Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 4: Shadows of the Ottoman Empire

Tuesday 28 May
We reach Nikopol on the Bulgarian (right) bank. It was named by Trajan to commemorate his Dacian victory (nike + polis). A coach is waiting to transport us to Pleven 50km inland. We drive through tranquil countryside which feels remarkably remote because in Bulgaria, the tradition is for farmers and peasants to live in the towns and villages, not in farmsteads scattered across the landscape. The soil on the Danube plains is black and rich like the fens. Hence the local saying, “Plant a button here and by morning it will have grown a jacket”.

The town’s principal attraction is the Panorama. We are expecting this to be some kind of memorial from the top of which we shall enjoy a satisfying view. In fact, it’s a museum dedicated to the memory of the war of 1877 that defined modern Bulgaria as a state. Before that, it was under Ottoman rule. But an alliance of Bulgarians, Romanians and Russians besieged the town and engaged the Turks in battle, resulting after five months in victory for the Slavs. This is part of Bulgaria’s defining story that is told inside the Panorama. The highlight is the circular space at the top, where you are surrounded by a vast canvas depicting the siege and the battle, complete with a realistic foreground consisting of artefacts that were found on the battlefield when it was all over. It’s reminiscent of the museum at Volgograd that I once visited, commemorating the Siege of Stalingrad in 1943. Not just for the art but for the way the memory of war is sanctified. It’s a place of some power.

In the town centre, we walk through the pedestrianised streets. In the middle of the day, it is hot, maybe thirty degrees. The fabric of the city is crumbling - our guide warns us to beware of loose paving stones and bits dropping off buildings. The precincts remind me of the urban development in the 1960s of bombed cities in the UK like Coventry where we once lived. It was well-meant, but executed too hastily, and the results were often bleak and without "soul". From what we've seen of Bulgaria, both town and countryside are poorer than Hungary or Serbia. Yet Pleven is a cheerful town, bustling with activity. The streets are thronged, the cafes full, the conversation animated. Fountains are playing in the parks, and youngsters too. There's no reason to think this is not a good place to live.

We go inside the mausoleum where the heroes of the Ottoman conflict are honoured, and the victims are remembered. It's a sacred space, an orthodox church in the shape of a Greek Cross. The symbolism of this shrine can't be exaggerated. The Ottomans overran south-east Europe in 1299. They ruled over these Christian lands for almost six centuries. And while accommodation between Christians and Muslims was commonly the norm, Orthodox Christianity was constantly made aware of its subject status in an Islamic world, for instance in the requirement that church towers should never be taller than the minarets surrounding them. So the final throwing off of Ottoman hegemony was Bulgaria's equivalent of the Spanish Reconquista. And it took about the same time to achieve it.

 My Cyrillic is rusty and as we walk the streets I only half remember the letters from my visit to Russia a quarter of a century ago. I get caught out by false friends - letters that look like Greek but are different, consonants that turn out to be vowels. Perversely, I want to read it from right to left like Hebrew. But on the coach we have learned one important fact about it. Cyril and Methodius introduced the original Glagolitic alphabet to the Slavs in the ninth century, the first alphabetic transcription of Old Church Slavonic. However it was not to Russia that they brought this gift but to Bulgaria. So you must never say to a Bulgarian that of course they use the Russian alphabet. It’s the Russians who have adopted the Bulgarian.

In the centre of the town we find a beautiful medieval Orthodox Church. It's like a holy sepulchre, a sacred cave half underground, hidden and humble as befits a church of the poor Galilean. In this, the contrast with proud church we saw being built in Belgrade could not be more stark. Here it is dark and cool. The iconostasis glows golden in the low light. The faithful are lighting candles and kissing icons. Among the icons we find Cyril and Methodius, so I silently thank them for their priceless gift of letters and literacy that opened up the texts of scripture and liturgy to the Slav peoples.

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We are on the move again. Gliding downstream on this vast river is to live in a kind of dreamscape. The forests that line the riverbanks on either side go on uninterrupted for hundreds of miles. There is little variation, save the occasional village or industrial town. Tugs pass us propelling long trains of barges upstream, but not nearly as many as on the upper Danube between Budapest and Germany. The monotony is seductive, narcotic, sleep-inducing in this lotos-land. On the river you get a sense of how profoundly rural Eastern Europe is, how the woods and the water together shaped the character and the mythologies of the peoples who made their home here.

As I write this we are passing a town on the Bulgarian side. It’s quite a sizeable place with apartment blocks, some light industry, a prominent church cupola and red-roofed houses spilling down the hillside. But in front, behind, on all sides are thousands of deciduous trees, lush green in the late spring. It’s as if this is no more than a temporary clearing in the forest. The trees tolerate this human intrusion into their ancient domain, but only for a while. You could feel that at any moment they could close in again, take back these riparian lands that have been theirs from prehistory, swallow up all that human occupation has achieved during its brief tenure.

We dock at Rousse. How skilfully these mariners navigate their long ships! It is no joke swinging the boat round so that it lines up accurately alongside another ship, their access points exactly aligned to allow crew and passengers to go ashore. It’s warm and humid. Teenagers are swimming in the river.

After dinner we walk into town. This place is well spoken of by visitors, but it isn’t clear how to reach the town centre - it’s one of those settlements, like Vienna, that turns its back on the Danube rather than exploiting its fine riparian position. We cross a railway track and walk along a back street. The map doesn’t make sense and such street names as we can see are incomprehensible. Dogs are barking furiously in every back yard. It’s a couple of hundred yards at most but I feel on edge when I can’t read, let alone speak, the language.

However we are soon crossing a ring road and find ourselves in the lively hub of this town. Its inhabitants are out in force on this summer night eating, drinking, sitting by the fountains talking, and in the case of the young, skateboarding, cycling and running around. The aestival atmosphere is redolent of the south. Here in northern Thrace, the Mediterranean is not so far away. Rousse has some fine colonial-style buildings not to mention an opera house. It's an altogether agreeable place to wander for an hour. “Dog Street” is a lot quieter when we stroll back down it towards the ship. Perhaps its canines sense our new-found confidence as we negotiate Bulgarian towns and their suburbs.