Here are a few holiday snaps from Sofia, just so you can see some of the sights of Bulgaria’s capital.
The most famous tourist site in the city is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. It’s fairly new, having been completed in 1912. It’s rarely used for services, I’m told, but can hold 10,000 people and, before the Soviet era, was once was an important religious gathering spot. Its inside lacks any seating, but the walls are covered with icons and paintings. One of the sights I’ve gotten used to here is people actually kissing the icons on the wall and then crossing themselves, a custom of the Orthodox—and a good way to spread germs!
The Saint Sofia church is the second oldest church in the city, with Christian worship beginning in the 6th century after the supposed Jesus-man but with Roman ruins underneath some 400 years older. When you visit the church, you walk downstairs through the successive ruins, winding up with the Roman foundations.
The city of Sofia is actually named after this church, which in turn is named after a Christian martyr (see below):
The photo below is not mine, but taken from Wikipedia. This structure itself dates back to the sixth century but has been extensively restored. It was also converted to a mosque during the Ottoman occupation.
Mosaics at one of the lower levels of the church. I don’t know if they’re Roman; perhaps an astute reader can tell me.
Old wall painting in the church, inaccessible but visible through a window. I don’t know the date of this painting either, as the plaques were in Bulgarian.
A sign outside the church, promising God’s blessing if you guy the religious geegaws on offer inside:
Next to the church is apparently some headquarters of the Orthodox Church in Sofia. At the top of the building is a nice mural of three bearded Orthodox patriarchs (or priests):
The Bulgarian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:
A flea market next to the Nevsky church sells all sorts of odds and ends, including some cool-looking Soviet-era cameras. Here’s a guy in his camera stall; perhaps photography buffs can recognize some of the arcane models:
Old signs from Sofia. Those who can read Cyrillic can translate them, but I’m told one of them (the rectangular blue one below the triangular yellow sign with a wheel grinding something) reads “exemplary house.” Vassi told me that if you had a really nice house with a garden, you could put up one of these signs. They also had them for “exemplary apartment.” I have no idea what most of the other signs are supposed to convey:
A street scene in Sofia, with trolleycar. It is a lovely town, at least the parts in the center I saw, and is well worth visiting. I don’t think many Americans come here.
Saint Sophia the Martyr, the patron saint of the city, atop a huge pedestal. As a goddess of wisdom, she’s holding an owl on her arm.
Saint Sophia the Martyr (died 137 AD) is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on September 17. Born in Italy, Sophia had three daughters: Faith (age 12), Hope (age 10) and Love (age 9), who were named after virtues mentioned by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.
They are said to have been martyred during the reign of Hadrian (117–138). The guards took Sophia’s daughters one by one, from the eldest to the youngest and beat and tortured them to death. Sophia buried her daughters’ bodies and remained by their graves for three days until she died herself.
Lubo told me that when the made the statue, they discovered they’d given Sophia too much. . . er. . . pulchritude, and so she had a breast reduction before she was erected.
One of the government ministries in the center of town is guarded by two soldiers wearing helmets festooned with eagle feathers. The guard is changed every hour on the hour.
In the middle of the complex of buildings is the oldest church—indeed, the oldest building—in Sofia, built by the Romans in the fourth century after the supposed Jesus-man died. It is the Church of St. George. It was closed, so we couldn’t go inside to see the famous frescoes.
I love the old fascistic Soviet-era buildings. This one was once the Parliament. A big red Soviet star once crowned the steeple, but was removed by helicopter after the Russians left. The big steeple now bears a small (too small) Bulgarian flat:
Sofia has many lovely parks with big old trees. The locals, particularly older ones, were hanging out on the benches on this lovely day.
An old news kiosk (reminiscent of the ones in Paris), dating from 1874. Sadly, like too much of Sofia, it’s been defaced by graffiti.
The Russians built a National Cultural Palace: a huge building now used for various events and exhibitions. We were allowed to go into the lobby only, but it is cool, with a vaguely Art Nouveau look:
Finally, Vassi told me that these statues are of the two inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet. Some judicious Googling suggests that they are Sts. Cyril and Methodius (written in Cyrillic on the base), two brothers and missionaries who devised the alphabet in the 9th century A.D.
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Wow, old Europe! I love looking at these photos.
