Orthodox churches are dotted around town and on the stone façade of the 11th-century Church of Sveti Sofija I see a strange âunorthodox' script. This, I later learn, is Glagolitic, the earliest form of Cyrillic.
DAY 431 (28 AUGUST): SVETI NAUM
After visiting the town's churches, many pilgrims continue on around the pine-forested lakeside road to a point near the converging borders of Macedonia, Albania and Greece. Here, on a hill above the lake, they file into the church and monastery of Sveti Naum.
Below the hill a purling stream empties into the lake, spurting jets of froth. The water's pristine clarity, and the fish teeming in it (which are legally protected), are therapy for the soul. Later I learn that Sveti Naum is highly recommended for mentally disturbed people. On hearing this I emit a nervous laugh, but the truth is that my busy days are contented ones so that, physically and psychologically, I've seldom felt better.
Just as I am gazing vacantly across the water at a town on the Albanian shore, my reverie is interrupted by a young roughly dressed man who introduces himself as Hristo. My first thought is that he is going to beg from me, but instead he launches into a tirade against the Albanians, who make up one third of this tiny country's population. They ought to be deported, they are not Macedonians, he tells me with great passion, and then adds, âBut I'm not a nationalist.'
The curse of the Balkans has struck again. If racism is a disease spread by ignorance of our common human nature, Hristo is clearly a troubled man. Perhaps he is here to take the Nature cure. So I hold my tongue, the easier to depart in peace, and hope Sveti Naum can work its magic on him.
DAY 432 (29 AUGUST): OHRID TO SKOPJE
The morning news is full of last night's bus hijack. A band of Albanian militantsââterrorists', the state radio calls themâkidnapped a busload of passengers near Gostivar, south of Tetovo, and police blocked off the road while negotiating for their release.
This news fills me with anxiety: will the bus service be stopped, delaying my onward journey? No, this is Macedonia, where a little local difficulty doesn't get blown out of all proportion. My bus will leave on time but, avoiding the Gostivar road, will go the long way up to the capital.
Much of Skopje was destroyed in an earthquake in 1963, and the rebuilt city is a dreary place. Dusk finds me foraging through its deserted streets for somewhere to stay. At the youth hostel, where I booked ahead, the duty receptionist on seeing the wheelchair announces there are no vacancies. I have grave suspicions about this but, seeing all the rooms are upstairs, I back off. Eventually a taxidriver suggests I try the Hotel Bimex, a homely establishment âon the wrong side of the tracks' and not mentioned in my guidebook, but the family who run it invite me in as if I were a long-expected guest.
The Bimex's rooms are so small that in Japan this would be classed as a âlove hotel'. In fact, as the night wears on, it becomes obvious that it is not so much a bed-and-breakfast as a brothel. But the âgirls' and customers alike smile shyly as they quit the bar for a good night's unrest.
DAY 433 (30 AUGUST): TETOVO
The hijack is over, with all passengers released safely by their Albanian National Army captors. Radio can now reveal that police shot a hijacker dead after the ambush. An AlbanianâMacedonian in Carsija market dismisses the event as an orchestrated election stunt. Whatever it was, the episode's peaceful ending has reopened the road to Tetovo, enabling me to keep faith with my itinerary.
âMicky' is tense. My taxidriver is SlavicâMacedonian and he's driving me into outlaw territory. Tetovo is tense. Just last week two Macedonian police reservists were shot dead in this town of 80 000 of whom 80 per cent are ethnic Albanians. We are 10 kilometres from Kosovo.
Passing down the main street, I see the Albanian flag of the double-headed eagle hanging from every streetlight. When I ask why, Micky forces a smile. âThe government banned it yesterday.'
BULGARIA: 1â15 SEPTEMBER
DAY 436 (2 SEPTEMBER): SOFIA
What a grand capital this is. Wide boulevards, curious byways, bread shops that get up your nose in the nicest way, and public architecture on the monumental scale. The more I travel, the less I find myself photographing people, the more snaps I take of streetscapes, churches and quirky-looking structures, as if something in them expresses the soul of Man too often hidden behind that infuriating mask, the face of Man.
