Photo by garthwalker

Travelers to Bulgaria short on time will be pleased to know that Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city, is often referred to by visitors as a “one-day town.” Most of what tourists typically find interesting—concentrated in Plovdiv’s Old Town—can be seen in a single day.

Built around three hills under Roman rule in the 1st century A.D., Old Plovdiv (known in Roman times as Trimontium) a very walkable maze of tangled, cobbled streets lined with Bulgarian National Revival Era houses from the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of these houses have been renovated on the inside and are now galleries, restaurants, or museums showing the elaborate furnishings and ornamentation from that time period in post-Ottoman Bulgaria.

The Municipal Institute of Old Plovdiv (+359 032 633 380) is now offering a package for visitors to see Old Plovdiv’s Top 5 in one shot. For BGN9 (€4.50), one can gain admission to the Balabanova House, Hyndlian House, Nedkovich House, Zlatio Boyadzhiev Gallery, and the city’s pride and joy, its Ancient Roman Amphitheater, renovated as a modern-day venue for some of Plovdiv’s summer performances. All of these sites are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week, except for the Nedkovich Gallery, which is closed on the weekends.

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Photo by Sunnia Ko

In Bulgaria, herbivores and carnivores alike can enjoy the delightful and addictive red pepper relish known as lyutenitsa. Made from red peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, sugar, and other spices, a little bit of lyutenitsa can add life to a dry piece of bread or any of the grilled meats so commonly found in the Balkans.

You might have heard of lyutenitsa’s cousin—the ajvar sauce of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, a variety that is more pepper and less tomato. While you can find lyutenitsa (or ajvar, for that matter) at gourmet food shops elsewhere, once you’ve sampled some homemade lyutenitsa, we promise you’ll never go back to the store-bought variety.

Those traveling in Bulgaria should make some local friends and try to get invited over for a taste of lyutenitsa. Barring such an invitation, visitors can also visit an outdoor market and purchase the homemade variety as cooked up by an enterprising баба (grandmother). One jar should be enough to last you weeks and you won’t have to pay more than BGN2 (€1).

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Photo by marlandova

The beauty of travel in the Balkans is the authentic experience it provides its visitors. Without much of the tourist infrastructure set up in other parts of Europe, an adventure is always just around the corner.

Like when you want to inquire about transport options to Montenegro from Bulgaria and your handy Bulgarian phrase book only gets you so far with the impatient cashier. After all, how are you supposed to know that locally, Montenegro is known as Crna Gora?

Never fear, it’s ‘ole Wikipedia to the rescue. Consulting this handy Wikipedia directory in advance might just save you the energy you need to climb Ano Poli when you travel from Sofia to Solun (Thessaloniki). We love that the Web site lists city names in most European languages and with a version that uses the Latin alphabet. This way, we can at least approximate the local pronunciation.

Oh, and if you’re in Budapest and want to meet me in Dubrovnik, ask for a flight to Raguza pronto.

Wandering Cheapo Sunnia Ko is a wanderer at heart and primarily supports this habit as a teacher at Plovdiv University in Bulgaria. She is currently on a cross-Balkan trek from Plovdiv to Sibenik, Croatia, where she hopes to find the Adriatic as splendid and turquoise as she remembers it to be.

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photograph courtesy of mhodges

The Balkans stretch from Croatia’s Adriatic coast to Bulgaria’s booming Black Sea resorts, and include cities from hip and brooding Belgrade to creative, chic Thessaloniki. The tourist infrastructure in the region is famously uneven, with Greece and Croatia among the easiest to navigate, and Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia among the most difficult.

For a number of reasons, tourism is exploding in the region. From the increasing popularity of the Montenegrin coast and Macedonia’s Lake Ohrid (pictured above) to waves of second home real estate sweeping Croatia and Bulgaria, there seems to be no stopping the tourist euro in the Balkans.

Here’s a Balkan region roll call: Albania; Bosnia-Herzegovina; Bulgaria; Croatia; Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM); Greece; Montenegro; Romania; Serbia; Slovenia; and Turkey.

Surrounded on three sides by the Black Sea and branches of the Mediterranean Sea, with extensive mountain ranges traversing the region, the Balkans feature a wide range of warm weather and cold weather delights.

And with their low price index—and with low-cost routes winging to destinations all over the region—the Balkan region has become the place to go for city breaks and affordable extended holidays. And given the European Union’s commitment to enlarge to eventually include the entire region, it is also a good bet that long-term stability is in the region’s future.

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