JP
There were 147 passengers on board our vessel Avalon Passion. Some of them were quite sane. This one not so much. But he sure was one with whom it was fun to travel. HIs name is JP and we have a traveled with him a couple of times and he is always upbeat and having a good time. Hard to find a better travelling companion
The second country we visited on our Balkan journey was Bulgaria. I knew almost nothing about Bulgaria before the trip began. I knew that they had been taken over by the Soviet Empire without permission. That was how the Russians operated. They would apologize later as the saying goes, but they never apologized. The Russians advertised the hostile takeover as a friendly takeover, but that was fake news. They did this at the end of World War II.
Like so many countries in the Balkans they were rarely independent. Usually some big boys in the area took them over, like it or not. An early society that occupied the lands of current Bulgaria was the Karanovo culture which existed around 6,500 B.C. From that time to the 3rd century B.B. the region became the battleground of warring cultures that included Thracians, Persians, Celts, and Macedonians.
Things finally stabilized when the Romans conquered those culture around 45 A.D. That stability was shattered when the Roman state splintered around the 6th century A.D allowing in what we used to call Barbarians, which meant tribal invasions that included early Slavs, Bulgars establishing the First Bulgarian Empire recognized as such with a treaty made in 681 A.D. it dominated most of the Balkans and significantly influenced Slavic cultures when it developed the Cyrillic script. It became a great power of its time when the Krum dynasty took power. That first Bulgarian empire lasted until the 11th century when the Byzantine Empire began its domination of the Balkan peninsula after Basil II conquered and then dismantled it.
The second Bulgarian empire arose when it revolted against the Byzantine Empire in 1185. That second empire lasted until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1396 and lasted for nearly 500 years. Many aspects of that culture are still visible particularly in buildings such as mosques. The Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 created the 3rd Bulgarian Empire but it was taken over by the Communists in 1946.
That regime lasted until 1989 when the Soviet Empire collapsed. After that the country has transitioned into a democratic state which joined the European Common Market (now EU) and NATO. It is also part of the Schengen Zone. That means that once you cross the border into Bulgaria you don’t need to pull out your passport until you leave the EU. For example, you can go all the way to the UK without reporting in to any border crossing.
As I mentioned I really knew nothing about Bulgaria before I left, other than a few articles on line and a very interesting CBC radio show, Ideas, which I will get to a little later. One of my friends mockingly said all he knew about Bulgaria was that the women there looked by big strong men who could heave a shot put in the Olympics about as far as a male Olympic athlete. Long before Gender ideology became a thing or gender dysphoria, we had suspicions about the real gender or sex of these athletes.
Well, I am happy to report that the women in Bulgaria look just as good and feminine as women anywhere in Europe. Everyone should go to Bulgaria. It’s worth the trip.
Men need not be afraid.