louiseinlimbo

As well as the 'formal' ruins, Bulgaria has countless abandoned houses, factories and other buildings. In Veliko Tarnovo I poked around three different abandoned places.  The first was a Soviet-era dam, intended to raise the level of the river so that residents of the town could swim in it, but not yet completed at the time of the fall of communism.  The kind of place that would be safely closed off to random passers-by in somewhere like the UK, but just left in Bulgaria for people like me, who are fascinated by abandoned places, to go into at my own risk. The second I only found thanks to a conversation with a friend of the hostel manager, as I would otherwise have just walked past without realising what was there.  Would your attention be drawn to this building on the right if you walked past it? I'd been told that down by the river there was an old Roman baths, later used as a hammam by the Ottomans, which had fallen into disrepair and even been used for a while by a s...

After a long train ride from Brasov, I arrived at Gorna Oryahovitsa in Bulgaria, a town some 12km from Veliko Tarnovo, where I was heading, with no idea how I was to complete the journey except that I'd been warned to avoid the rip-off taxis.  But as ever in this part of the world, in my experience so far, things just work out.  A bus pulled up in front of the station and I asked if they were going to Veliko Tarnovo - yes, they were!  & as we pulled into the town, another passenger indicated to me in sign language where I should get off and in which direction I should walk. Veliko Tarnovo was beautiful (the two photos above looking in different directions from the town, both viewpoints only a short walk from my hostel) and the hostel was really nice with a terrace and garden as well as a really helpful manager.  It became the capital of Bulgaria in the twelfth century, until 1879 when a decision was made to transfer this status to Sofia. I have to admit to having...