Founders of the Bulgarian State (Shumen ~ Bulgaria)

October 2019

Our second stop in Bulgaria was Shumen, and definitely would not class it as a touristy town. Whilst writing this blog we have been using the term massive a lot to describe all things Soviet. But for truly massive you have to see the monument to Founders of the Bulgarian State.

It was made from 2,500 tonnes of steel and 50,000 cubic metres of concrete and has the largest triptych in Europe. It has huge futuristic style figures (think transformers) of Bulgaria's medieval rulers.

The lion on the top weighs in at 1,000 tonnes.

It was built to commerate the First Bulgarian Empires 1,300th anniversary in 1981 by Russia. Unlike most Russian monuments hasn't been torn down and dominates skyline above the city.

Because it is so big and powerful a monument it sounds like to locals have taken it to heart and it now forms a backdrop for official ceremonies and weddings.

As I said this is not a touristy town so took us a good half hour of wandering that night to find a restaurant that was open and actually had some customers. We did find one eventually and definitely the locals choice. Downside was menu was purely in Bulgarian. After invoking the Google Translate app we figured out we would order the top item from the second page (salad) and top item from fifth page (big meaty pork dish). Small cock up in that accidentally ordered top item from third page so instead of salad we had three types of fried cheese on top bed of fried onions and potatoes - which was very tasty.

The second big meaty pork dish was ummm interesting as it contained miscellaneous vegetables and stewed pork, belly pork, smoked pork, pork sweetbreads and some other bit of pig that we couldn't identify.

The next morning prior to heading on to Veliko Tarnovo (our next destination) we headed out to a small village called Madara. On the outskirts of the village 23 metres up a sheer cliff face is the 1,300 year old base relief carving of a man on horseback. Exactly who it is is unknown - sounds like there are a lot of differing opinons. I pity the poor buggers whom were told to carve as one small slip and you're out looking for another stonemason. Unfortunately a combination of early morning mist and weathering of the carving didn't make for a clear photo but what we could see was still impressive.

Sadly the cliff face is less than stable hence a rather ugly, but necessary,  bit of steel work is in place.