I’m from Macedonia, so Bulgaria is our neighbour and very close to us, and yet this year was my first time visiting Bulgaria in the summer. I always thought of Bulgaria as my ‘winter hideout’, visiting its many ski centres and spa resorts. The only thing I can say: I wish I’d spent my summers here before.
Because I have a very adventurous spirit, I went on a road trip, as I do almost every year, with a couple of friends from here and Bulgaria. We made our travel map and began the trip to Varna and back, visiting a few places along the way and covering nearly 2,000 km.
The place we stayed most days, and the goal of our trip, was the city of Varna. Varna is the last big city close to the Bulgarian-Romanian border, set in the north-east of Bulgaria, bordering the Black Sea and part of a few beautiful mountains. It’s also the third-largest city in Bulgaria.
Varna is a very old town, populated since the Neolithic era. It was a major centre for metallurgy and seafaring, and is a major business centre now. They have found the oldest known man-made golden jewellery, dating back to 4,600–4,200 BC. It has a few archaeological sites you can visit with a breathtaking view of the sea.
The first thing that astonished me when I set foot in Varna was the city itself — the beautiful architecture and structural order of the city. They have places for every taste: great nightlife clubs, cultural museums, business and shopping centres, a lot of restaurants, beautiful beaches and even a “Delfinarium” (a dolphin aquarium, which I think is the only one in the Balkans, and Varna is known for it).
Let’s go through them one by one. First, the nightclubs — most are settled on the beach in a line, so you can choose where to go according to the music you want to hear. There are clubs playing Balkan music (especially traditional Bulgarian folklore music), hip-hop, trance, R&B, pop, rock, metal, punk, or you can go to a karaoke club and sing whatever you want.
Second, there are restaurants, lined up the same way as the nightclubs. There’s a restaurant for every taste: traditional Bulgarian food, Serbian food, Croatian food, Turkish food, Italian food, seafood, pasta and pizza, barbeque, fast food, a lot of different desserts, and so on. So while visiting, you can try different things every day and feel like you’ve visited other countries too, because they tend to make the original recipes.
I mentioned Bulgarian cuisine, so let me explain further. Bulgarians are known for their barbeque, especially the way they make ribs and kebabs, with their own way of seasoning the meat before baking or grilling — the most-used seasoning is called “Chubritsa”, which is actually the savory plant. They also make their own traditional “Tarator”, very refreshing, used as an appetizer or sauce — a soup made of yoghurt, walnuts, cucumber and garlic. It goes well with “Mastika”, a traditional Balkan drink the Bulgarians make so well — a liqueur made from resins of the mastic tree, which grows in the Mediterranean and Balkan regions. It’s similar to Greek ouzo, but with a lighter smell and a little sweeter. If Bulgarians don’t drink Mastika with Tarator, they drink it with “Ayran”, a Turkish cold yoghurt drink mixed with salt. The second most famous drink is, of course, beer, which Bulgaria is very famous for — a lot of different breweries, each making exceptional beer, the most famous being “Kamenitza”.
On the other hand, Varna is most known for the clams and fish recipes that the Black Sea has in abundance. They are always fresh, coming directly from the sea or from the few clam farms around Varna, and they know how to prepare them in thirty or more different ways. There are also small fishing villages around Varna that supply the city with fresh fish from the sea or nearby lakes, some of which have unique species that live only here and nowhere else in the world. As a seafood lover, I tried as many as I could, and was sad I couldn’t try them all. They are delicious.
I mentioned there are a lot of cultural and historical sites in and around Varna. There are different kinds of museums you can visit — for vehicles from World War II, old-timer cars, old airplanes, wax figures, and more. There are also archaeological sites, like the old fortress or the old lighthouse at the oldest port and fishing village. So again, there’s something for every taste.
Next, there are the beaches. Varna has a variety of beautiful city beaches to offer, but the most breathtaking ones are a few kilometres away from the city, heading north towards the Romanian border. The most famous is the Golden Sands, visited by millions of tourists every year. However, the most beautiful, wild ones are even further north of Golden Sands — small, beautiful beaches with white sand, clear water and beautiful landscape. The Black Sea is known for not being too salty and not being calm, so because of the beautiful waves, you can try or learn recreational sports like surfing and kite surfing. Because of the climate and the sea, there are a lot of dolphins, so you can easily spot them — which is why they built the dolphin aquarium I mentioned before. It’s one of the crucial landmarks of the city of Varna.
I really recommend visiting this beautiful city in Bulgaria, especially in summer, so you can go swimming in clear waters, try kite surfing, go shopping, eat, visit museums and have the best time in the clubs. But don’t stop there — ask about the places you can visit around, so you can fill your heart with astonishing landscapes and great memories. You will not regret it!