The Flying Saucer Chronicles (Part 2)

So ... since I wrote the last entry, things have progressed a little.

Being a stone's throw from Buzludzha with no plan as to how I might get there was frustrating. I mean, my friendly taxi driver yesterday did offer to take me up the mountain and back, which would be something. However, the fee wouldn't include going inside – he was 100% not up for that. 

Given the monument's advanced state of structural disrepair, it was essential that there be someone else there with me if/when I broke in. If I fell through a floor or something dislodged from the ornate ceilings and landed on me, I wanted someone else around to call for help – though exactly how to do that in this part of the world I really had no idea. Plus, it was just an experience that I wanted to share, 'cause it seemed like fun.

So while the 20 Euro taxi ride was a better plan than any I'd had up to that point, I figured I should keep looking. I'd keep my taxi driver in mind as a last resort, though. He could at least get me up the mountain to see the monument from the outside.

Dinner time was rolling round, and my hotel was separated from one of the nicer parts of town by a spooky alleyway. The road surface had deteriorated to the point of non-existence, so it was one of those times in former Communist countries where you can have an 'off-road experience' in an urban environment.

"Bonus!", I thought :-)

I headed outside and negotiated Spooky Alley, thinking I'd maybe find a corner shop, buy something simple to eat, and have a 'night in' catching up on emails, Manor entries etc. I also figured that now I was here, it might be worth doing one more search for people in Kazanlak who could join me for a trek to the saucer the following day.

Unfortunately there were no corner shops to be found. But there were a couple of 'ethno-restaurant complexes' (a new term for me) which looked and smelled very inviting.

I thought "Alright then ... let's do the ethno-restaurant thing, whatever that might entail." 

As I was approaching one of these complexes – a hotel, bar and restaurant in one, and probably a spa and casino as well – I heard English being spoken in the street. It was coming from two guys who were unloading some things from the boot of a car.

They looked slightly unconventional, so I approached them, thinking there was just a slight chance that they were on a similar mission to my own.

Of course, that would've been too good to be true. But they weren't entirely 'mission free' either.

In fact, one of these guys, a Serb called Miloje, was a professional painter of orthodox icons. His very talkative companion, Larry, was a photographer and a devout member of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Michigan, USA. 

Some time back, Miloje had been commissioned to decorate Detroit's Serb Orthodox cathedral, while Larry had been commissioned to photograph Miloje's work there. This had sparked a fruitful partnership, and now Miloje was helping Larry achieve one of his dreams: a monastery tour of the Balkans.

I had dinner with these guys in the ethno-restaurant, and it turned out to be one of those dinners that last till midnight. It was clear that we were from very different worlds, with very different world views, but that we had a lot to talk about nonetheless.

They were headed to the town of Veliko Turnovo, a stunning jewel set into a gorge on the opposite side of the Shipka Pass from Kazanlak. (I visited V. Turnovo in 2011. You can read my rant about it here, and I recommend you do.) There's a monastery in the town that was on their 'must see' list, so that was the goal for tomorrow. In other words, they were going my way!

Well, not quite ... but almost.

At the end of the night, just before braving Spooky Alley in the darkness, I put a proposal to them. No doubt you can guess what it was.

Miloje and Larry guessed too. I mean, it wasn't  hard; they'd already heard my "Buzludzha is absolutely the most interesting place EVER!" rant, and they knew this was my reason for being in Kazanlak.

I got as far as "Look, I want to propose something to you both, but it's completely ok to say 'no' if you want to", and they filled in the rest. And most crucially, they didn't say "No".

In fact, they said the other thing – the thing I wanted to hear.

I walked back to the hotel feeling hyper-excited, barely able to restrain myself from doing a Happy Dance in Spooky Alley. In the space of a dinner (which was ethno-excellent, btw), I'd gone from "No plan whatsoever" to "I'm definitely going". If I was a devout man like Larry, I probably would've concluded (as he did) that there was a higher power at work in bringing us all to Kazanlak. But I'm not ... so I thanked the Gods of Chance ;-)

After a somewhat sleepless night, I met them at the ethno-complex, and just after 8am we drove out of town and pulled onto the Shipka Highway. We were looking for a sign that said "Кран" (Kran), which was the last town we had to pass before our turnoff.