It’s good to be reminded that, despite all the political differences, there is a great deal of beauty on the other side of what was once the Iron Curtain.. I’m glad the people there have a greater degree of political autonomy, and hope they’re never tempted to ditch the beauty of the past even as they ditch the politics of the past.
Here, too, of course….
b&
sub
There’s an “exemplary apartment” sign in that collection: small rectangle, blue on white, to the right of (and just overlapping) the circular pedestrian sign.
Well, the yellow triangular one at the lower right clearly indicates that toilet rolls should be mounted in the over-the-top orientation.
No it isn’t – the yellow triangle is caution in doing this – in other words, the sign is politely telling you not to put your toilet paper on backwards.
Diana was too fast for me
It is a warning sign, yes.
But it’s a two-fold warning. First, it’s a warning that people like you might be about switching the proper orientation.
And, secondly, it’s a warning to people like you that you’ll be folded into a small, flat yellow triangle if you’re caught….
b&
🙂
Oh I agree that it is a warning – a warning that if you don’t put the toilet paper on correctly, it will be changed and the you will be squished in the role. That’s why the arrow. It’s a common Soviet practice that caught on all over the world.
Well, you certainly already do seem squished in the role of roll-changer, so you otter no….
b&
Heeeeere comes Diana. Better duck!
Very impressive. The statue of Saint Sophia the Martyr makes her out to be an attractive Athena resemblance.
I suspect none of those signs is OSHA approved or even an ANSI standard in any country, however ‘garden of the month’ signs should be more common. Neighbors should have some competition amongst themselves to make their yards and houses look nice.
Both the mosaic and the wall paintings look Roman-y but of course that doesn’t mean they are.
And yes, that kissing of artifacts habit always seemed really yucky to me. I guess there isn’t too much germ OCD among Christian Orthodox religions.
I saw that in a church at a monastery in Corsica this year. I had the same thought about a hygiene.
A mother lifted up her 4yo daughter to kiss Jesus. Religious indoctrination in action.
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PS. I also have some photos from the monastery I’d been meaning to share…
I’m intrigued.
What is a trigued, anyway, and why do we never tell anybody when we’re out of one?
b&
Sorry, your question outtrigues me…yawn…
How outrageous!
b&
I’m inraged by that! Emraged too.
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I, on the other hand, am inraged.
At the moment I’m ert and ept.
I know a little man
Who is both ept and ert
Not an intro or an extro,
No, he’s just a vert.
Must remember that one;-)
The Intro and the Outro
(with Eric Clapton on ukelele)
*
CorsicaCorfuWhat’s that thing that looks like a dancing egg in the bottom center of the mosaic?
Ha ha! I noticed that too. Like a person missing a limb. I think it’s the tripod portion that holds up the bowl.
Humpty Dumpty lost an arm from his fall off the wall ( old Bulgarian fairy tale doncha know)
Those old signs — at the least the 4 with images — are just begging for a contest. (I see we already have an entry upthread!)
Describe a sign and explain what it means.
I don’t have an entry yet but the round orange seems to indicate that you shouldn’t put rocket boosters on nuclear power plants. In this area.
I think the round orange one is actually reminding people that pouring water on burning liquids spreads the fire. The triangle above it suggests one should wear eye protection when operating a lathe. The yellow one with a gas mask is rather ominous, maybe it was on a storage cabinet for safety equipment?
But no, your explanation of the orange sign is much better. Bulgarians were totally disposed to putting rocket boosters on nuclear plant cooling towers.
I was going to go with something about crappy audio quality (denoted by the fat sine waves) when playing back wax cylinder recordings.
What about the cat face on the shovel coming out of the guy’s side??
The blue guy in the circle is the eggman. His basket of eggs are pointing in the direction the walrus got lost in the Black Sea.
I lived in Sofia most of my life, so these photos are a trip.
A couple corrections to your captions, though:
“One of the government ministries in the center of town is guarded by two soldiers wearing helmets festooned with eagle feathers. The guard is changed every hour on the hour.”
Actually this is the President’s Office.
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“This one was once the Parliament.”
No, communist party headquarters. Behind you was the site of the old Mausoleum, there were tunnels that went between the two so that higher or secret officials could come and go surreptitiously. The Parliament Building is a ways back behind you on the right side of the road that you’re standing on.
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I hate that statue with the fire of a thousand suns.
