Bolkans 2009	03 – 21 srpen	1700km / 21 deys
		Sofia– Leskovatz – Vranje– Kumanovo–Stip–Negotino– Gevgelija– Kilkis– Kavala–Xanti– Komotini–Aleksandropoli–Svilengrad– Krumovgrad– Kardzhali– Asenovgrad–Perustiza– Bratzigovo– Peshtera–Ihtiman–Sofia (see map)

To take the bicycle, go outside your home, depart in one direction and return from the opposite direction in 3 weeks.

This was the motto of the “Balkans 2009” bicycle trip. Compared to our routine way of traveling, the innovation this time is not using any other kind of transport but bicycles in international trips (the route goes through Bulgaria and three other countries). Innovative for our web site is a description of a route in Bulgaria. So far we have described our trips abroad and indirectly advertised their local places of interest. Most of our Bulgarian readers are probably well acquainted and even better acquainted than us with our native tourist attractions. But our notes could be of interest for the rest of our readers and particularly for the foreigners. Our goal would be to establish a tradition in this respect and to have Bulgarian travel notes and photographs hereabouts.

The Macedonian Issue

(which is not a mandatory reading for the fans of strictly geographic travel notes)

Translated by Vassia Vassileva

I shall start with historic background information, mainly for the sake of our foreign readers, and I will leave it in the Bulgarian version as well in order to fight the wrong doing of our education system, particularly in the last years. Also, I think that for some of the readers living behind the border, and particularly to the south west of it, it would be easier to read in Bulgarian than in English.

In ancient times the territory of the present day Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and mainly the land to the south and southwest of it was inhabited by the people of Macedonia. The climax of their development was the rule of King Philip and his son Alexander, who in IV century B.C. first conquered the numerous Greek states and then—the great Persian Empire and Egypt, i. e. most of the civilized world at that time. The ancient Macedonian state existed until 146 B. C. when it was conquered by the Roman Empire. The territory was a part of the Roman Empire and later, of Byzantium, which was the East Roman Empire, until the IX century A. D. when it was conquered by the Bulgarians, but occasionally Byzantium managed to take it back for certain periods of time. The fight between Bulgaria and Byzantium over the territory ended in the XIV century with the conquest of the Ottoman Turks. The process of assimilation of the ethnical Macedonians as well as their neighbors, the Thracians, actually happened under the Roman Empire. The dominance of the Hellenic culture, the lack of script and the lack of common administrative structure were among the factors contributing to the dissipation of the mighty empire. The culmination of the extinction of the Macedonians and Thracians was the Great Migration of Peoples when the Huns and some Germanic tribes plundered the territories. Because of these frequent invasions, Byzantium did not oppose the Slavic settlements in these barren, plundered territories in the VI - VII century. On the contrary, Byzantium counted on their involvement with agriculture for the economic upheaval of the region. What was left of the original inhabitants of the territories moved to the bigger cities and did not consider themselves Macedonians or Thracians, but rather Romans or Byzantines. Because of ethno-geographic reasons and the separation of the churches, the official language in Byzantium was Greek. Whatever was left of the other ethnicities was assimilated into Byzantines during the 8 centuries that elapsed until the Ottoman conquest. Moreover, they spoke Greek and later called themselves Greeks although this was not the only ethnicity in the country.

In this respect, the arrival of the Bulgarians at the scene was somehow unexpected. They originated somewhere in the mountains of North Afghanistan and Iran and were presumably a Turkish tribe. Khuber was the first to lead his tribal clan and settle in today’s North Greece, the town of Kastoria, around 640 A.D., but his state did not live to be independent. Although Khuber’s Bulgarians were assimilated by the local Slavic tribes and have little historical significance they have certain share in the local genome. Asparuh’s Bulgarians settled to the north of the Balkan Mountain in 680 A. D. capturing the land from Byzantium and establishing their own country together with the seven Slavic tribes dwelling in the region. During the first 2 centuries of the existence of this state, the Bulgarians were the dominating ethnicity in the state administration. The big change happened during a moment of military superiority over their neighbor to the south – Byzantium. Bulgaria not only captured new territories, including present day Macedonia, but also accepted Christianity and proclaimed the Slavic tribes as officially having the same status as the Bulgarians. An official common language for both Bulgarian and Slavic ethnicities was introduced and an alphabet was devised for it as well. The alphabet has an interesting story. Byzantium sent Cyril and Methodius on a diplomatic mission aiming to introduce the Orthodox Christianity to Moravia in an attempt to spread the Byzantine influence as far as Central Europe and the script that they offered was their Trojan horse. Ironically, the script eventually arrived in Bulgaria as Cyril and Methodius’ students were expelled from Moravia by the Roman Catholics and finally welcomed in Bulgaria by the Bulgarian King Boris. The task that the King gave them was to establish schools in different parts of the country and spread the new script. They were given financial and all necessary aid. The biggest school of that type alongside with the one in the capital was the one in Ochrid (a town in today’s west Macedonia). The School was founded and led by St. Climent of Ochrid until his death when his ancestor became another one of Cyril and Methodius’ students – Naum who had so far led the Preslav school. The school was of paramount importance for the integration of the local Slavic population within the new nation. Only about 100 years later, at the end of the X century, Byzantium gained more power and conquered back the territory between the Danube and the Balkan mountains. The last citadel of the Bulgarian kingdom was Ochrid where the Patriarch sent the symbols of the Bulgarian kings and the crown was passed to Samuil – an ancestor of a notable dynasty from West Bulgaria. Among the various reasons to select Ochrid as a stronghold were its strategic position and the remoteness from Byzantium. This was how Samuil became a successor to the Bulgarian crown. Although Samuil had certain victories over Byzantium, the Emperor Vassilii II finally defeated him near Belassitsa. For his cruelty Vassilii II was called the Killer of Bulgarians. Samuil died shortly after the defeat, his successors never been able to restore the military might of the country. A few years later Byzantium finally subdued Bulgaria over a 170 years’ period. After the Bulgarian Kingdom had been restored, the territory of nowadays’ Macedonia was passed many times from Bulgaria to Byzantium and vice versa, but the ethnicity in the region has remained unchanged.

