Beautiful - Surprisingly Beautiful

EasternEurope to the Black Sea - Vidin, Bulgaria

I never dreamed I'd see Bulgaria, or that I would even want to.  As a child of the 60s, all I knew was it was part of the USSR, they were Communists and it was all controlled by the Russians.  We hated the Russians.  Turns out, so did the Bulgarians.  

Now they are free, but struggling with a poor economy and no real industry.  They are trying to develop tourism, since they are right on the Danube, and close to the Black Sea, but the area is not well known.   Our riverboat made two stops in Bulgaria, at Vidin and at Ruse.   In Vidin we visited a mosque, right across from an Eastern Orthodox church  The imam didn't speak English, but he did speak Italian.  Our Program Director, who is Romanian and speaks no Bulgarian, found an Italian guide who spoke English. Voila!   

Vidin

The translator and the Imam

The Imam was dressed in normal street clothes, which I found a bit surprising.  He looked so normal, and he sounded perfectly reasonable.  I think he must be representative of the "good" Muslims who don't want jihad.  He spoke of the declining numbers of people of faith, in general.  In Vidin, the Jews were gone, the Muslims were going and the Catholics were barely hanging on.

What's left of the Jewish Synagogue

After our visit at the Mosque, we walked down to the Baba Vida Fortress.  This fortress was begun in the 10th century (900-999 AD, ahem) and took 400 years to complete.  It was an important fortress on the Danube protecting northwestern Bulgaria from the Turks. Unfortunately, in the late 14th century the Turks won and for the next 500 years Bulgaria would be an occupied region within the Ottoman Empire.  They ruled Bulgaria for 500 years, leaving it a strange mixture of East and West.

Baba Vida Fortress on the Danube

The Ottoman influence kept Bulgaria from developing as a Christian European State.  On  the  other hand, a religious awakening of  Christians in the late 19th century broke the hold  of the Turks over the area and in 1908 Bulgaria  asserted its independence.

Here is the link if you didn't get it as the title:
https://plus.google.com/photos/+LindaHarward/albums/5981889022647814177