BULGARIA’S Rose Parade : The Region That Has Made A Name for Itself Producing the Fragrance of Roses Celebrates Its Bounty Each Year With a Festival

Pasadena hasn’t cornered the world market on flower parades just yet.

Though the city’s annual Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day has become an internationally known spectacle, another less-publicized salute to the rose--thousands of miles from Orange Grove Boulevard--has established a place for itself, even if network television cameras can rarely be found.

Every year, Bulgaria’s Valley of the Roses also stages a parade--the Rose Festival--that unfolds like the flower it celebrates.

Locals shake out costumes from trunks and closets, tune up instruments, spiff up the family donkey and turn the usually quiet Kazanlik town square into a potpourri of motion, sound and color.

This is no stateside procession with long-legged bathing beauties, multithousand-dollar floats, marching military units, waving Disney characters or hot dog vendors. And yet, it is one heck of a parade.

I sensed a special day when I awoke to a fresh morning breeze from the snowcapped Sredna Gora Mountains and the fluttering of pink banners on the hotel balconies. In the dining room, employees readied luncheon tables with polished wine glasses and folded napkins for the officials who had begun arriving the day before from Sofia--their black, shiny Mercedes Benzes parked in reserved spots in front of the hotel. My waiter set a small glass before me.

“Try,” he said. The liqueur I held to the light had a warm hue, somewhere between the color of sloe gin and pomegranate juice.

“Our rose drink,” he said.

I wasn’t eager, remembering a weird California luncheon of nasturtiums, violets and other strange-tasting blooms. But as I sipped, my senses exploded: I tasted the deepest heart of a rose . . . I tasted beauty.

“ Dobro (good),” I said enthusiastically, lifting the glass in a toast to the day.

Although it was barely 8 a.m., life scurried through the streets. In the square, state-owned Balkan tourist vehicles double-parked next to mammoth buses from Germany, Yugoslavia, France and Holland. Every bed in the four hotels was full, and nearly three dozen foreign journalists poked about in the town of 70,000.

Gray-uniformed policemen planted themselves in small groups on corners, a few wearing pistols and walkie-talkies. One young officer accepted a rose with a broken stem from a pretty flower arranger, sniffed it deeply, then tucked it under his belt.

By 9 a.m., people filled the shady areas under trees. There were no folding chairs or camp stools; even the officials in the reviewing stand stood in the hot June sun. Babies in buggies had the most comfortable seats.

Promptly at 11, the first music wafted to town from the distance. A small band of accordions, drums and guzlas (Balkan banjos) set the pace, followed by a dozen quick-stepping costumed dancers.

The roza queen, held aloft on a teetering platform that looked like a wooden door, held tightly to a post before her; her other hand thrust straight up, as if reaching for a carrousel ring.

During the previous day’s rehearsal, the queen had been only a pretty schoolgirl in blue jeans, her thick black hair braided to one side.

“Wave to the people,” the parade director insisted several times, “and smile!”

Now, wearing a rose-red toga, her hair curled, her face made up, she looked like the ancient Thracian queen who once ruled Bulgaria.

Opposite the reviewing stand, she stepped off the platform and walked to a flagpole where she hoisted the rose banner and accepted a modest bouquet of flowers. With fetching shyness, she recited a formal greeting, then backed away from the throng of journalists whose cameras zeroed in on her like prying eyes. She wilted as she struggled with the role of being queen for a day.

Transformed Overnight

The Thracian king, a townsperson who the day before looked like a thin, clean-shaven Ed Asner, had been transformed overnight into an aging king with a graying beard. He approached in a creaky “Quo Vadis” chariot, then mounted a throne where he and his queen held court, sitting together on stools atop a Persian carpet under a wrinkled awning.

Overhead, a small plane swooped low, towing a banner: “Festival of Roses.” Another plane dive-bombed the crowd with a trail of drifting roses, while on the ground young boys surprised people with rose water mist. The crowd gasped when the sky, blue as a robin’s egg, suddenly filled with fireworks.

Rose-garlanded girls offered small bouquets. When I accepted one, there was no question that I, too, was truly part of this party.

Earlier on a drive through the 9-mile-wide, 80-mile-long Valley of the Roses, I had to strain to see these unobtrusive blooms.