In Them There Hills ...

Road to Buzludzha, Bulgaria, 11.07.14

Right next to the Kran exit we slowed down for a photo op, and just for a second, I caught a glimpse of Buzludzha in silhouette on its mountain summit. It was a genuine pulse-quickening moment. Then we stopped, and I got out of the car to take a pic. But the monument had disappeared. I scanned the peaks (an activity which I guess Bulgarian people must do a lot), and couldn't see it anywhere.

Still managed a few reasonably nice pics, though :-)

After that, the next landmark would be a statue of Dimitar Blagoev, a.k.a. Mr. Socialist Hero from the previous post who organised the fateful Meeting on The Mountain back in 1891.

Of course, statues come in all dimensions, from Rio de Janeiro-sized behemoths to the kind that carry an "-ette" prefix indicating their tinyness. We didn't know where Comrade Blagoev would fit on that scale, but since this was a Communist-built statue, I figured it would probably be large and imposing ... and hence easy to spot. Which, thankfully, it was.

In fact, standing as he was on the edge of a field, 12ft high with a hefty white column next to him, the dignified founder of Bulgarian Socialism couldn't have been more obvious if he'd been twirling a feather boa and singing 'Hey, Big Spender!', accompanied by a troupe of 72 dancing marmots and a choir.

(I clearly haven't slept enough.)

Sentinel

Road to Buzludzha, Bulgaria, 11.07.14

We turned off the highway and started making our way along a road which quickly got super-steep and windy. Along the way we came across a small team of construction guys pulling up a section of roadway that looked no more pitted and worn than any other part, and an elderly bearded man in a brilliant blue tracksuit, out for what must have been an Odyssey-sized morning walk. I think we also passed one car. Apart from that, we saw no-one else for the 20-ish minutes we spent climbing the mountainside.

Suddenly, we forded a crest (don't you wish you got to say that more often?), rounded a bend, and there it was: the thing I'd been obsessing about for months. It sat there, somewhat indistinct and blueish-looking in the morning haze, surveying the plains below like an alien visitor trying to size up the world it had just inadvertently landed on.

It was fucking magnificent.

Saucer in The Haze

Buzludzha, Bulgaria, 11.07.14

From this angle I got a good look at the huge, elongated star set into the tower behind the main building. The star used to glow red at night, like a beacon, and apparently it was visible in Kazanlak and other towns in the region. 

In the 1980s, there was a rumour that its surface was made of solid ruby. According to one story, some time after the fall of Communism a bunch of guys came up here with Kalashnikovs (what else?) to find out whether the rumour was true. They shot at the star, and parts of its surface shattered and fell to the ground. When the pieces were gathered up and analysed, it turned out that the material these guys had shot out of Buzludzha was nothing more than red glass.

I don't know if that story is true. But in any case, there it was right in front of me: the 'ruby star'.

Cool with a capital everything.

We drove a little further and came to the main gate, beyond which you have to go on foot. The road doesn't end here, but rather than go right up to the monument, it snakes off down the other side of the pass. Getting any closer to Buzludzha therefore means hiking up a steep, precipitous ridge littered about with exposed rock. It's beautiful, but not entirely inviting to the casual country rambler.

Gateway to The Monument

Buzludzha, Bulgaria, 11.07.14

Precipitous or not, at this point I was bouncing around like a kid, taking photos (most of which didn't turn out) and going "Wow!" a lot. But I sensed that Larry and Miloje weren't entirely sharing my enthusiasm. They'd told me they had a schedule to keep; after seeing their monastery in Veliko Turnovo, they'd been invited to stay with a friend in Niş (Serbia) that evening, which meant they had quite a lot of driving to do.

So I put the question to them: were we going up there, or not?

There was no direct response, but from what was said, the feeling seemed to be "We'd quite like to, but given our other commitments we just don't think we can spare the time". I thought: what could I do? Could I really just walk away from this?

I tried some gentle encouragement, and let some "Well, we've made it this far – why not go the rest of the way?"-type sentiments hang in the air for a while, hoping one of my companions might pick them up and run with them. But I also knew that it would be horribly inappropriate (and almost certainly futile) to get pushy with these guys. They'd been extremely good to me by bringing me this far, given that hulking great communist UFOs were my thing, not theirs. 