Early this afternoon, and more than a bit peckish, I succumb to an attack of the âmunchies' and take a table outside McDonald's. (I tell myself there will be time enough later for homegrown cuisine.) Keen to relax with a book, I am perhaps a bit off-handed when Vanya, a stylishly groomed woman of 30 or so, invites herself to sit opposite me. soon, though, we are talking like old friends, and indeed we gradually become just that.
Her English is excellent, and when Vanya tells me she reads avidly in it I need no convincing. So far all I have ordered is a Coke, so she takes the opportunity to suggest we move round the corner to a café that has become
the
place to be seen in Sofia. While we are shooting the breeze, Vanya nudges me. âLook who's on the next table.' I turn round, affecting a casual air. Ten young people, enjoying themselves. âI don't know. Who are they?' I whisper. She gushes, âThey are the stars of Bulgaria's biggest TV soap opera.'
In seconds she has rushed up to one of the celebs, introduced her friend âfrom Australia' and organised a photo shoot with my camera. The photogenic actors are smiling with the ease of those who own famous physiognomies and to whom this sort of thing must be an everyday occurrence. A couple of them even appear to be mouthing the word âkangaroo' in acknowledgement of my origins.
When we return to our conversation, Vanya is positively glowing. First meeting a foreigner, now hobnobbing with the famous: this has made her day, and the excitement is catching.
DAY 437 (3 SEPTEMBER): BANSKO
Every bit as charming and rustic as advertised, few possible improvements stand between this provincial town deep in the Rila Mountains and perfection. One might be to replace its wheelchair-hostile backstreets with some terrazzo. But even that is not enough to keep me from dining à la
mehana
, a traditional Bulgarian restaurant whose interior is warm and inviting, like a scene from
Grimm's Fairy Tales. In
one of these, Kasapinova House, tracked down through the directions of my pension host family, I partake of a Bulgarian regional dish,
kapama
âa simmering stew served in a clay pot. May McDonald's never come to Bansko.
DAY 438 (4 SEPTEMBER): DANCING BEAR PARK, ANDRIANOV CHARK
In the right season it is still possible to go bear hunting in Bulgaria, and when planning this part of the trip I thought that might be a mildly interesting diversion from museums, churches and traditional markets. Although this is not the right season, these thickly forested mountain slopes are the natural habitat of the European brown bear, and it would be a pity to come here without seeing any.
Sixties sex symbol and latter-day animal-rights campaigner Brigitte Bardot has become a vocal defender of the rights of these bears not to be taken by Gypsies (the Roma) and turned into circus acts. She and her supporters in groups such as Vier Pfoten (Four Paws) allege that our furry friends are the victims of gross cruelty.
You cannot be long in Bulgaria without seeing brown bears led around by halters held by their Roma handlers. What Bardot has done is sponsor a set of sanctuaries where these bears, removed from Roma custody, are kept under kindly supervision. The Roma are paid compensation. It all sounds like a neat piece of progress, but life (as we know) is not so straightforward. An hour in the ursine presence this morning has convinced me their whole kind would be better off without humans of any description (as they no doubt once were).
At this parkâa hectare of grass, hollows and a caveâthe six resident specimens of
Ursus arctos
are closed in by a high-wire fence. Leaving them alone may be their new protectors' aim, but that's not exactly how things work out. One of their three keepers, Ibrahim Garaliiski, explains why the growing bears are spayed: âWe don't want to have baby bears because we can't look after them in the forest.'
When nineteen more bears currently living with the Roma end up here, the Dancing Bear Park of Belitsa (a village close by) will be the biggest of its type in Europe, brags Vier Pfoten. But then, when you consider that the Roma have lived off the proceeds of dancing bears for centuries, what will this change mean for them? Tsvetelina Ivanova, Vier Pfoten's publicity director in Sofia, frankly admits, âEach of these “dancing bears” feeds about 25 persons from their big families.'
The compensation is something, to be sure, but it is hard to imagine happy-go-lucky bear owners of a certain ageâmany Roma bear-handlers are on the far side of 60âfinding new ways of earning their livelihood.
DAY 440 (6 SEPTEMBER): PLOVDIV
Today is 1885 Unification Day, a public holiday for the Bulgarians, who are clearly not ones to let their historical past go unremarked.
