Shoumen, south of nowhere

Patriotic ruins, a Coca-Cola branded mosque, a “stud factory” and a message for future generations: just part of Shumen’s charms.

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS: Albena Shkodrova

Name three places in Bulgaria considered beyond the pale for a week's holiday and Pernik, Karnobat and Shumen would probably top the list. Shumen's poor reputation, however, is ill-deserved.

Even though the architectural megalomania of the 1980s has ruined much of the old centre, triggering some monstrosities visible from the city and its surroundings, Shumen is unexpectedly pleasant, fun and diverse. The ancient Bulgarian ruins, the country’s oldest mosque, the horse-breeding farm inherited from the Ottoman Empire, Battenberg’s residence and its calm provincial rhythm make a visit to Shumen surprisingly satisfying.

The town: between Sherif Halil Pasha and Pencho Kubadinski

Leave the Sofia to Varna main road and a surprise awaits you. Literally, hundreds of flags adorn the three-kilometre route to Shumen. Their stately flapping in the wind creates a funny, old-fashioned tension, as if anticipating an elaborate military parade. Yet the town, a trifle disappointingly, begins with a mundane industrial zone.

Shumen is an authentic provincial town. Its pedestrian street, alternating with shops, banks and cafйs, passes underneath two rows of tall trees lined with benches, sculptures and fountains. Pedestrians buy bagel-like snacks, newspaper sellers yawn and the diverse crowd litters the pavement as if transfixed.

At one end of the main street stands the Russian monument. The old centre is at the other end. To create the spacious square in front at least a few dozen Austro-Hungarian style houses of the type that made up the original town required demolition. In their place stand three remarkably ugly buildings: an unfinished concrete tower, the erstwhile state-owned hotel (imaginatively named Shumen) and a marble-covered residential block bearing the sign Club Orgasm.

Try very hard and you can occasionally forget about this peripheral vision. This brings a few moments’ relief, during which the monstrous silhouette of the monument to the Founders of the Bulgarian State does not dominate, much like a storm-bearing cloud, the town’s otherwise sweet serenity. Perched on a high hill in the centre, it’s one of the most maniacal legacies of socialism. Supposedly weighing about 1.5 billion tons, its curious dimensions even entice German tourists from the Black Sea. Two winters ago, a horse's hoof broke off the tip of the monument: various sources claim that it weighed between two and five tons. It did not kill anybody only because there were so few visitors during February.

Accompanying this monumental folly is a capsule with a message to future generations buried in its foundations. According to tour guides, who seem to remember startling details, the message was planted by a former Bulgarian Communist Party senior apparatchik, Pencho Kubadinki.

After crossing the town’s central square, you start descending to another of Shumen’s landmarks, the Tombul Mosque. Despite its recent restoration – and Coca-Cola stickers on its windows – it's perhaps Bulgaria's oldest and most beautiful mosque. It was built in the 18th century by Sherif Halil Pasha. The locals, with historical patriotism, like to complain that its foundations were laid with white stone blocks from two ancient Bulgarian towns nearby – Pliska and Preslav.

Dreamy archaeologists and Mafia baroque

Pliska and Preslav are the two classic places to visit near Shumen. Their ruins are not as impressive as those of Efes, Aphrodisias or the Parthenon, but they are comparable to the holy city of Phillip of Macedonia, Dion. To Bulgaria’s history, they are just as important.

Pliska was the first capital of the first Bulgarian state, founded at the end of the seventh century. The best way to see it would be from a helicopter but nobody has yet introduced this service.

Archaeologists have made impressive graphic reconstructions of the ruined city, the foundations of which are now visible. Their work has brought about more inspiration than restorers can handle. It seems they were so impressed with the recreations – based largely on guesswork – that they have begun to complete, quite eccentrically, the Big Basilica along Pliska’s walls. As a result, it currently resembles not so much an archaeological finding as mutrobaroque – the style favoured among certain circles of nouveau riche and organised crime mobsters known as mutri (literally ‘mugs’) in Bulgaria. It dominates many new houses, built in kitschy classical Greek and Roman styles.

Preslav, the erstwhile literary school and the second Bulgarian capital (from 893AD) has been spared. In Preslav, the ruins are simply ruins and strolling among them is like walking through nature. It’s good to visit it relatively early in the day because the surrounding hills block the sun long before sunset.

And more horses…

The Shumen region is dominated by horses: the sculptures of horses in mid-flight – part of the monument over the town – through the two medieval capitals founded by Bulgarian horse-breeders, the accompanying rock relief of the Madara Horseman and, finally, the "horse factory" at Kabiyuk.

This "factory" was inherited from the Ottoman Empire, long envied by Western Europe for its magnificent stallions. Legend has it that its founder, Midhat Pasha, chose the place, 13 kilometres northeast of Shumen, by experimenting with a popular technique known as “meat hanging”. This involved hanging pieces of veal on trees. The area where the meat rotted the least – and the process was monitored with scientific exactitude – was deemed to have fewer flies and therefore suited to horse breeding.

Thus, Kabiyuk was founded in 1864, to raise horses for the Ottoman army on the Balkans. When it retreated from Bulgaria at the end of the 19th century, the Turkish army took every single one of its stallions with them and the newly-established state found the stable empty. It started to recreate it anew, renaming it as the sinister-sounding “horse factory”.

One of the few Bulgarian race horse breeds, known as the East Bulgarian, was selected and reared there. And even though business was never run completely in a market-based way, the farm survived as a remarkable place for walks and horse-riding to this day. Besides that, it hosts what is probably the only Horse Museum on the Balkans and offers a view into more recent history: the residence in which Prince Battenberg signed the Unification decree in 1885 is on the park’s grounds.

A surprise lurks around every turn of the town of Shumen and its outlying areas. When you think about it, Pernik – the Bulgarian epitome of the post-industrial Apocalypse – will be quite an interesting place when the Balkans discover the term “industrial archaeology”.

Did you like what you read? Explore the Balkans at balkantravellers.com, the first Bulgarian e-zine for feel-good travelling. Food, music, books & adventures, in the region and beyond.