Destination: Bulgaria : A Different Kind of : Rose Parade : Like Flower Petals, the Culture and the Surprising Architecture Are Multi-Faceted

It rained last night and the ground is too wet for treading into the rose fields. And so I am sitting with half a dozen friends on a cafe balcony in the town of Kazanluk--an important center for the world’s rose oil industry--watching rose-decorated people trickle into the square below. They come in ones and twos, then in whole groups, wearing traditional costumes of red and gold; some of the men in tall furry hats and green vests, everyone with roses tucked into their hair or their button holes or with wreaths of roses around their necks. Folk dancers and musicians begin to appear, mixing with shoppers returning from the market; one man carries a sack full of ducklings, another holds a fine red rooster by its feet. A little boy dangling a strap of cowbells from his shoulder makes a strange melody as he moves along the street below.

Suddenly the square is full. It seems the whole town has turned out, carrying bouquets of roses or single blossoms. Trumpets blast. Men wearing tall headdresses decorated with bits of mirror and clanging bells dance around in a ritual to drive out evil spirits. A band playing sheepskin bagpipes heralds the arrival of the rose queen and her retinue. The strong, sweet smell of roses wafts up to the balcony as young people spray scent into the crowd from large canisters.

For a week each spring (this year, May 30-June 6) villages and towns in Bulgaria’s Rose Valley celebrate the country’s most famous crop with rose festivals like the one here today, jumping from village to town on different days. I first heard of these festivals about 10 years ago, when I was travel editor for the European Stars & Stripes newspaper. As a fan of folklore and traditional costumes, I dreamed of exploring the Rose Valley. It also seemed a good opportunity to travel around the country whose economy is influenced to a great extent by something as lovely as a rose.

From my home in Frankfurt, I hopped a plane to the capital of Sofia and took a bus to Plovdiv, in the center of the country and at the southern edge of the Rose Valley. From there I made my way around the region, branching out into the countryside by bus and car.

I had a general plan: After seeing the Kazanluk rose festival--the most famous of the celebrations--I wanted to go to the Black Sea coast, then on to visit one of the ancient rock monasteries and, finally, to one of the National Revival-style monasteries that are typical of Bulgaria. Several of each type of monastery are scattered around the country and I was able to do all of this, if only briefly, covering more than 800 miles in 10 days.

I visited the Alaja rock monastery near the Black Sea coast and stopped at Rila Monastery on my trip to the southwest corner of Bulgaria.

But I was first of all in search of roses, so I started with the rose fields.

The narrow Rose Valley, about 20 miles long and five miles wide, nestles in the shadow of the Balkan and Sredna Gora mountains. Its rolling landscape is verdant at this time of year, dotted with fields of red and white roses that stretch like a checkerboard as far as the eye can see.

Nature’s red and rose colors are adopted in the dress worn during the festivals. Tradition is treasured by those who live in the Rose Valley, and the Kazanluk festival is a wonderful opportunity to get acquainted with typical Bulgarian song and dance, as well as to admire the intricate costumes.

The celebration continues for a week, but most guests remain for about two days--just the right amount of time to take in an afternoon folklore performance, to accompany the locals into the rose fields and pluck a bouquet of roses and to see the Rose Museum, which traces the history of rose-growing here.

The streets of Kazanluk are crowded from mid-morning until late at night as guests from Japan, Germany and the United States rub shoulders with Bulgarian visitors from other parts of the country and with local people in costume. The Bulgarians are invariably friendly and polite to strangers and they patiently explain time and again to every guest who asks how roses are intertwined with their lives.

The attar roses--the red Rosa damascena and the white Rosa alba are the primary breeds used now--were brought from Persia to this valley about 300 years ago. The area now known as the Rose Valley, whose main towns are Kazanluk and Karlovo, produces some of the world’s best rose oil for perfume . . . the best, at least, according to the admittedly partial Bulgarians. Yet even discriminating French perfume makers seem to approve of its quality. A spokesman for a major French perfume producer, Fragonard, told me that Bulgarian rose oil is equal in quality to French, which is, to him of course, the best in the world.

