Vagabond, Bulgaria's English Magazine

10/12/2025

⚓️Dive deep with 🇧🇬 Bulgaria's last submarine! https://vagabond.bg/bulgarias-last-submarine-4823

08/12/2025

🎁 The best gift you can give yourself? A great journey. Get inspired with our travel books: https://fsibooks.eu/

05/12/2025

👉 Vitosha’s rivers of stone 👈

🧗Ever since the first tourists discovered the Vitosha as the fastest way to leave the pollution and chaos of the big city and roam among pristine nature, the moreni, or moraines – massive boulders that cascade amid the firs, a hidden river rumbling beneath them – have been top of the 📜 👁 must-see list.

⛰️ The moreni are easy to visit, safe to explore and fascinate year round. Though the rivers of stone they form are scattered through the Vitosha, the Golden Bridges, just a few miles away from the Boyana neighbourhood of Sofia, is one of the favourite spots.

😳 The moreni, though called that, are not exactly moraines. The latter are the rock debris of various shapes and sizes created when glaciers melted down steep mountain slopes and dislodged boulders on their way. They remain in place long after the glaciers are gone.

❗ In its geological history the Vitosha never had glaciers. The boulders of volcanic rock were carved through the millennia by the combined force of running water and erosion. They form the so-called rock river. The water that still can be heard running underneath them is their actual creator.



📷 Anthony Georgieff

04/12/2025

❓Who was Krali Marko?, part 1 ❓

🪨Huge boulders that rise at precipitous heights. Giant bedrock holes that look like imprints of 👣 footsteps. Strange ruins from times immemorial… 🇧🇬 Bulgaria and the Balkans are dotted with such places – natural phenomena carved by the ☀️ sun, 🌧️ rain and 🌬️ wind, remains of ancient rock shrines or forgotten fortifications erected by some obscure warlord.

🤯However, if you were to travel back in time, say 150 years, and asked the locals about the origins of this strange rock or that mysterious "imprint," they would not hesitate to tell you: "Krali Marko did them!".

🧐 Krali Marko is a curious emanation of the imagination of the people in the Balkans. Part mythical hero, part historical figure, he is venerated across modern 🇧🇬 Bulgaria, 🇷🇸 Serbia and 🇲🇰 North Macedonia as the mighty man who protected lands and people from the Ottoman invasion.

😳 The real-life prototype of the mythical Krali Marko, however, has little to do with his epic doppelgänger…Marko (1335-1395) was a relatively insignificant feudal lord in the 14th century Balkans.



📷 Anthony Georgieff

03/12/2025

02/12/2025

🔥Meet Методи Митев/ Metodi Mitev - a man who doesn’t just embrace change, he drives it forward

26/11/2025

👉Bulgaria's Best Museums👈

🏠Picturesque old houses lining a narrow river and tiny shops selling hand-made sweets, knives and fabrics: The Etara open air museum recreates a charming, idealised version of mid-19th century Bulgaria. Spread along the banks of the Sivek river, eight kilometres from 📍 Gabrovo, it is a love 💖 letter to a 🇧🇬 Bulgaria lost in time – that of small merchants and artisans, and their families, who lived in beautiful houses of timber and stone, used primitive water-powered technology to mill corn and produce textiles, met in dim cafés, prayed in humble, brightly painted churches, and dreamt of ending the five-centuries of Ottoman rule and establishing their own state.

‼This alluring version of Bulgaria's past was created as the answer to a moment of monumental change for the nation: the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation that followed the Communist coup of 1944.

📜Etara was established in 1964. The idea was hardly new; the first open air display of this kind, Skansen, was opened near Stockholm in 1891. But in Communist Bulgaria the idea of Lazar Donkov, from Gabrovo, was revolutionary as immersive experience was an unknown concept for local museums (to a large extent, it still is).



📸 Anthony Georgieff

25/11/2025

The play Marilyn Monroe's Last Hour was written by a Bulgarian and a German psychotherapist, Vivian and Andreas Hamburger, and premiered in the National Theatre this autumn. Photos by Stefan Zdraveski

24/11/2025

🔔🔔🔔For whom the Bells ring, part 1

📍Beyond the E871 highway and after the last premises of Sofia's Business Park, a white metal palisade shields an immense building site. The borehole drilling resonates from within. The summer sun is burning. With Vitosha mountain against a clear blue sky for a background, a sandy country lane meanders up a plateau.

⚠Colourful weeds grow tall on both sides of the lane. Modest houses in peeling orange, green or yellow hide behind the old trees. Above them, towers a massive concrete structure, rising from the plateau: Kambanite, or The Bells.

⚠The site, a leafy park of 25 acres, breathes serenity. Despite the nearby road, the place is remarkably quiet.

‼The Kambanite monument was built in 1979, in just 30 days. Back then, it was called Banner of Peace Monument and was part of the activities for the first edition of the Banner of Peace International Children's Assembly.



📸 Anthony Georgieff

📝 Mike Diliën

21/11/2025

👉Bulgaria’s best scenic drives, part 9 👈

📍Shipka Pass (Road 5)

⚠️For you this may be yet another Bulgarian mountain pass, but for every Bulgarian schoolboy Shipka evokes a famous poem by Ivan Vazov which describes the fierce battles between Russian Imperial forces, joined by Bulgarian volunteers, and the Ottoman Army, in 1877. The Russians won, paving the way to victory in the 1877-1878 war, one of the results of which was Bulgaria's independence.

‼️At the southern trailhead of the pass, in the village of Shipka north of Kazanlak, there sits the magnificent Russian Church erected to commemorate the fallen Russians.

‼️What lies ahead of you is a winding road gaining about 5,000 feet in elevation all the way to the ridge of the Stara Planina. From there there is a side daytime-only road that can take you up to the very top. 360-degree panorama views will leave you stunned. On top of the hill there is a huge stone monument to commemorate the Shipka battle, and on the lower slopes you can see numerous Russian monuments and weapons left over from the heady days of 1877.

‼️East of Shipka Peak you will note a bizarre man-made construction perched on a hill. It resembles... a flying saucer. This is the remains of one of Communism's best-known follies, a Party House that was constructed in the early 1980s and that was supposed to celebrate the triumph of Communism in Bulgaria. It has long been abandoned and is now in danger of caving in. Colloquially, it is known as, well, the Flying Saucer. 👽👽👽



📸 Anthony Georgieff

20/11/2025

👉Bulgaria's best museums👈

✈The jet fighters that rise by the Sofia-Varna road at 📍 Omurtag are a rather surprising sight. When you take the detour, you will find one of the few exhibitions dedicated to aviation and space technologies in Bulgaria. The site was located for a reason - Omurtag is the birthplace of pilot 👩‍🚀 Aleksandar Aleksandrov, the second Bulgarian to fly 🚀 in space. In 1988, he was onboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-5.

‼The museum exhibition was created in 2008, to mark the 20th anniversary of the mission. It includes three fighters that Aleksandrov used to fly with (MiG-19, MiG-21 and SU-22), an M-11 surface-to-air missile system, and a radar.

‼In Omurtag's History Museum you will find the spacesuit that Aleksandrov was supposed to wear in 1979. Back then, he was selected as replacement for Georgi Ivanov, who became Bulgaria's first man in space.