So I accepted the decision ... though it took me a couple of minutes more to actually make my feet move away from Buzludzha, now that it was SO, SO CLOSE.

And that was how I very nearly achieved a 'traveller's dream'.

We wound down the other side of the Shipka Pass, which offered some breathtaking scenery (as Bulgaria will tend to do), emerging in the township of Grabovo where we were presented with another, albeit rather smaller, weird socialist monument to admire. Then it was on to Veliko Turnovo.

Incongruous Soviet Statuary

Grabovo, Bulgaria, 11.07.14

This, btw, was another benefit of travelling with Miloje and Larry. Rather than go back to Kazanlak, I got to go in their direction for a bit, which meant bonus statues and also checking out V. Turnovo in summer. I'd previously been there in winter, so it was wearing a different coat this time to when I saw it last.

Also, I've raved so much about the town since my visit in 2011 that I've actually wondered a few times if I wasn't exaggerating its beauty a little bit. But ten minutes in Veliko Turnovo was enough to allay those concerns; I hadn't exaggerated at all. It's still one of the most beautiful human settlements I've seen in Europe – or anywhere, for that matter.

(Btw, the town is actually a candidate for 'European Cultural Capital' in 2019. I'm just throwing that in as a way of saying I'm not the only one who's noticed its general fabulousness.)

The day ended with drinks and excellent conversation in Sofija with my friend Irena, who kindly offered me her sofa for the night. It had been a spectacular day all round; leaving Veliko Turnovo by bus had taken me through more of the Stara Planina, and I'd had plenty of time to contemplate my growing love for this country as I stared through the window at mist-shrouded peaks in the middle distance.

As you can imagine, though, the whole "Coming so close and not quite getting there" feeling just refused to leave me alone. And it persisted for the next couple of days.

Luckily, Sofija offers plenty of diversions, some of which I'll talk about about in the next rant. But even while enjoying those, there was this feeling of ...

... er, what was it exactly?

Hmmm. Not disappointment, exactly. It was more like a growing sense of grim determination; a "This isn't over, dammit!" kind of sentiment. Which explains why this rant has an epilogue.


EPILOGUE

So, err, let's see ... how to ep this logue in suitable fashion?

Basically, what I want to say is this: me and Buzludzha are not done. Not by a long way. There will be a 'Flying Saucer Chronicles Part 3', because on or around August 16th I'm going back. And this time, I'm going inside.

I've found a couple of crazy folks in Sofija (including my friend Irena) who are are keen to make the journey up to Kazanlak, and then ascend to the monument and break in. There's also an Irish guy called David who's interested, and a few others from various places may join us as well.

The thing is, at this stage I'm thinking "The more, the merrier". We'll spend one night in Kazanlak before attempting the Buzludzha assault, which will make a weekend of it ... and an evening in one of those ethno-restaurants in international company could be one to remember :-)

For those reasons, I'm going to end this entry in a way that I've never done before: with an invitation. If you're free from August 15th-17th, and you're not too far away (something of which only you can be the judge), then I want to hear from you.

Having been there once, I can make almost all the arrangements – you only need to get yourself to Sofija, and everything else will be sorted. Plus, it's Bulgaria, so it will be affordable ... even if you're an English teacher ;-)

So write to me, and let's ascend to the mothership together!

See you :-)

FOR THE NEXT PART OF THIS MINI-SAGA, CLICK HERE

The Flying Saucer Chronicles (Part 1)

If the word Kazanlak means nothing to you, that's ok: until a few years ago, it meant nothing to me either. But I'm currently in it, and I'm not merely 'passing through'. I've put myself in this town with some difficulty, and with a very specific purpose in mind. 

In its own way, Kazanlak is a pretty remarkable place. It's ridiculously old, for one thing. There have been settlements here since the fifth or sixth millennium B.C., and around 2,500 years ago, the township was an important centre of the Hellenistic kingdom of Thrace. In fact, in a park about half a kilometre from where I am now, there's a Thracian tomb which is open to the public. It was originally part of a huge necropolis that stood here in late ancient times, and it's probably the best-preserved object of its kind anywhere in the world. 

