Oct 4 – Vidin, Bulgaria and More Sailing

Vidin Square at Port

Overnight, we docked at the Bulgarian border town of Vidin, and toured it in the morning before setting off again toward the Black Sea coast and a stop in Ruse, Bulgaria. The town boasts an impressive moated fortress, a mosque, a ruined synagogue, and a large church. It also shows the history before and after communism in the first elaborate buildings then the boring boxes. It is also near one of only two bridges between Romania and Bulgaria. The bridge near here is newly completed and all the roads are not finished, but soon it will be a key link between these two countries.

Mosque library with heart on top

Ruined synagogue -- used to be a much
bigger Jewish population here.

We walked along the waterfront and turned off to go to a mosque, where we were introduced to the imam who spoke to us. Islam was forcibly introduced during the Ottoman occupation in two ways: the oldest sons of people were removed to Turkey, converted to Islam, trained in the army, and returned to Bulgaria to control the country; and the Ottomans offered people the chance to avoid taxation if they converted to Islam. During the Communist years, all religions were suppressed and houses of worship were closed. The imam explained the interior of the mosque and talked about fasting at Ramadan and then told us the local Christian leaders were invited to join in the breaking of the fast each evening, which was held in the mosque. He also said he attended Christian festivals and pointed out that the top spire of the minaret was not topped by a crescent, but by a heart representing his family connections. The mosque also included a small library next door that contained a wide variety of books that were available to all to borrow. The imam spoke of worshiping the same god as the Christians and took a very tolerant attitude towards other religions, an attitude that is not prevalent enough in some world religions today.

Baba Vida Statue

Next, we walked to a medieval fortress known as Baba Vida – named for the oldest daughter of a boyer (local hotshot) who chose not to marry and saw to the village instead. We got a chance to wander through it for a while. Then we hopped on the bus and took a drive through the city and back to the boat.

Fortress and former moat space

We had two hours to explore the nearby downtown, so we took off walking and stopped at a local mall – 3 levels of small stores, mostly small clothing stores. It was really chilly this morning – I started out with my down jacket under my leather jacket and had on gloves, a hat, and a light scarf and thought a heavier scarf might enhance my warmth factor. The weather has been quite a bit colder than usual and I am a bit worried about having more than 3 more weeks to go before heading home. Cristian also touted the local red wines and the bottom floor of the mall was a grocery store, so that was on our list to check out too. Unfortunately, all the scarves we saw were more decorative than toasty, so we skipped that. 

New bridge between Bulgaria (left) and Romania (right)

In the grocery store, I picked out a bottle of red wine with a screw cap because I don’t have a corkscrew. We encountered a British expat who had moved here because he could buy a home on the Danube for only 11,000 Euros vs 100s of Euros in England. Others from the boat waved us back to the wine area when a local purveyor who spoke excellent English volunteered to provide wine advice. His place was 20Km away and we had less than an hour left before the boat sailed. The first thing that happened was that he put back my screw top wine (not good), but then when he tried to find something local, the store didn’t carry it. He finally gave up and left, and I got a better bottle with a cork. While we were in line, hoping we could use a credit card to pay, another British expat in front of us assured us there would be no problem.

We continued to walk around the various side streets kind of on the lookout for a corkscrew. At dinner on the ship, we are allotted 2 glasses of wine each night, so this bottle will get used when we leave the ship, otherwise I could probably talk the crew here into lending me one.

Pelican flock along the Danube

We spent the afternoon catching up on email while we still had an internet connection after we sailed east at 1pm, and watched a History Channel show on Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. (NASTY people who totally deserved what they got -- Elena was so hated that she took 10 bullets from the firing squad for each one her husband got.)