Tones of brown

October 5th, 2006 Bulgaria

Bulgaria is beautiful country loaded with wild natural scenries of mountains covered with dense forests, but also contaminated with dominant soviet remnants. They might seem romantic for those who can ignore the context, but with no doubt, the huge ugly buildings never integrated in their surroundings.

The noon-time bus ride from Bulgaria’s second biggest city of Plovdiv to the rural town of Smolyan made me spend a little more than one page of that travel-log splashing my impressions in ink.

We are moving quietly, as the bus somehow softly cruising – excluding the non-rhythmic tremblings – through the forests condensed with dozens and hundreds of different tones of fresh green. In these altitudes it seems like the summer skipped this area and continued further south, to spread of its warmth and browness.

We’re almost alone on the road and in the background, faint sounds of local music can be heard.

All of this could have been remarkably pastoral, if only the bus hadn’t passed Chepelare on its way. What was supposed to be a ski resort turns out to be a medium-sized town somewhat schizophrenically rooted in the heart of the greenish mountains.

The red bricks roofed village houses are sliding down the hills slopes, but in the center, a number of concrete 10-floors buildings – gigantic monuments and an examplar of tasteless architecture – stick to their blindness to their surroundings.

Additionaly, rusty factories with huge cranes and a sooty chimney are stuck abandoned on the outskirts of what should have been a rural village.