Perhaps more entertaining, though, is the town's modern reputation.

On my first visit to Bulgaria in 2011, I met a really cool guy called Hristo in the capital Sofija. Hristo is a talented designer and a Kazanlak native. He and his wife now live in New Zealand (which they absolutely love), but during our one of several long chats in Sofija, he told me that he could organise for me to be treated as an honoured guest if I ever visited his home town. He also told me that it was famous during Soviet times for two things: producing over half of the world's rose oil, and manufacturing the best quality Kalashnikovs. 

This is apparently why, if you say the phrase "Guns'n'Roses" to a Bulgarian, they'll have a slightly different association to most other people: they'll think of Kazanlak.

However, as much as I enjoy that little piece of trivia, I'm here in Hristo's birthplace neither for the guns, nor for the roses. I'm here for the flying saucer.


SAUCER CULT 

About 20kms from here, on top of a mountain, stands a ruin. It's not your average ruin, though: the building in question was completed just 33 years ago, and had a short but glorious public life. It then fell into disuse, and is now in the process of decaying. But because of its unusual form and location, it's become a kind of 'cult destination' for travellers and photographers. 

The ruin in question is called the Buzludzha Monument, and it's one of those odd 'Communist flying saucers' which started cropping up around the USSR and eastern Europe during the late Soviet period. 

It's not hard to find these things; last year, for example, I came across one in Kyiv, just down the street from my hotel. It's now being used part-time as a yoga centre.

Baykonur Mission Control ... This is Yoga Station Four

Kyiv, Ukraine, 15.08.13

The flying saucers have fascinated me for quite a while, but Buzludzha is without a doubt the queen of them, standing in a category of its own. In all my travels, I can't think of a time when I came across a more striking building, with a more compelling story than this one. And I think it's fair to say now that I'm just a tiny bit obsessed with it. 

In fact, this summer I've planned my travels partly around the Buzludzha obsession ... and if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know what that means: LOTS and LOTS of words!

So settle in with a cup/glass/tankard of your preferred liquid. This one is going to be an epic ... 


WHUPASS ON THE OTTOMANS 

To start with the bare biographicals: Buzludzha was commissioned by the Bulgarian Communist Party, and designed as its new headquarters.

Here's the thing, though: if you're gonna build a Headquarters of The Bulgarian Communist Party, the sensible place to put it would be somewhere nice and central in downtown Sofija, wouldn't it? That way, it'd be an easy commute for party members, and for anyone else who had occasion to go there. Whereas the best place not to put it would be on a mountain half-way across the country, at an elevation of 1,441 metres, with only a few windy access roads. 

This is where the story gets interesting. Because at the time when Buzludzha was conceived, there were other factors to consider.

See, up until about 120 years earlier, Bulgaria had been part of the Ottoman Empire, along with most of the Balkans. But during the 19th Century, this arrangement all began to fall apart. Things came to a head in the 180s, when there were mass uprisings in Herzegovina and Bosnia, and these inspired the Bulgars to revolt as well. The Ottoman response was brutal, with tens of thousands massacred as they put down the insurrections.

A book by someone 

who knows much more 

about this than me.

News of this inevitably spread to Russia, and it provoked a huge wave of sympathy for the Bulgarian cause, coupled with a surge in 'Pan Slavism'. The author Dostoyevsky, for example, led a movement that insisted Slavic peoples should be freed from their oppressors and then 'united', with Russia (naturally) as their protector and guide.

All of this was a major contributing factor in what became known as the Russo-Turkish war, fought in both the Caucases and the Balkans in 1877-78. 

One of the decisive battles of that war took place on the Shipka Pass – an eastern high point of the vast Stara Planina mountain range, which dominates central and western Bulgaria as well as eastern Serbia. There, Russian and Bulgarian troops stood side-by-side on the mountain ridges, and together they showed Turkish forces the meaning of the still-to-be-coined phrase 'to open a can of whupass'. 

Their victory was a turning point, and not long afterwards, the Sultan was forced to give up his Bulgar territories, signing an agreement that guaranteed their independence.


At this stage, you may be thinking that Captain Tangent here has already strayed hopelessly far from the point. But all this would have consequences much later – not least for our flying saucer. 