The crowd, a sea of black hair, broken occasionally by bright umbrellas, craned their necks to see the outskirts of town. From the fields beyond the river came the parade--a ribbon of color, motion and rhythm that undulated without pause for nearly three hours.

Only years of winter evening stitching could produce costumes adorned with such ornate laces and embroidery. Preschoolers in baby blue dresses skipped hand-in-hand; young girls quietly formed a large rose before the throne.

Anyone Can Join

Without rhyme or reason, the parade juxtaposed ancient times with modern--women with braids to their waists, wearing babushkas and ornamented costumes, marched next to children in jogging suits carrying large cardboard roses. It was as if the word had gone out that anyone with a smile and a costume could be in the parade.

Within two hours, 1,000 people in 50 groups had paraded by and still more streamed down the street. Some groups sang; others played age-old songs on horns, bagpipes, guitars or guzlas. Still others simply walked arm-in-arm, swinging baskets of roses.

Old people crowded onto small balconies, teen-agers stood on rooftops and children hung like monkeys from trees. Hotel windows were filled three-deep with cleaning ladies.

Lustily singing shepherds strode by carrying long staffs. The only make-believe animal in the parade--an awkward, four-legged, booted buffalo with a pretzel hanging on an ear--playfully butted its masters. Real horses and donkeys swung red tassels as they trotted along, ignoring the crowds.

Young people “yahooed” as they skipped by, followed by flag-twirlers, drum majorettes, gymnasts and a village wedding party. The crowd went respectfully silent when a two-block-long group of schoolchildren in white blouses and dark skirts walked slowly, chanting: “Give us peace and a happy childhood.”

A gentleman spoke of the humor of Kazanlik’s late, beloved satirist, Tschudomir.

Portray Characters

Watching townspeople portray characters from Tschudomir’s drawings and writings, the Bulgarians laughed at themselves and at the foibles of mankind. Several girls walked by, wearing oversize concumas, the traditional round vessels for storing rose oil, reminding us that the parade celebrates the rose as the essential ingredient of perfume. I had seen real concumas at the Rose Museum, where the history of the industry is chronicled--beginning with the first oil-bearing roses brought by Turkish pashas and beys for use in fragrant gardens and rose water for Muslim rituals.

This valley, with its mild winters, sandy soil and high humidity, has a perfect rose-growing climate.

Bulgaria produces 95% of the attar of roses on the international market, with 80% from the Kazanlik area, or the Valley of the Roses, which stretches from Klisura to Tvardica in central Bulgaria.

Feeling weary, I was about to leave when I heard a monotonous drumming. Straining on tiptoe, I caught a first glimpse of masked males, looking like Kachina dolls, dancing ceremoniously on the rose-paved street--the famous koukero dancers from the town of Pavel Banja.

Each wearing half-a-dozen metal bells the size of beach balls, slung low on their hips, they carried the parade even further into Bulgaria’s colorful past.

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The best place to stay in Kazanlik is the Kazanlik Hotel, which is right on the town square and affords great views of the Rose Festival. Every room has a balcony. It’s comfortable, has an excellent staff, live music in the evenings and good food. We didn’t want to eat anywhere else. Rooms are about $30 U.S. a night.

Recommended: Make your reservations before leaving the United States, which is always a good idea when traveling in Eastern Europe. You’ll save about 50% of the cost doing it that way. Balkan Holidays of New York offers a nine-day tour package to Bulgaria for $799 that includes the Rose Festival, plus round-trip air fare and accommodations.

Kazanlik is about 130 miles from the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia. You can get to Kazanlik from Sofia via bus, train or rental car. We rented a Renault (attracting curious looks everywhere from citizens who aren’t used to seeing foreign cars) and had an easy ride traveling over very good roads. The scenes reminded us of motoring in the United States in the 1940s; there was no commercial advertising on the highways. The car rental cost about $35 a day (unlimited mileage).

Every year on the first Sunday in June, when the first roses of the season bloom, the Rose Festival in Kazanlik takes place. The date for next year’s event is June 5.

For more information, contact Balkan Holidays/U.S.A./Ltd., 161 East 86th St., New York 10028, phone (212) 722-1110.