Nine golden and silver Thracian treasures, among them the most ancient famous treasure in the world were exhibited from 20th May to 20th September in the Archaeological Museum in Varna. I visited it on 19th of September. It was fantastic. The particular thin about his exhibition was that these nine treasures were shown in one museum while otherwise they were distributed among several Bulgarian museums.

At the moment I’m trying to receive a permission to publish here the photos from the catalogue. I don’t know whether I’ll manage to do it.

More ancient than the Mycenaean treasure, more ancient than the treasure of Priam from Troye- this is the treasure from tomb ¹1 of the necropolis in Varna, which dated back to 4400- 4200 BC. These golden objects are made before more than 6000 years, and have a common weight of about 8 kilos.

The Archaeological Museum in Varna

in front of the The garden museum

After the visit to the museum I was sitting unsuspectedly in a restaurant in Varna in order to have refreshment. Suddenly I saw a Bulgarian, coming towards the table and smiling in front of me. That was Dimo- our tourist guide from the trips to Sofia/ Rila Monastery in 2004/2005. He didn’t have time, because he was traveling with a tourist group, that’s why we arranged a meeting in Sunny Beach, where we drunk a couple of beers after that.

Again in the Balkan mountains. We travelled from Sunny Beach towards Burgas. We turned west into the inner part of the country before Burgas and after Aheloy. We passed through the town of Kableshkovo (it is there where the famous weekly market is). Then we passed through a lot of Turkish villages and finally along the E-773, which we followed through the towns of Aitos and Karnobat we arrived near Sliven. There we turned to Zheravna, our first target.

Zheravna is an old Bulgarian village, which is found after the Turkish invasion in 1396. It was tend to be a shelter against the brutal Turkish actions. Many shelters as that one exist in the Balkan mountain. At that time according to the legends the Bulgarian leaders had searched shelters in Zheravna.

The entrance of the church in Zheravna

After we finished our lunch we went on to Kotel. The town is famous for a lot of things. Man spiritual leaders of the Bulgarian defense against the Turkish during the national Bulgarian Renaissance were born here. Further more, here is found the Galatan school with its unique exhibition of carpets and tapestries. The town of Kotel is the center of the weaving of carpets in Bulgaria. Not at last position, here is situated the oldest school for national folk singing in Europe, which is, at the same time, the second by age in the world. But we visited first the ethnographic museum.

Photos of the inner part of a historical Bulgarian house:

Unidentified Flying Object

A Galatan School:

Teachers from the famous school for national folk music are playing for us

All these are real hand-made carpets:

There are figurative weaved carpets as well

These stones are from volcanic origin. In the sunlight they have a blue gleam. Therefore the name. On small serpentines we drove to this stones. Who wished could go down to Sliven by a chairlift.

A view towards the Blue Stones

The chairlift

Sliven is tightly connected with the Bulgarian history. 100 Bulgarian voivodes (leaders) were born here.

By the way the name of the current mayor of Sliven is Iordan Lechkov. He is the Bulgarian football player who scored a goal for 2:1 for Bulgaria against Germany in the World Football Championship in the USA in 1994.

We went back from Sliven to Sunny Beach by bus. That was a lovely and useful excursion for me.