Bulgaria

I arrived in Sofia on an overnight train from Belgrade, stepping onto the platform at 6am into a city that smelled of bread and diesel and something sweetly floral I couldn’t identify. The women at the bakery next to the station were already pulling out banitsa — those warm, cheese-stuffed pastry spirals — and handing them to commuters through a window the size of a school locker. I ate two standing on the pavement, burned my fingers, and understood immediately that Bulgaria was going to feed me well.

Sofia is a curious capital: layers of empire stacked without apology. A Roman rotunda converted into a Byzantine church, wrapped by an Ottoman mosque, flanked by a communist-era department store — all within walking distance of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, whose neo-Byzantine dome dominates the skyline like a benevolent gold helmet. But what surprised me most was how unhurried the city felt for a European capital. People sat in the park for hours. Nobody seemed to be performing being on their way somewhere important.

The mountains of the southwest

Beyond Sofia, Bulgaria opens into something more wild than the map suggests. The Rila Monastery, a UNESCO site that could easily become a packaged day-trip checkbox, hit differently when I stayed overnight in the monastery’s guesthouse and walked the courtyard at dusk as the last tour buses pulled away. The painted arcades — every inch covered in frescoes of saints and demons — take on a different intensity in low light. Nearby, Sapareva Banya is a spa town built around mineral springs, a pleasant stop on the way to the hills.

South of Rila the mountains continue into Pirin National Park, a UNESCO-listed range of granite peaks, glacial lakes and old pine forest. Bansko at its foot is a ski resort in winter and a base for hikers in summer, with a small old quarter of stone taverns. Further south, Melnik is the smallest town in Bulgaria, a wine village beneath sandstone pyramids where the local wine is served in family cellars.

Old towns and the heart of the country

Plovdiv is the city I would go back to first. It sits on seven hills with a Roman theater in the middle of town, an Old Town of painted Revival houses, and a creative neighborhood of galleries and cafés called Kapana. In the mountains to the north, Koprivshtitsa and Tryavna are two towns of National Revival architecture, with wooden balconies, carved ceilings and cobbled lanes that feel unchanged for generations. The villages of the Rhodope Mountains feel genuinely remote: smoke from wood stoves, dogs that own the streets, a local rakia that could strip varnish.

The north and the Danube

Veliko Tarnovo was the medieval capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, a town draped over the loops of the Yantra River with a fortress on the hill of Tsarevets. In the northwest, Belogradchik is known for red sandstone rock formations surrounding an old fortress. Along the Danube, Ruse is a city of neo-Baroque façades facing Romania across the river, and Shumen holds a large fortress and a monument to the founding of the Bulgarian state.

The Black Sea

On the Black Sea coast, Varna is the sea capital, with a long seaside garden and a famous archaeological museum, and Burgas is a port city with lagoons that attract migrating birds. Nessebar is a UNESCO-listed old town on a tiny peninsula, crowded in summer but beautiful out of season, and Sozopol is a calmer old fishing town of wooden houses and stone lanes. In the far south, Tsarevo is the base for beaches like Sinemorets, where I found stretches of sand with none of the infrastructure of Croatia or Greece — no sunbed empires, no cocktail menus — just sand, cliffs, and people who drove there from Plovdiv for the weekend.

Food and getting around

Eat everywhere. A Bulgarian table starts with shopska salad, followed by grilled meats, bean stews and yogurt-based dishes, and ends with a glass of rakia or local wine. Bakeries serve banitsa all day. In the villages, ask what the family is cooking and let them decide. Trains link the main cities slowly and cheaply, while buses and shared taxis reach the smaller towns. For the mountains and the villages of the Rhodope, a rental car gives you freedom, but mountain roads are narrow, so allow extra time.

Bulgaria is also a country for slow walking. Marked trails run through Rila, Pirin and the Rhodope, and mountain huts offer simple beds and hot soup for hikers who set out early. Even in the cities, the best hours are often the quietest ones, when old men play chess in the park and the cafés fill with the smell of fresh coffee.

Bulgarian hospitality is a real thing. In guesthouses, I was often offered a second breakfast, a story about the grandmother’s garden, and a bottle of homemade spirit I had not asked for. Say yes to as much of it as you can.

When to go: May and June for the roses — the Valley of Roses near Kazanlak is harvested in early June and the smell is genuinely otherworldly. September and October are ideal for the mountains and the wine country around Melnik. July and August on the coast are popular but manageable compared to the Adriatic.

What most guides miss: They frame Bulgaria as a budget alternative to somewhere else — cheap Prague, affordable Greece. That framing undersells it and misses the point. Bulgaria is not a substitute for anywhere. The Thracian heritage, the Orthodox traditions, the specific texture of Balkan mountain food — kyufte, tarator, shopska salad with that crumbled white sirene cheese — belong to nowhere else. Come for what it is, not for what it costs.

Photography: Pexels contributors.