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The signs: from top left going down, they read:
High voltage, potentially lethal (lit: dangerous for life)
No smoking
Fire alarm
I think the obscured yellow one says “no climbing”, but hard to tell.
46th Street
Middle:
price or fine for something, too scratched up to tell
Housekeeping
Street 70[?]
Exemplary Apartment
3rd Floor
the 36 is a street number, the arrow points the way the numbers increase.
Top right going down:
Rusalya Street
white one is an old license plate
red: Warning! Shooting area!
Yup. I read Cyrillic, too, and concur with your translations (I speak Russian, not Bulgarian, but many of the words are the same).
In Russian, “zhivot” means “stomach”, so I read the first sign as “high pressure; dangerous for stomach”.
Thank for the translations!
Interesting to note that the third floor is the III “етаж” – that’s a phonetic transcription of the french word “étage”. I was in Bulgaria several times and I noted that they are several french words in bulgarian, e.g.: “мерси”,”асансьор”,”ниво”(“merci”, “ascenseur”, “niveau”). I suppose that in the 19th century french was popular among snob people of the upper class…
Thank for the translations!
Interesting to note that the third floor is the III “етаж” – that’s a phonetic transcription of the french word “étage”. I was in Bulgaria several times and I noted that they are several french words in bulgarian, e.g.: “мерси”,”асансьор”,”ниво”(“merci”, “ascenseur”, “niveau”). I suppose that in the 19th century french was popular among snob people of the upper class…
Not just in Bulgaria! Of course, the Frenchification of english goes back to the Normans. French for what posh people ate; Anglo-Saxon for the animals the common people tended; eg mutton/sheep, beef/cow.
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If I wrote a book about it, I’d call it: The French: Why are They so Fancy?
French was the upper class and diplomatic language for everyone in the 19th century – it took over from Latin. Now English has taken over from French, obviously. I sometimes wonder what it will be next.
Mandarin.
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As long as it’s not Arabic…
Uh, by which I mean, as long as the “Caliphate” doesn’t succeed; nothing racist intended.
Yes, I was going to say Chinese. Josh Whedon seemed to think so too since Firefly had a mashup of English & Chinese.
My first passport from New Zealand, in 1970, was in English and French; my second, in 1980, English only; I believe they are now in English and Maori. I no longer have my first US passport; but for at least the past 10 years, they have been in English, French, and Spanish.
English seems to be the de facto (and even “official”, in the sense of used on passports and the like) second language – at least, the language of commerce – everywhere it is not the native/official language; and I’m not sure there is going to be a successor. Mandarin Chinese strikes me as the only possibility, but I think it’s both too complex and too late to do so.
There is a good reason Mandarin is not a likely candidate for an international or diplomatic language. Unlike English, French or Spanish, it is not widely spoken outside its native region. Thanks to British, French and Spanish colonialism, those languages have a far greater geographic distribution than Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect or language could have for the forseeable future. So even though Mandarin has the numbers (in terms of native speakers), when you include people for whom English is a second language, you’re looking at English having a little over two billion speakers. You are far more likely to find someone who can understand English in a non-English country than you are to find a Mandarin speaker outside the borders of China.
There’s also technology to consider. Virtually all programming languages are derived from English. Also, much international communication is done online, and automatic translation services are already generally “good enough” such that you don’t need to learn another language or hire a translator to get by.
Indeed, it wouldn’t take all that much to combine a cellphone with high-speed data, a bluetooth headset, and something that spiders Google Translate to create a passable technological equivalent of the Babel fish. Nor would I be surprised to learn that Google Glass already has such a feature.
All in all, I predict that the current mix of languages will remain relatively fixed for quite some time — though, of course, with the smaller (especially tribal) ones continuing to die out at a rapid pace. Given enough time, we’ll be left with English, French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Russian, Chinese, perhaps small pockets of Hindi and Portuguese and some of the other minor Asian and European languages, and the odd handful of dialects, with proportions similar to where they are today.
Cheers,
b&
Yes, my NZ passport is English & Maori. My Canadian on is English & French. 🙂
Thanks for the corrections!
Not necessarily. For instance, I can read the Cyrillic alphabet (well, maybe decipher is a better term, because I keep forgetting what some of the letters represent), but I cannot translate any of the 30+ languages that use it. Furthermore, some languages interpret the letters differently (as with English ‘w’ and German ‘w’) and yet others use unique letters to represent sounds that do not exist in other languages using Cyrillic. Non-linguists often forget that the correspondence between letter and sound is arbitrary.