Here's how it happened:  


MARXIST MOUNTAIN HOB-NOB

In 1891, almost 15 years after the Russo-Turkish war, a gentleman by the name of Dimitar Blagoev called a meeting of prominent Marxists and socialists from around Bulgaria. 

As a venue, Blagoev chose a peak in the Shipka Pass, very close to where the Russians and Bulgars had seen off the Turks. It's safe to assume that he was trying to evoke some kind of connection between socialism and Bulgar patriotism, because the purpose of this meeting was to found the first Bulgarian Socialist Party ... which, in fact, he did. 

This forged a link between socialism in Bulgaria, and between the earlier struggle for independence, which later generations of leaders would exploit at any opportunity.

1971 Dimitar Blagoev

commemorative calendar 

(with 'glamorous' models)

As it turned out, the socialist movement developed in ways that its founders never dreamed of in 1891. It's far from clear, therefore, whether Blagoev and his idealistic Marxist confrères would have approved of the later Bulgarian Communist Party and its policies. But of course, the latter insisted that their roots lay back in that great Meeting on The Mountain. 

Lionising Blagoev in this way ensured that his name took on titan-like proportions in Bulgaria. It also gave the Communist Party a ton of 'socialist lineage cred', which would've been difficult to come by otherwise. So once again, this remote peak in the Stara Planina took on a symbolic significance in (at least some versions of) the nation's history.  

BULGARIA MAKES ITS OWN UFO

Moving forward to the late 1970s: when the plans for a new Communist Party HQ were proposed, the Powers-That-Were decided to opt for symbolism over practicality. And so, for all the reasons above, they stuck their monument up on Blagoev's peak. 

This is not a place to which you'd want to transport thousands of tons of building materials and legions of workers ... but in those days, the decision of The Party was final. 

Spot the Road ...

Kazanlak-Buzludzha Approach Road, Bulgaria, 11.07.14

About 6,000 workers were involved in the construction, which meant that they had to a) be in the area, and b) get up the mountain every day. So when bloggers and other web folk say that Buzludzha's completion was "a remarkable feat" (as they often do), they're really really not wrong. 

Finally in 1981, it was finished. Historically, this was a huge year: to name just a few milestones, it saw the birth of the first test-tube baby and the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands; Greece entered the EEC and Hosni Mubarak became President of Egypt; Lech Walesa's Solidarinosc Movement was outlawed in Poland; Mozart's lost symphony was revealed to the world in Bavaria; Reagan moved into the White House; NASA launched the first space shuttle, while the USSR sent the Venera spacecraft to Venus; John McEnroe coined the phrase 'You can't be serious!'; Charles Windsor married Diana Spencer; and speaking of royalty, Queen released Another One Bites The Dust.  

In Bulgaria, though, the biggest event on the calendar was the opening of Buzludzha. 

All Hail The Mothership!

Buzludzha Monument, Bulgaria, early 1980s

In certain corners of the internet, you can find photos of of the event, and of other gatherings held at Communist HQ. Parades of people wave flags along the mountain road, expressing (whether voluntarily or otherwise) their admiration for socialism as they prepare to ascend towards heaven / the Mothership. The impression is almost of a kind of alternate reality, in which Marx meets Spielberg on the set of The Sound of Music.

On the inside, the monument was absolutely resplendent, with gleaming stone and vast, intricate mosaics (the work of more than 20 artists, toiling for somewhere between three and seven years) decorating every surface. 

Sample mosaic

Buzludzha Monument, Bulgaria 

Lenin, Marx and the other biggies put in appearances, as did all the classic Soviet mainstays like triumphant agricultural workers, along with mythic-looking Bulgarian motifs. And, Dimitar Blagoev, whose meeting on the mountain and later appropriation by the Communist Party had started this whole ball rolling, was given pride of place. 

AFTER PRIDE COMES ...

Tragically, Buzludzha had less than ten years to enjoy the spotlight. In 1989, the Socialist dream (or nightmare, or both depending who you talk to) came to an abrupt end in Bulgaria, as it did elsewhere. 

On November 9, the The Wall fell in Berlin. The following day, the Bulgarian Politburo ousted its long-standing leader Todor Zhivkov, who was one of those guys that journalists and historians like to call a 'hard-liner' (he'd strenuously resisted Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reforms, for example).  

