The New York Times
By CORINNE LaBALME*

YOU may have trekked through Tuscany, sipped Calvados in Caen, and smelled jasmine in Provence, but if you haven't savored grilled kebapcheta kebabs along the back roads of Bulgaria, there are frontiers of Europe yet to be explored.
Of course, Bulgaria has been easy to miss until recently. Few countries have presented such an opaque facade, and more visa regulations, to the outside world. Bulgaria effectively disappeared behind the Iron Curtain and has stayed out of the spotlight as an oasis of calm during the recent Balkan conflicts. Now, after decades of isolation, Bulgaria is rousing itself like Sleeping Beauty.
It's also living a third-millennium fairy tale with the return of King Simeon II to Bulgaria's political life. The long-exiled monarch, of blue-blooded Saxe-Coburg lineage, was named prime minister after the parliamentary victory of his party this summer.
In fact, you don't have to talk politics or head into the countryside to find surprises in Bulgaria. After one hour in downtown Sofia, I already had clocked some minor urban mysteries. Why — in a city where stray mutts snooze peacefully in the shade of every monument — are the sidewalks so much cleaner than those of Paris? Why are the hemlines shorter than Milan's? Why have so many national monuments clearly listed in my 1999 guidebook vanished?
I didn't expect to find all the answers because I had only five days to see the capital as well as some of the countryside. Happily, the mid-July weather was ideal. The temperature hovered near 88 degrees every day, and the skies were blue.
Sofia is sightseer-friendly because most of its architectural treasures are clustered in a very compact area. A good starting point is the chandelier-laden lobby of the Sheraton Hotel on St. Nedelya Square, part of a sprawling but not unsightly government complex built in the 1950's as a luxury lodging for Communist party officials. The hotel's exterior walls meld into the Presidential Palace, where one can watch the Changing of the Guard.
Some of the oldest remnants of Sofia's past — the fourth-century red-brick rotunda of the St. George Church and the second-century ruins of the Roman settlement of Serdica — are nestled in the hotel courtyard. Protected from street noise, this little oasis, with benches and a cafe, is a nice place to bring a good book.
The small green-domed St. Nedelya Church is directly in front of the hotel. A cheerfully superstitious Bulgarian I met explained that this Orthodox landmark offers special services to deflect the evil eye on Thursday mornings, although they seem to have had mixed historical results.
An anarchist's bomb destroyed much of the building in 1925 while the intended victim, King Boris, escaped unharmed. A panoramic survey from St. Nedelya Square alongside the church provides a quick visual overview of Sofia's eclectic history, including the minaret of the 16th-century Banya Bashi Mosque (which is a block away from an early 20th-century synagogue) as well as a tiny medieval church, St. Petka Samardzhiiska, whose roof peeks over the pavement in the middle of a traffic island (during the Turkish occupation, 1396 to 1878, Christian buildings were not allowed to exceed a certain height, so the architects dug deep).
Over the next couple of days I learned that the Tsum, the former Communist-era department store that now resembles a multistory duty-free outlet, is the dullest shopping experience in Sofia, while the flea markets and the elderly ladies selling crochet work and honey on the streets are the most instructive.
I learned not to pack my most conservative clothing on future visits since Sofia is the rare European capital where hot pants and micro-minis are acceptable day wear. I also discovered that shopska salata — a chilled medley of chopped cucumbers and delicious tomatoes topped with white cheese — makes a perfect summer dinner and that inexpensive Bulgarian cabernets and merlots surpass many French table wines.
I'd been given an introduction to Lyuba Boyanina, an English-speaking guide who has become a fixture on the Anglo-Saxon expatriate scene since 1991. A trained engineer with a deceptively innocent sense of humor, she answered most of my questions in record time and proved that any Sofia guidebook published more than 15 minutes ago is almost useless in a city evolving this quickly. Although she didn't know much about the curiously clean dogs, she did explain that most of the Communist landmarks had been razed in the last few years, including Lenin's Statue and the mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov, the Stalin loyalist whowas named premier in 1946.
This introductory conversation took place over an informal lunch at Trop's, a popular cafeteria squeezed into a short street between St. Nedelya and the National Archaeological Museum. We loaded our tray with all the must-try specialties behind the glass: sautйed zucchini squash topped with yogurt and garlic, succulent stuffed peppers, tomato salad, cool cucumber soup and mellow, home-style puddings made from creamed rice and sugared pasta. (Lunch for two: under $3, at 2.21 leva to the dollar.)
The former director of the archaeological museum, who sat at the same table — Lyuba seems to know almost everyone in Sofia — told us about the most recent results of the excavation on the Chalcolithic necropolis discovered near the Black Sea in 1972 and dating from around the fifth millennium B.C. While it sounded like a tempting journey, Lyuba had already organized day trips that I was anticipating for the weekend.