He said that the Bulgarian method of processing rose oil is the decisive factor in maintaining that quality. Rose oil is distilled by the same method as brandy. It takes three tons of pink roses or five tons of white to produce one liter (about a quart) of rose oil, which sells for $7,000.

The value of this--both aesthetically and economically--cannot be overstated. For years, while all other Eastern Bloc currencies were “soft,” the Bulgarian lev was traded on world money markets because its rose oil was used in the world’s leading fragrances. The oil is exported to 30 countries, with France the No. 1 buyer. And there is still hope that rose oil will help lift Bulgaria from the economic mire engulfing so much of Eastern Europe.

Once considered one of the most hard-line of Moscow’s allies, Bulgaria is making the change from communism to capitalism with so little fuss that the West hardly takes notice. Yet this tiny country--about the size of Ohio--deserves closer acquaintance. As the place where two cultures--the Christian Orthodox and the Muslim--collided, it is a perfect combination of the exotic and the familiar.

Tourists find familiar vegetables on the table in delicious guises, and Bulgarian wines are an “in” secret among connoisseurs throughout Europe, especially in England. Bulgarian music (similar to, but less shrill than Turkish, and made famous in the U.S. through tours and records by the Bulgarian Stage Women’s Choir) shares billing with Western rock at local night clubs. And prices are low: Hotel rooms begin at about $18 a night; a substantial dinner can be had for as little as $4.

Like the rose, modern Bulgaria is layer upon layer of beauty, just as it is layers of some of the world’s great civilizations: Thracian, Greek, Celtic, Roman, Slavic, Byzantine. The Rose Valley is a superb place to explore the epochs. Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city and once its capital, has been a settlement for perhaps 8,000 years--making it older than Rome, Athens or Constantinople. Plovdiv’s restored Roman theater is today a favorite spot for open-air performances, and its Old Town is a showcase of 18th- and 19th-Century Bulgarian National Revival architecture. Ornate merchants’ houses have been turned into museums revealing that life here has for centuries been a juxtaposition of East and West: bright-cushioned Turkish divans under the windows, baroque wood carvings decorating the ceilings. Traditional craftsmen have set up shop along Rue Stramna (Steep Street) in the Old Town.

A Thracian tomb from the 3rd Century BC, decorated with frescoes and filled with priceless golden objects, was unearthed in 1944 at Kazanluk. And like the caves at Lascaux in France, a copy had to be made to protect the original from visitors. There are in the immediate vicinity 37 tumuli, or hillocks marking the ancient burial sites of kings and nobles. However, to see what has been called by archeologists the oldest worked gold in the world, one must go to Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. Much of that gold, dating to around 4,000 BC, was found entombed without a corpse, perhaps buried in rites symbolizing the end of a monarch’s reign.

The heart of Bulgaria, however, lies in its monasteries--120 of them--which preserved the national culture during the Turkish rule that began in 1396 and ended only in 1878. The pride and joy is beautiful Rila Monastery, ancient seat of religion and learning, nestled in the country’s highest mountains about 75 miles south of Sofia.

The monastery itself has burned many times; the buildings standing today are a fine example of 19th-Century Bulgarian National Revival architecture. Rambling white stone arches on the lower levels support lacy wooden balconies, giving the impression that they are built of light and air. The church, crouching low under its Orthodox dome, appears aglow with frescoes and wall paintings, inside and out, on every inch of paint-able surface.

The monastery has 300 cells (although only 12 monks are in residence) and a number of “guest rooms,” now preserved as examples of folk art. They were furnished by cities throughout Bulgaria for their citizen-pilgrims (locals who made pilgrimages to the monastery), and each city tried to outdo the other in showing off its prosperity.

From Rila Monastery it is a short drive south to Blagoevgrad, a lively city where the American University in Bulgaria has, ironically, set up in former Communist Party headquarters, a center for teaching business and economics. Farther along the road I discovered the spa town of Sandanski, an excellent overnight stop, not just for its good hotels but for its relaxed atmosphere--the type that characterizes spa towns throughout southern Europe.

