Somusing

Plovdiv was a Thracian city before it became a Greek city around 340 BC. (See the Wikipedia Plovdiv page for more history.) There is an impressive Communist-era concrete monument in Plovdiv which I only saw a few weeks before we moved away. I went will Lillian and Seth. The OpenBuildings page on Memorial complex Hillock of fraternity describes it this way: The “Hillock of fraternity” monument symbolizes a Thracian hillock. It reminds of a stone wreath from above. A 90m long sculpture composition inside the monument is dedicated to the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule, the The Unification of Bulgaria, the Bulgarian partisan movement and “the victory of socialism” in 1944. Bones of partisans from Plovdiv region were placed inside the memorial complex, once it was finished. It was inaugurated on 9 September 1974 by the party leader Todor Zhivkov in honor of the 30th anniversary of the “socialist revolution” in Bulgaria. There were plans to connect the “Hillock of fraternity” ...

About a month ago I went on a day trip with my friend Иван Чакаров (Ivan Chakarov) to the south-central Bulgarian city Кърджали (Kardzhali) , which is about a 95 km bus ride from Plovdiv and which lies about 60 km north of the border with Greece. I was on a quest to find another Bulgarian friend I knew from my mission in Germany who I'd lost contact with. (Keeping in touch with people who moved around in the pre-Internet era was not easy!) This friend had long lived in Kardzhali and said it was a beautiful place he planned to go back to. The chance we would find him 22 years later was small, but it was worth a try and was a good reason to go see a different part of Bulgaria in the Rhodope mountains. We came close to finding him. We found his old apartment and people who knew him, and he supposedly still lives in Kardzhali. But after much trying, we were not able to find him. The journey was interesting and mostly fun, and we got to see the river, city, suburbs, memorials, fores...

Here I happened to be walking by as evening began and the bells were ringing at the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (църква Света Богородица, Пловдив, България):

The Plovdiv Regional Ethnographic Museum is really close to us. Like it takes less than five minutes to walk there. So I don't know why it took us so long to go, but we finally did, and it was cool. First, the kids had fun in the courtyard. This is a huge, beautiful painting in the very large entry area. From the second story windows looking out into the front courtyard. I took tons of pictures of traditional costumes. They are so colorful and varied and have beautiful hand-knit socks and intricate scarves and sashes and all kinds of fancy braiding. I'll spare you all of my pictures of that stuff, though. Here's just one. I think this is a typical rich person's Revival-era room. Mira with some awesome rugs. The kids exhausted after exploring the whole place. (Not really that exhausted. They just liked those wide window seats.) From the front courtyard of the museum, which is a house that was built in 1847 for a wealthy merchant...

There's a lot of really cool street art in this pedestrian underpass in Plovdiv, but unfortunately, I don't have pictures of much of it. Somewhere in Plovdiv. This is a swimming pool on top of Mladezhki Halm, the tallest hill in Plovdiv. Somewhere else in Plovdiv. Somewhere in Sofia. This is at the bottom of a memorial built for Buglaria's 1300th birthday, which Seth blogged about here (at the very end of the post). Near the ancient aqueducts in Plovdiv. A couple by Plovdiv's graffiti artist Билко (Bilko). Jon mentioned him here and included a link to an article about him, which is in Bulgarian, but Google Translate can help with that.