Our first destination was the Monastery of Troyan in the Stara Planina mountain range, about three hours' drive west of Sofia. At 8 on Saturday morning, I waited in the Sheraton lobby as a group of eight fellow tourists assembled and repaired to an air-conditioned van, with a driver and Lyuba as our guide. The group was varied and included Sofia-based diplomats and bankers and a British Embassy officer. I was the only person who didn't live in the city, and almost everyone else had already taken several tours with Lyuba. (I simply identified myself as an American tourist)
The countryside starts quickly, and by the time you clear the suburbs, you may have already had to brake for goats. Farther out, the landscape was unexpectedly dazzling. Bulgaria may have suffered from underdevelopment and bad industrial planning, but its untouched hills and fields may prove to be a blessing for eco-tourism. We stopped to pick raspberries in a field, and learned that most of the crop was destined for jam as there is little market for fresh berries in Bulgaria. We proved to be a strong market and left with a giant flat of fruit.
By lunchtime, we were seated near a shaded branch of the Cherni Osam River, near the village of the same name, for a picnic lunch. It was prepared by a former fashion designer who had moved to the country to start a bed-and-breakfast. Ruska Tsvetkova served a memorable and mountainous meal of roasted peppers, delicate cheese pastries, lush homemade yogurt, vegetable goulash, Bulgarian chardonnay and rakia, the heady fruit brandy. Bulgarian cuisine tends to be fresh, simple and healthful (including the fabulous yogurt), although desserts like Turkish delight and halva can add calories.
Because this fringe of the Danube plain is known for its ceramics, we stopped at several independent workshops. A large decorative serving platter, with an ornate teardrop pattern in the traditional colors of blue and sienna, costs approximately $4.70. In the village of Shipkovo, near the famous Troyan Pass, or Trajan's Pass, we made a stop at the studio of Bay Petko, a celebrated local artisan who digs his own clay. (We also spotted his work in a crafts museum in the nearby village of Oreshak.)
Crossing the road that the Emperor Trajan built, we arrived at the secluded Troyan monastery, the third largest in Bulgaria, while the late-afternoon sunlight shimmered through the pine trees on a diminutive building covered with frescoes.
The exterior walls were decorated in jewel-like tones by a Bulgarian Revival artist, Zahari Zograph (1810-53), a romantic figure who died in the arms of his brother's wife and refused to obey most church restrictions. Zograph's lively depictions of hell make it look like a trendy nightclub populated by female fashion victims and bartenders who water the wine. The church's interior houses an icon of the Three-Handed Virgin, a healing icon.
Lyuba's contact at the monastery opened the shrine's small museum, where we saw the room, equipped with a trapdoor over the bed, where the 19th-century Robin Hood-ish freedom fighter, Vasil Levski, hid from Turkish authorities. By 9 o'clock, we were back in Sofia.
The Sunday trip was more nature-oriented. Our group of around eight — which included an American Peace Corps nurse and her husband, an artist, and a German worker for the United Nations — headed into the Rhodope Mountains roughly 110 miles southeast of Sofia, a center of ancient Thrace that is believed to be the birthplace of Orpheus. Archaeologists also theorize that it was once settled by Celts. When Lyuba played a tape of local bagpipe music, that theory made sense; the plaid fabrics hanging on the wash lines added still more credibility.
Our goal was the striking cave rock formations known as the Miracle Bridges. While the area's major city, Plovdiv, is a prime tourist destination for its Roman ruins and Bulgarian Renaissance architecture, the Rhodope range, whose peaks average 6,500 feet and rise over 9,500 feet at points, offers some of the country's most scenic hiking, past fortified villages, pine forests and alpine vistas. To get to the bridges, we passed through hillside villages where donkeys are still the most viable transport. It was harvest time, and the animals looked like mobile haystacks.
In the village of Zabardo, the van came to a forced halt. Only a jeep or a truck could take us farther into the hills. Lyuba had tracked down a retired forest ranger who — after inviting us into his house for a traditional snack of pancakes and honey — arranged a ride on top of his farm truck.
The Miracle Bridges turned out to be huge gray rocks, shaped into graceful arches, towering over the forest, Below, a cool, clear brook splashed through the canyons.
On the way back, we stopped at a roadside stand where vendors were selling jars filled with multicolored Balkan spices that had been swirled into a marbled pattern, layered like sand candles. I took one home and it reminds me of the historical strata — from ancient Thrace to the Ottomans, from the czars to Communism, and a fresh start with a princely prime minister returned from exile — that provide Bulgaria's fascinating subtext.

*CORINNE LaBALME writes about cultural events in Europe.

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