Most tourists go to the Black Sea coast for sun, sand and water that is shallow and safe enough for children, but during my short stay I had no time to lie in the sun. Local acquaintances and I poked around the Alaja rock monastery, which is burrowed into the limestone cliffs near Albena, at the northern end of the coast. Its 13th-Century murals are in such poor condition that they have been closed off, but we were able to explore the two-story hermit cells.

Also on the northern end of the coast, Golden Sands was the first Bulgarian resort to attract international tourists and still is one of the most popular. However, I found Druzhba next door to be quieter and more elegant. Nearby Varna has an aquarium and dolphin pool in its Marine Gardens, as well as a recently excavated aeneolithic (the transition period between the Neolithic and Bronze ages) necropolis and an elaborate network of Roman baths. It is a bustling city with a naval academy and a port for passenger ships connecting to Yalta, Istanbul and Athens.

The central-coast resort town of Sunny Beach has the country’s best beach and is popular with groups, but Nesebur peninsula lies just two miles away, a delight for anyone who wants to explore history as I do and get to know the local population by staying in a private home instead of a hotel. This is easy to arrange. I simply asked someone on the street where I could find a hotel. Invariably either he or she rented rooms at home or knew someone who did. Once there were 40 Christian churches here, but now only a few examples remain from the 5th, 10th, 13th and 17th centuries, scattered among the National Revival houses.

But my time was getting short, so I hurried back to Sofia, far to the west. This city of churches, museums, art galleries, opera and theater is taking on a new sheen of neon and shop windows and its bustling atmosphere is far removed from the peaceful rose fields in the country’s center.

I visited the imposing Alexander Nevski Memorial Cathedral, standing at the city’s highest point, in delightful contrast to the tiny, half-buried Sveta Petka Samarjiiska church that is overshadowed by the TsUM department store. I explored the oldest preserved building in Sofia, the 4th-Century church Sveti Georgi, sitting incongruously in the courtyard of the Balkan Sheraton Hotel, which is built in the Stalinist “wedding cake” style--a reminder of an era that is being firmly laid to rest.

My flight back home was booked, so I didn’t have time for the concerts and art exhibitions, or for shopping for handwoven carpets. Those things I left for next time. My golden rule of travel is never “finish” a country, but find something that will bring you back. Someday, when I catch the scent of the roses again, I will recall the Rose Valley--and then I will return to Bulgaria.

GUIDEBOOK: Bulgaria Basics

Getting there: Lufthansa flies nonstop from LAX to Frankfurt and then nonstop Frankfurt to Sofia. Lowest round-trip fares start at about $1,060. Other carriers connect to Balkan Airlines in various cities, including New York, London and Paris. Lowest round-trip fares start at about $1,000.

Tours: Balkan Holidays has several Bulgarian tours, including a Valley of the Roses tour during the rose festival in early June. One-week tour includes visits to Rose Valley, Sofia, Plovdiv, Koprivshtitsa and Bachkovo Monastery; $1,143 per person, double occupancy, includes round-trip flight from New York; add-on round-trip fare from Los Angeles is $418. The company also offers seven-to-10-day package tours of Bulgaria, as well as city tours for independent travelers; tel. (212) 573-5530.

Where to stay: Western chain hotels are good but may be expensive. Among them are Sheraton, Novotel and Summit International. Facilities outside major tourist centers may be modest. Rooms in private homes can be arranged through Balkan Holidays or when you arrive in Bulgaria through central booking bureaus at tourist offices, usually in train stations.

Getting around: Rental cars are available, both from private local firms and international chains such as Hertz. I also used buses and found them to be inexpensive, efficient and convenient.

Visas: American citizens staying less than a month do not require visas but for stays of a 30 days or more visas can be obtained from the Embassy of Bulgaria, attn. consular office, 1621 22nd St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008; (202) 483-5885. (There is no Bulgarian Tourist Office in the U.S.)