I can look at a word written in Cyrillic and know how to pronounce it, but I can;t tell whether it’s Bulgarian, Russian, Kalmyk or Khalka.
The alphabet devised by Sts. Cyril and Methodius was the Glagolitic alphabet, apparently developed to lessen dependency for written scripture on the Western clergy. The alphabet now known as Cyrillic was developed by combining elements of the Greek and Glagolitic scripts, and was probably created by followers of the two saints.
If you look closely, the Glagolitic alphabet is clearly written on the top row of the pedestal in the picture.
Fascinating peeks at such an ancient city!
It looks like there’s a Bolex or two among those cameras. They hold 3-minute 16mm reels, and you wind them up to run them for about 30 seconds a shot. I think some have attachable motors so you can run them for longer shots. You can also shoot a frame at a time with them, so you can do some animation if you had a camera stand.
Actually, it looks like there are several Bolexes there. One of which is identical to one I used in school.
What’s the “writing” (if that’s what it is) *above* the “Sts. Cyril and Methodius” stuff? I see some other “fainter” inscription.
Bulgarian online translator says: “most holy apostles brothers.”
See pithom’s post in comment thread 11 for an ID of the faint alphabet used at the top.
Curious, it looks deemphasized; I wonder if that’s on purpose, or just to avoid retouching an old monument.
Thanks for the tour. Very beautiful city and sites.
Funny that the temple entrance sign says it’s free twice…a typo, or perhaps too much enthusiasm 🙂
Traveling through Italy, I found it ironic how most of the famous cathedrals had an entrance fee. I wondered when these fees became standard. Perhaps after the population became more secular. 70’s?
The statue of Sophia apparently was put up in 2000 in a spot that once had a statue of Lenin. She clearly has more…er…wisdom, even with her breast reduction.
2 notes: That statue of Sophia does not look like a woman who’s given birth to daughters. Also, her daughters are beaten and tortured to death and she’s the martyr and saint when she dies (of heartbreak?) beside their graves? I guess she probably was beaten and tortured herself physically (as well, of course, mentally seeing her girls go that way) and succumbed to her wounds at the graveside, but the whole story sounds like a male fantasy to me, like the Greek Amazons.
Wisdom, Faith, Charity, and Hope. Given the allegorical names of the characters in this particular Christian fable, I rather think that the likelihood of its veracity is quite minimal. Also given that the earliest sources for a 2nd Century Saint Sophia are 6th C.
Quite a large number of popular saints and martyrs are, unsurprisingly perhaps, made up, probably many if not most of the early ones (such as Sofia or Maurice) as well as some later medieval ones (Saint Roch comes to mind).
I was always under the impression that Sofia and its Sofia church were, like the magnificent Hagia Sophia in Instanbul, named after the “Holy Wisdom (i.e. “sophia” in Greek) of God”, not after the obscure martyr of the same name. The modern statue is, at least according to the German wiki page, a symbolic representation of the city, and not of the saint.
I thought the same.
These are lovely & fascinating pictures, Prof CC.
Re your observation that Nevsky Cathedral lacked seating: the eastern Orthodox tradition is to remain standing throughout the entire mass, men on the right, women on the left. (Some sit for the reading of the Epistle only, then stand up again; most stand throughout).
Various justifications for the practice exist:
1. Xtians are ‘servants’ of g*d, & worship is conceptualized as duty / work. Sitting is rest, & thus inappropriate.
2. Worship should be physically taxing because suffering is virtuous.
3. Sitting in the presence of a king or lord (i.e., ‘Lord g*d’) is disrespectful.
4. The example of scripture (cf. Isaiah 6:2; I Kings 22:19; Dan. 7:10; Rev. 7:11; Mark 9:5; I Cor. 16:13; Phil. 4:1; II Chron. passim; etc.; etc.; ad naus.).
5. Tertullian & other church fathers speak out against sitting in church.
&, of course,
6. ‘We’ve always done it this way’.
(There are undoubtedly other justifications, as well, but these were the only ones I bothered recording when I learned about it).
The Temple sign seems incorrect:
Entry to the Temple is free is free of charge
Maybe someone commented above