Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 9: A Fortress in the Sky

Sunday 2 June
We sail into the port of Vidin on the right (Bulgarian) bank of the river. An impressive new road-rail bridge across the Danube linking Bulgaria to Romania was completed in 2013. It replaced the car-ferry which could not reliably run either in cold winters because of ice, or in dry summers because of lowered water levels. At such times, road traffic would need to detour through Rousse 190 miles downstream to take the only other Danube crossing, the "Friendship Bridge" connecting the two countries. On the lower Danube, all distances are huge by western European standards, whether it's to travel up and down along the river banks or to get across this mighty river.

We set out for the little town of Belogradchik in the foothills of the Balkans. Our guide this time is a woman who is not only Anglophile but has a distinctly British love of irony and word-play. Once again we hear the take of a native Bulgarian on the history of her country. But she is more outspoken than her predecessors in the countries we’ve visited. As we leave Vidin she points out the effects communism has had on her town. Once upon a time, she says, this was a jewel of the Lower Danube, a stylish, beautiful riverside resort full of churches and mosques, narrow streets and fine houses, a place that encapsulated the best of the river’s rich, complex history from antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages through the Ottoman centuries to the Victorian age of elegance. One book I’ve read says it was once a magical town on the Danube where you first caught a whiff of the Orient. “Now look at it!” she scorns as we drive past an unending sequence of derelict socialist-realism factories, office buildings and apartment blocks. Is there anything more depressing in the repertoire of human assault on a townscape than concrete that has been abandoned? “If you want to know why we hate communism so much, just visit Vidin.”

We leave it behind us and head for the blue uplands on the horizon. Rust-and-concrete grey gives way to lush greens. The cumulus is towering ominously. The road is torturous but well engineered, and our driver is skilful. Your first view of Belogradchik is across a deep forested valley. “There’s only one building in this town not to like” announces our guide, “and that’s the socialist telephone exchange”. But we don’t pay much attention to this charmless building so out of scale with the intimate architecture of this town. What holds the attention from miles away is the extraordinary acropolis that sits at the very top of this hilltop town. A vast citadel built among red sandstone crags that tower above the fortifications like giants’ teeth. It’s an unforgettable apparition.

However, the sky is darkening ominously. “I pray that God will preserve us from light (sic) and thunder this afternoon” she warns, all irony gone. “There is iron in these rocks. If an electrical storm happens, and hopefully it won’t, keep away from them for safety’s sake.” Through the medieval gateway, we see a path snaking up a series of steps to another gateway high up, then more steps to the crags at the very top. This adventure is not for everybody. But even from the entrance you can take in the magnificent spectacle of fortifications that are probably unique in Europe.

Known by the Ottomans as Kaleto ("the fortress"), the citadel was created in Roman times as a defensive structure to control the Danube plain at the northern edge of empire. It was remodelled in Ottoman times, and a splendid curtain wall added. We climb up and reach the middle gateway. The sky ahead behind the towering rocky pinnacles is getting darker by the minute. But this is not a time for faint-heartedness. We strike out again, onwards and upwards until we reach the summit. From here there is a magnificent 360 degree panorama over the mountains to the south and the lowlands to the north, with the town (and telephone exchange) as foreground. But most spectacular of all is the sky to southward, blue-black, brilliantly setting off the red rocks rearing up all around us. It’s a photographer’s dream, this dramatic sky that so perfectly echoes the dramatic landscape.

But there is lightning in those clouds, and the first oily drops of rain. We need to get off these rocks quickly. But like the summit of Everest, traffic in both directions has to pass through a gully where the steps are steep and narrow and only one person can get through at a time. Some of our companions are not as fleet of foot as we (still) are, so there is a queue to get off the acropolis, not a long one but enough to concentrate the mind as the storm begins. Meanwhile a party of schoolchildren is on its way up. They crowd inside the upper gate for shelter just as I reach the lower bastion, and the heavens open.