The name of Bulgaria's second city sounds ugly to my ears, suggestive of a pudding that failed to rise, but the Old Town quarter is just oozing with character. Nineteenth-century Plovdiv âbaroque' houses with eaves projecting over the cobbled streets account for much of it. But the jewel in Plovdiv's crown is a magnificent example of Orthodox architecture, the onion-domed Church of Constantin and Elena. Dating from 1832, the current structure is the latest of several churches to have occupied this site since very early in the Christian era.
On the cobblestones opposite the church walls, a mustachioed man who looks as if he had stepped out of a sepia photo
circa
1910 cranks up a Wurlitzer. On the next corner sits another, offering his own finely worked watercolour sketches of the memorable streetscape around us.
After a brief negotiation I hand him the equivalent of US$25 but he detains me for a favour. When I arrive back in my homeland, would I send him a photograph of myself with the sketch in my own home? It is a casual but compelling request and weeks after I return, when more pressing business is out of the way, my promise will be kept.
DAY 442 (8 SEPTEMBER): BURGAS TO SOZOPOL
The overnight train from Plovdiv arrives at the Black Sea coastal town of Burgas bright and early, but my eagerness to seize the day encounters a mechanical setback. Having the compartment to myself, I took the wheels off my chair and rested them on the floor while the rollicking of the carriage across the central Bulgarian plain guaranteed me a restful night. But, on rising, I find that the tyre I bought in Athens is flat. It dawns on me that the source must be a slow leak, the likeliest culprit being those oh-so-charming cobblestones of old Plovdiv.
Fortunately, minibuses to Sozopol, the beach resort just down the coast, depart from directly in front of Burgas station, but the hundred or so metres wheeling down the platform on my lopsided mechanical steed leave me feeling as deflated as the offending tyre.
Once in Sozopol, I again have no alternative but to âlimp' around town until I come to a service station. Ten minutes later, with my wallet a little lighter but looks of appreciation and gratitude all round, I am back on the road again, ready to face the day totally pumped.
This is a good time to be in Sozopol, with the annual Apollonia Arts Festival in full swing. Rolling alongside a beachside park this evening to join the crowd at an open-air concert, I am surprised to run into Vanya. She is in town specifically for the festival, she tells me, and although we don't spend long together here we agree to meet back in Sofia next week.
DAY 445 (11 SEPTEMBER): VARNA
Now is the tail-end of the summer boom. Hundreds of white deckchairs sit unoccupied, looking out to the Black Sea.
An autumnal chill makes me wish I'd put a windcheater on for my stroll along the beachfront boardwalk.
Funny thing, this journey. A week today, it will be a year since I was at the eastern end of the Black Sea: now I'm on its western shore.
At noon I find myself by the south wall of Varna's imposing Assumption Cathedral, whose towering gold onion domes look as if they had been airlifted straight from Kiev.
But what's this I see on the path beside the church? A bear, forepaws down, being led by a halter.
In a flash I have bounded up, eager as a puppy to communicate with the Roma man and his gold-capped-but-otherwise-gap-toothed lady. I need to know: is this bear's contented life as a future inmate of Belitsa going to mean misery for them?
Acting on a brainwave, I rub my fingers together in the universal symbol for money. The Romany wife grins, utters the magic formula, âBrigitte Bardot', and indicates the money will be rolling in before long.
DAY 446 (12 SEPTEMBER): VARNA
Distance, and the absence of newspapers, help me to see through to the heart of things. Today I tune into Bush's UN speech, where he raises the stakes against Saddam, accusing him of hiding âweapons of mass destruction'.
What we are witnessing here is pure Greek drama, and the plot boils down to this: Bush's rage against Saddam is the story of one man trying to kill another man who tried to kill his father. The rest is pure posturing.
DAY 449 (15 SEPTEMBER): SOFIA
Back in the Bulgarian capital, I am outside the most famous and beloved building in the entire country: Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The large public square out front is almost empty, with the only sounds the dying of the church bells' peal and the rustle of Sunday morning flea-market stallholders setting up.
Then, from the far side of the square, the quietness is pierced by a middle-aged woman's shrill voice. She is wagging her finger at a Gypsy couple leadingâyou guessed itâa bear on a stout leash. She berates the couple so fiercely that their smiles turn to scowls and they skulk off, animal in tow, as if to avoid further public embarrassment.