This was the first step in a process that saw Bulgaria 'transitioning', just as many ex-Soviet republics did, from Communism to a deeply flawed and horribly corrupt form of democracy – the kind that earned the not-so-affectionate nickname "shitocracy" in Russia during the 1990s.

In this not-so-brave new world, there didn't seem to be much call for massive UFO-shaped edifices perching incongruously on mountaintops, and Buzludzha was simply left to fall apart.   

Successive governments have refused to preserve it as part of the nation's history and architectural heritage ... and recently, it was given as a 'gift' to the Bulgarian Communist Party, who still exist on the fringes of national politics but have no money for its upkeep.

Ironically, the Thracian temple I mentioned before is a protected UNESCO site – as well it should be. But just 20kms away, an even grander historical structure is more or less guaranteed to be ignored by the same organisation, since there's still this bizarre perception in much of the world that Soviet-era architecture was a chronic aesthetic disease from which humanity is still recovering.

And so, it's up there rotting.


BEAUTY IN DECAY?

As I mentioned before, Buzludzha has caught the eye of travellers around the world, and become something of a 'cult destination' (e.g. I recently read a breathless account of its beauty written by a blogger from Brazil). It's also an attractive target for photographers.

Among those who visit and write about the experience, you see a wide variety of opinions about the building's state of decline. 

British photographer and urban explorer Timothy Allen has produced some of the most impressive photos of the monument yet. He's been inside Buzludzha numerous times during winter, and has also photographed it aerially from an ultra-lite during a snow storm (just in case you thought you were pretty courageous and manly). 

Here he explains one reason for his attraction to the derelict building:

"These days, in my country at least, it’s very unfashionable to let a significant building die gracefully. We tend to feel that we are somehow disrespecting our heritage by allowing them to decay, and so, often we attempt to stop the march of time by tidying them up and imprisoning them behind a red rope, preserving them in a most awkward state of disrepair for future generations to line up and look at from a viewing platform.  

The ironic thing is that abandoned buildings feel alive to me. They are involved in a beautiful natural process ... on the rare occasions that I get to visit a forgotten building as magnificent as this one, I can’t help day dreaming about some of the incredible monumental relics I know back home and quietly wishing that a few more of them had been left to grow old and perish naturally." **

Of course, not everyone agrees. There are plenty of people who feel saddened that such a wonderful piece of architectural heritage is well on its way to non-existence. And it's just remotely possible that, at some point in the future, the government will be persuaded to change course and try to save Buzludzha. Meanwhile, the debate will continue on forums and blogs worldwide. 

(Btw, you can see Timothy Allen's pics here: 'Forget Your Past': Timothy Allen on Buzludzha. I highly recommend it: they're stunning.)

The fact that Buzludzha is closed to the public also means that these visitors need to do a bit of breaking and entering to make their way inside. 

Every year or so the Bulgarian government sends someone up the mountain to re-inforce bars across the front doors and seal up any other entrances that might have been created. But this hasn't deterred people. Most blogs you read about Buzludzha offer a slightly different description of the unofficial entrance – because every time one is sealed up, explorers and/or locals make another.

So now, it's my turn to find the door ...


ENTER THE NERDLY  

I realise this has been a super long entry, but I hope you're still with me. Let me finish by telling you the current situation vis a vis me and the Flying Saucer.

I left Ankara about a week ago, and I've travelled here in stages. Before leaving 'home', I tried to make plans for the Buzludzha visit, but nothing worked. I couldn't cajole any workmates into coming to Bulgaria with me and hiring a car together, I couldn't find any interested couchsurfers who lived in the area, etc. etc. So I decided I'd just have to go, and see what happened when I got there. 

And this is where things stand now. Even from my hotel, the monument is almost physically in sight (in fact, during our ride here, the taxi driver pointed out to me the Shipka Monument, which is on an adjacent peak. I felt a thrill of excitement go through me when I recognised it). But at this point in time, I have no plan whatsoever regarding how to get there. 

And with that, I think I'll end this extremely long ramble, and leave the rest for tomorrow. Or, to put that another way:

To be continued!


The Flying Saucer Chronicles Part 2