastern Europe. It gets our vote too. We followed the Yantra river which winds through a gorge in the center of town to the 1185 monument. From there we had far reaching views of red tile roofed houses clinging to the cliffs. We followed the road to the artisan quarter, past medieval churches, parks and painted buildings. At the Tsarevets hill we came to the Citadel, a massive fortress that was burned by the Turks in 1393.

Exploring it took most of our afternoon. Stone walkways led us around the outer edge to peer over high walls to the foundation of the three-tired palace from which 22 kings ruled Bulgaria. Execution rock sat along a bluff. From this rock traitors were pushed into the Yantra river. Above us, at the top of the hill, was the rebuilt Assumption Patriarchal Church. The interior was magnificent, a vast open room with large paintings climbing from floor to ceiling and all along the support arches. It was the perfect echo chamber. "Oooo," I moaned. It came back to me from the floor, the ceiling, the walls. Then something else came back to me. From everywhere I heard a low mystical humming, a hymn of sorts. Had I awaken a sleeping spirit? I turned around but the only other person there was an old woman behind a small desk at the entrance. Her lips weren't moving. She only smiled at me.

Back at the bottom of the hill we came level with the panoramic views we had seen from the top. We walked down the cobbled street, through the arch and back into town to search out dinner. Some people say you should try everything once. Gluttons for punishment? Maybe, but lucky for us pizza number two was pickle-less.

Evening at the Citadel

At 9:55 pm the Citadel was cloaked in blackness. At 10:00 it was blue; at 10:01 - red, then yellow, then white, then purple, then a mixture of colors pulsing, racing, shining and disappearing over the stonework, dancing to mystical music. The light and sound show presented over the hill was unexpected - magnificent.

The show is only presented in the summer when tour groups are present. In New Zealand we had cursed the tour buses dumping loads of people into our picturesque worlds. Here, we were glad they had arrived. Without them we might never have seen this concert of lights that ended our time in Veliko Tarnovo in the best possible way.