Pleven, Bulgaria

Here we go with some more Bulgarian history...oh boy!
- Bulgaria became an independent country in 681 AD as a combination of Bulgaria, Slavs, and Thracians (Spartacus was a Thracian).
- Bulgaria created the first Cyrillic alphabet and is used by 350 million people in Eurasia (Russia makes up half of that). With Bulgaria's acceptance into the EU, that is now the 3rd alphabet accepted (in addition to Latin and Greek).
- Pensioners (retired folk) live on about 300 euros/month but fortunately most own their homes, thanks to their Communist past.
- During Ottoman occupation everywhere, young boys were taken to Turkey and converted to Islam and became the elite fighting force of the Janissaries.
- If you didn't convert to Islam during occupation you had to pay a special "blood tax."
- The Eastern Bloc was often called the "Second World," while the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but also included the pre-1948 European Soviet ally Yugoslavia.
- Primary export of Bulgaria is rose oil.

Apparently there was nothing to see along the Danube, so we were bussed an hour to Pleven, a town of 90,000 people, the 7th largest but shrinking. There are a total of 6 million living in the country, with the capital, Sofia, the largest with 1.5 million people. (Note: Chicago has a Bulgarian population twice as big as Pleven.)

The main attraction in this town was the Epopee (Epic) of Pleven 1877. The war for independence from 500 years of Ottoman rule happened for almost a year and only after the 1876 uprising was unsuccessful. In that uprising 30,000 Bulgarians - mostly women and children - were killed, causing anger and eventually motivated Russia to assist with the Ottoman Turk removal. (An American journalist working for NY and London papers helped with that empathy.)

This panorama shows the battle in a 360⁰ round (similar to Gettysburg and other spherical depictions). This was not the first or most important battle against the Turks, but was the last major battle to get the Turks out of Bulgaria. Many of the weapons supplied to the Russian forces were American - Springfield, Remington, Winchester, Smith & Wesson (America and England supplied Ottomans); world-wide arms supplying doesn't really change it seems. (Wonder if this was surplus from our Civil War.)

We then went into the town square and yet another wonderful pedestrian zone (where we got Greg some cold medicine.) Here we saw
St. Nicholas church, built in 1834. On the other end of the mall was the Chapel Mausoleum of St. George - where soldiers are listed (and some buried) from war of 1877; 7500 Pleven soldiers were killed in battle.

Our bus took us to another port further down the river, back onto the boat, a lovely British tea (gotta love a scone with clotted cream and jam!) and then picking up some people from an optional two-day excursion before heading to our last stop on our cruise.Read more