The drive back to Vidin is eventful for the number of heavy trucks that have appeared on the road, heading towards Sofia. It is narrow and sinewy and the risks taken by some of these drivers anxious to make progress are worrying. We round a bend and there directly in front of us is one big truck overtaking another. A head-on collision is averted but it’s a nasty moment. But there’s a good moment later on. Our guide spots a stork in its nest at the top of a pole guarding its young. We stop and enjoy the sight for a full five minutes, a simple pleasure that is touching for its sweetness.

Back in Vidin, we drive round the city. Our guide continues her architectural survey of the depredations of communism on her native town while picking out surviving buildings of beauty such as three houses from the Ottoman era, one of which has been lovingly restored by its owner. We walk to the medieval bastion, the Baba Vida fortress that guards the river upstream of the town. Its mighty curtain walls and towers testify to the threat posed to western Bulgaria by Serbia in the late middle ages. The nearby synagogue is singled out for comment. This fine large late nineteenth century building is ruinous now - emigration to Palestine after the war largely emptied Vidin of its Jews. But our guide tells us proudly that Bulgaria was the only state in Eastern Europe that did not hand its Jews over to the Nazis to be deported and murdered. I find out later that this statement, while true, needs qualification. As an Axis power, Bulgaria was forced to collaborate with the deportation and murder of non-Bulgarian Jews resident in the country. However in 1943, a public outcry supported by both King and Church led to Jewish deportations being halted before any Bulgarian Jews had been transferred to the Germans. This only became generally known after the end of communism in 1989. It's a very different story from Romania and Hungary.

While everyone else gets back on board ship, I wander round the town centre alone with my camera. Children are playing round the grim buildings that front the river, something you see all over Eastern Europe in the way you used to in Britain in the 1950s and 60s when my generation was growing up. Our guide has already commented on this, saying that smart phones and computer games have yet to take over the lives of the young in the way they have in the west. They laugh and giggle as I photograph them, then line up to pose and wave merrily at me. “Hola” they shout, “hi!” And I can’t even say hello or thank you back to the, in Bulgarian!

This is one of the grimmest urban environments I’ve seen on this cruise, so much the worse because of what was destroyed to create it. Rust, weeds, rotting concrete are everywhere. Even the river frontage, normally the showpiece of every riparian settlement, is brutalised by socialist-realist buildings that are not only ugly in themselves but disproportionate in their scale. The railway station seems to be an exception to this rule, contemporary, clean, functionally elegant - but then I step inside the ticket hall that fronts the rectangular plaza as if to say, here at least is an attempt to do something that will make the twentieth century worth remembering. It is deserted and has every appearance of having also been long abandoned. I may be wrong about this - after all, it is Sunday afternoon and no rail movements are due for a while. But as I look up at the destination indicator, my eye is caught by two pigeons staring down at me from their perch on top of the board. This is our domain now, they seem to say. At least till Monday morning.

Outside the station is an object of genuine beauty. It’s a bronze sculpture commemorating those who fell in the conflicts that have plagued the Balkans for so many centuries. Here is a soldier looking down at his own sword in sorrow for the suffering and death it has been responsible for during his time of service. It symbolises the universal longing for peace that achieves real poignancy. Here is humanity’s best self, undaunted by the corrosive effects of living under one tyranny after another.

Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 8: Churches of Bulgaria

Saturday 1 June
After last night’s storm, it is cool and overcast on the river today. We have said goodbye to Romania and are berthed back at Rousse in Bulgaria where we were last week. We drive for a couple of hours to Arbanassi, a village in the foothills of the mountains that straddle the central part of the Balkan Peninsula.

Our guide is a young man who combines seriousness of purpose with a light touch, just right for the job. He tells us more about Bulgaria, a country I’ve always regarded as somewhat mysterious, as if it keeps itself hidden away on the south bank of the Danube. Once again I’m struck by the deeply rural character of these rolling landscapes. As we saw before, there are hardly any buildings between the villages - no farm buildings like you see in Western Europe, or Romania for that matter. Here, villages have clear boundaries. Outside them, the countryside is deep, tranquil, remote, “one of the most peaceful areas to live in the w 
hole of Europe” he says. He speaks about the depredations of the communist era, how long it is taking for the country to recover. This is a refrain we have grown used to: every guide has told the same story. But it’s been illuminating to hear it from the personal perspective of each of them, whether in Hungary, Serbia, Romania or here in Bulgaria. Part of that story is also the persistence of Christianity in these eastern European countries. And Peter our guide speaks about both of these with particular intelligence.  

