About 350,000 people live in Plovdiv making it the second largest city in Bulgaria. It was founded on the Marista River. People support themselves here on tobacco production, food processing, textiles and brewing, as well as high tech, festivals and tourism. There are six universities in this small city. It is known for its Roman era theater, still in use, and centrally located. There are old Orthodox-style churches, mosques, and a large Jewish temple. It was the European Capital of Culture in 1999 and 2019, no small honor.
We came in a van capable of seating 20, but there were fewer on this typical cold but sunny day. They waited for us on a side street near the Cathedral. We were accompanied by a guide. I’ll call him Boris. A big friendly guy, he speaks excellent, American accented English, the country’s second language, so this capability is pretty common.
Along the way Boris talked about life in the Soviet era. He told the story of his father wanting a car. He was able to accumulate the required 50% down payment. Then he waited. And waited. And waited for eleven years for the notification! When it finally arrived off he went to the official, and one and only, car dealership in the country. He’d ordered a red car. We have no red cars, they said, but here’s a green one. He could not refuse delivery without having to start the waiting period from zero. This was not unusual, our guide said. Generally consumer goods were hard to come by and the only imports allowed were from bloc countries. East German products were prized, though not by anyone in the West.
On the plus side, you could count on a job and if none were available, an income nonetheless. There are still people who prefer the communist era for its safety net. Also, while there were no real elections, government was stable. Maybe a few heads would roll now and again, but the government never fell. Nowadays the government is unstable. There are plenty of real elections, in fact, but there have been seven of them since 2021.
Once in town we walked up one of the city’s seven hills to take a look at some of the interesting architecture from the Ottoman period, something you do not find in the young (1887) city of Sofia. A mansion we passed was built by a well to do merchant. He was forced to change his name to a Turkish one and convert to Islam in order to do business.
Under the Ottomans, Christian churches were allowed, but they were not permitted to look like a church but rather but to blend in with the Ottoman architecture. Mosques were subject to no such restriction. Non-Muslims paid higher taxes. These sorts of policies made the Ottomans very unpopular.
We walked to the well preserved Roman era theater in the old center. As was normal for the Romans, the theater was carved out of the hillside, so seating followed the hill’s climb. No need to erect grandstands.
Nearby is the Circo Massimo, an oval race track, located beneath the area’s main drag. They have excavated only a small portion of the track, a main entrance. It was built at ground level and buried over time.
There are numerous eateries in the area, so this is where Boris dropped us off at lunch time. We saw lots of kabob shops, a contribution of the Turks, and places selling a variety of freshly baked doughy goodies like the one below. You can eat cheaply and well but you have to sit outside. Crossing back over the Circo Massimo you can find plenty or restaurants with indoor as well as outdoor seating, with plenty of people preferring the outdoors even at daytime temperatures around 5c/40f. The one we chose had a dozen salad offerings, which Bulgarians love, along with a variety of meat dishes. Lunch for two cost us around $20, payable with credit cards, almost universally accepted in the country.
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