I am loving Bulgaria. I think I already mentioned that. Even though I encountered my first (minor) setback of my trip so far.

My trip has been going super smoothly, everything working as planned, always getting where I want to go. So it was about time something went wrong. It was really such a small problem that it hardly bears mentioning.

There I was in Veliko Tarnovo, all ready to catch a bus to my next destination of Plovdiv. I arrived 45 minutes early to the bus station (the bus stations in Bulgaria are in annoyingly non-central locations), and went to buy my ticket.

“It’s finished”, the ticket salesman tells me. For some reason ‘finished’ seems to be the English word used throughout Eastern Europe for ‘sold out’, or ‘closed’. So all the tickets to Plovdiv were sold out for the day. I guess Veliko was a popular weekend getaway for Bulgarians and they were all heading back home.

After sitting dejectedly for a few minutes, I booked a ticket for the next morning, and headed back to the hostel for another night. If I could have been stuck anywhere for an extra little while, beautiful Veliko Tarnovo was a good option.

The bus to Plovdiv takes four and a half hours. One full hour of that time is the bus sitting around at a rest stop in the mountains and a bus station in another city. It was also the first bus driver I’ve encountered who seems to follow the speed limit. Bus drivers throughout my trip so far have been all about efficiency, speeding down the road, passing at every opportunity. This bus driver was positively slow. We were on some winding mountain roads, to be fair, but even so I expected a bit more verve from the driver. The drive was beautiful at least.

One unnecessarily slow bus ride out of the way and I was in Plovdiv, the European Capital of Culture this year. It’s also the oldest city in Europe, so they’ve had plenty of time to perfect their culture.

Plovdiv feels like a city of culture, and like an old city. In the old town every one of the beautiful houses contains a museum or gallery. The upper levels of the buildings jut out over the street, a tricky construction technique to get more floor space without paying for a larger plot of land. The cobblestone streets in this area are the most rugged I’ve seen yet. But the old town is hardly the oldest thing in town.

Plovdiv has been a city occupied by many cultures over the years. Thracians, Macedonians, Romans, Bulgars, and the Ottomans all put their stamp on Plovdiv before the modern Bulgarian state was formed one hundred years ago. There is a gate in the city wall that may date to the Macedonians. There are also some excellent Roman ruins here. I love medieval stuff and Communist stuff, but my journey has been lacking Roman stuff up to this point.

Plovdiv has an amphitheatre that still hosts concerts (sadly none while I was there), and seated six thousand back in it’s prime, a stadium which seated thirty thousand but is mostly buried today, and other Roman ruins. Apparently, being named Capital of Culture gave the city more incentive to excavate and display some of these ruins, with some being made open to the public only months ago.

Seeking to become the Capital of Culture also caused the city to clean up an area in the city centre that was basically streets full of parked cars seven years ago. Today the area is full of cool cafes, restaurants, and bars, as well as beautiful street art.

There is also one of the longest pedestrian streets in the world, and it wouldn’t feel out of place in Western Europe.

Also there are tonnes of cats here, and though they are stray, they’re getting fed and they’re healthy and friendly.

Bulgaria is my favourite country so far. I’m going to spend a little while longer here before heading into the rest of the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia.

Here’s some photos for your edification.