We arrive at Arbanassi as a folk festival is in full swing. Pretty girls and young men in native costumes are dancing to pipe and accordion music. All round are stalls selling food, drink and souvenirs including an enticing collection of mugs with Soviet heroes ironically depicted on them. My heart sinks at the thought of an hour of nostalgic Bulgarian folklorique.

But this is not the plan. We walk through this showpiece village with its display of pantile roofs till we get to the little church. It is a revelation. It was built at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in what was then a Greek speaking Christian enclave in Ottoman Bulgaria. Outside, it is nothing special, though I notice the unusual presence of the Star of David engraved in a stone immediately above the west door. Peter takes this as a sign that the church may have provided shelter for the Jewish community during times of persecution, though the church guide who takes us round the building interprets it as a reminder that Jesus was himself a Jew. I wonder.

What is remarkable about this this church is its interior decoration. (I have no images to share: photography is not allowed inside.) Every inch of it is covered with paintings - the two narthexes, one on the north side and one on the west, and the nave itself. Walls and vault are, to resort to cliché, a riot of colour. Can there be a single Bible story that is not depicted somewhere in this extraordinary church? It would take detailed study to work out the narrative scheme, and time to linger is what you never have on these group visits. But the guide does her work well. She points out the Tree of Jesse, Moses and the prophets, and scenes from the nativity, passion and resurrection. Pilate washing his hands is memorable because Jesus is depicted as immersed in the water basin as if to say, Pilate washes his hands not only of a dilemma but of the very Lord himself.

On the east wall of the central narthex is the last judgment, with a river of fire emanating from Christ’s throne, and immersed in it, an archbishop in full regalia. The guide, clearly a devout believer, finds this amusing. To me, most thought-provoking of all is a line of twelve Greek philosophers, among them Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Homer (yes, not just a poet but a purveyor of wisdom) haloed just like the saints and angels all around. It speaks of a sophisticated world view that is brave enough to see the presence of the divine even in the writings of pagans. There’s a world of insight here about grace and culture, and how the church should be doing theology and mission in the market-place where many faiths, ideas and world views clamour to be heard. I sense that these powerful paintings we have seen have had an effect on some members of our group. Is awe the right word to describe it?

After lunch we stop at the nearby university city of Veliko Tarnovo, “the city of Tsars” that is spread out across a remarkable site where four steep-sided valleys meet. We gaze from afar at the remarkable monastic citadel with its walls and towers (why isn’t there an opportunity to visit it?) before walking the old town and climbing up some steep steps to visit the beautiful eighteenth century church.  Inside, an elderly woman is selling candles. Our guide buys one.  

Before our next port of call there is time for me to ask our guide about something he has said to us earlier. He's told us that he was brought up as a Catholic but had turned to Orthodoxy in adulthood. He explains that he went to Germany to study economics. There he embraced atheism until he realised that life without faith was unrewarding and empty. He recognised that his upbringing had not given him the mystical or liturgical richness of Orthodoxy, and that as a Bulgarian, this was the native faith of his people. So he decided to convert. I ask him if he has studied theology, for his account of his spiritual tradition is lucid and convincing. He says he hasn’t, apart from his own reading. "Are you an ordinand then?" I persist. He laughs and says I’m not the first person to ask him. “Who knows what God may intend?” he says. And he asks me to pray for him.

I’ve mentioned the visceral hatred eastern Europeans have for the years of communism, but I've also sensed a similar if less explicit aversion for the centuries of Ottoman rule that coloured so much of their medieval and modern history. At the beginning of May Pope Francis paid a pastoral visit to Bulgaria. It proved problematic. He had requested a meeting with the Orthodox Church's leaders, and asked to pray with them. However, the Bulgarians would not receive him as a fellow faith leader, only as a head of state to whom political, but not spiritual, courtesies were due. On the other hand Pope Francis did meet Muslim leaders and, I understand, took part in a shared act of prayer with them.

Peter supported the stance of the Bulgarian Church leaders both in not recognising the Pope's spiritual authority (because of the Great Schism between the eastern and western church), and in their insistence that Islam is incompatible with Christianity. They believe that Pope Francis was compromised by meeting the imams and this justifies the Bulgarian church leaders’ resistance to welcoming him as their spiritual peer. “But Judaism, Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic sister faiths” I remonstrate. "Allah is the God whom Jesus called Father, whom all three faiths worship because of Abraham.” “Yes, but Allah is not a Trinity of three Persons” comes the response. “How can there be any sharing of holy things if you can’t agree about the Trinity?” The spectre of Ottoman Islam seems to haunt this exchange. So this response is not only typical of Orthodox theology but of a particular historic expression of it that is so coloured by its former subservient relationship with Islam. 

My own Christianity feels very different, so western is it, so influenced by the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and with a very different religious history behind it. Yes, his faith is more ancient than mine, and I honour that. Maybe I envy the certainty with which he practises it. I hope I am not less passionate about my faith than he is. We would gladly recite the creeds together. But in other respects we inhabit worlds that are very different and have been for centuries. Yet it is a fascinating conversation not only for its warmth and candour, but for how it helps me understand religion in Eastern Europe.

We detour and sink down from the green plateau into a deep gorge. The yellow limestone cliffs rise up sheer from the valley bottom, an arresting sight in its own right. But this is the land of the famous Ivanovo rock churches, created in these cliffs by monks who sought solitude here in the thirteenth century. We walk up to the top of the cliffs by a steep path. There is a profusion of colourful wild flowers. The tree canopy, as we climb clear of it, shows every possible shade of green. It’s marvellously fresh, vivid and vibrant, this holy and verdant landscape we find ourselves walking in on this first day of summer. As we walk, Peter talks to us about the monastic life. I was not expecting to learn about hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer on a Riviera cruise. There can't be many guides who can speak about mystical spirituality and prayer from the standpoint of a practitioner and do it so genuinely, without a trace of self-consciousness.

We contour along a pretty path until we reach some caves in the rocks. Here the monks lived in their solitariness. The low roofs are darkened by smoke from their fires or, equally probably, their candles. These primitive dwellings precisely echo their forebears, the desert fathers of Egypt a thousand years earlier who set the pattern for monasticism and whose rules of life proved such an  inspiration in the formation of monasticism in both the east and the west. Presumably this was a conscious harking back to a more primitive way of life. Did they know about the Irish monks who followed these patterns too in isolated locations like Skellig Michael? You’d be tempted to doubt it, yet Irish monasticism had well-travelled origins across Central Europe. I think of Cuthbert on the Inner Farne finding seclusion not to get away from the business of everyday life but to immerse himself more deeply in its challenges, choices and contradictions. And to fight evil in the name of his Lord - the world’s demons, his own. “Go into your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” 

A little further on we come to the rock church itself, dedicated to Saint Michael, the guardian of these high places. There are more than twenty of them hidden among these cliffs and crabs; this is the finest, and the most visited. Like Arbanassi (but tiny, no larger than a monk’s cave), its walls are covered with frescoes of Jesus, Mary and the saints. They take you back to the devotion of these holy men, their willingness to forsake everything for the sake of the gospel that called them into this life of poverty and prayer. There is a little platform outside the cave (thoughtfully supplied in modern times with a railing) on the cliff edge, with a sheer drop below to the valley floor that it’s not good to look down on for too long. I imagine a monk, stylite-like, perched on this space where there is barely room for a human being to stand safely, totally still and silent in prayer, rapt in  contemplative communion with God.

Then I look down at the ground. A metal rail has been inserted across the cave’s opening in modern times, maybe to contain a door or window of some kind. I look more closely at the lettering on the side. The message is unmistakeable, announcing its place of origin. Middlesbrough. The North East has come to Bulgaria. This calls for a photograph.

In the car park an elderly man is selling icons he has created (that's to say, "written") himself. I wish I could l could linger to buy one. But icons are prayers, windows on to heaven, and choosing one will not be hurried. It takes time because in truth, we do not choose the icon: the icon chooses us.  And the coach and the ship will not wait.

But what a remarkable day it has been.