The Bulgarians have been the dominating ethnicity in the region of present day Macedonia and they did not decrease in number during the five centuries of Turkish occupation, on the contrary, they increased. With the Greeks in the region having lower birth rate and dealing mostly with trade, the demographic expansion that the Albanians are performing now in the area was at that time performed by the Bulgarians, who were dealing with agriculture and for that reason preferred to have larger families, which at that time meant more working hands. For example, statistics cites the Bulgarians and the Turks being the dominating ethnicities in the Thracian region towards the beginning of the Liberation Wars. After Bulgaria lost two wars( Bolkan war and WWI), the territory was passed to Greece. But with the ethnicity in the territory being predominantly Bulgarian, Greece, being on the winning side of the wars made Bulgaria sign an agreement in the early twenties of the XX century facilitating ethnic minorities in both countries to return to their motherland. That was how about 200 000 Bulgarians were moved away from their homes in the Thracian region according to statistics and were actually compensated for that. Their place in Greece was taken by Greeks from other regions of the country, and from Turkey and the former Soviet Socialist Republics. Nowadays Russian is spoken in Alexandropoly and Xanty by immigrants from Georgia and Armenia. We have encountered some of them playing cards, domino or just socializing in the local parks and gardens.

Different from the Thracian region, in Macedonia Greece did not have an official agreement with Bulgaria to move ethnic minorities of both ethnicities, for that reason the country acted unofficially and rather steadily. We had an interesting encounter during our cycling tours there. At a gas station near Edessa (Bulgarian name Voden) on our way to Florina (Bulgarian name Lerin) we were approached by a man, around 30 years of age. He spoke relatively good Bulgarian but he struggled for words and he explained that he was from the Bulgarian minority there and that life was very hard for them as a minority. They were denied the right to speak Bulgarian even in their families and homes and his mother had been arrested several times during the military regimes for speaking Bulgarian. We have encountered local people speaking Bulgarian many times at many different places in the region – Serres, Drama, but nobody else spoke openly of being Bulgarian. I shall never forget our encounter with an old man in Drama in 2001 during one of our first tours. He spoke Bulgarian, was very nice and insisted that he bought us something to remember him. He said he had relatives in Bulgaria but he was not Bulgarian. In Lerin (the north of Greece) close to Bitola we asked the way to the border in Bulgarian and 100% of the older people understood us and showed us the way. An old man even shouted at us in Bulgarian “What way to Macedonia? Macedonia is here!”, which is actually the official attitude of Greece towards the Macedonian issue. It was there, too, that we spoke to a local woman in Bulgarian who said she had been to the Rila Monastery, which is one of the most important historic sites of Bulgaria, named after the Bulgarian Saint Ivan Rilski, and who insisted that the monastery was Greek. I cannot even imagine what psychological and physical attacks the Bulgarian people in the region have endured in order to forget that they are Bulgarian. A fact is that we only spoke Bulgarian and they answered back in pure Bulgarian which was only occasionally inconsistent. It is not possible that in the part of Greece called Macedonia they speak Bulgarian and in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia they speak Macedonian.

Here is the last experience that I am going to share. It is from this trip. We had stopped at a monument in a village near Shtip when a peasant shouted from the road “Oh, Mother Bulgaria!” Honestly, while travelling in Macedonia we do not gather enough information to know exactly what our brothers think and what attitude they have toward that issue. Our aim is to relax, rest, and have a little adventure and that is why we avoid the issue just like most of the young and not so young local people do.

In former Yugoslavia it was a matter of state policy to impose as an official Macedonian language a crooked version of the Bulgarian language, which was as different from the official Bulgarian as possible. And since the Macedonians are always pushing to be the first and only in everything, there is one thing in which they really are: they are the one and only people to know the exact date of the creation of their language. It is August 2, 1944, when the decree was issued. Later, in November the same year, at a conference some ten writers and linguists voted the new alphabet and basic linguistic rules. The new alphabet has 3-4 new letters (Serb), even though they do not have the same sound equivalent in the local language. They kept the sound "ъ", otherwise they would have had to invent a new letter or adapt a Serb one, but Serb does not have this sound. Later, they issued new linguistic rules in order to get rid of the "ъ" sound by omitting it (дърво -дрво), or replacing it with either "а" or "о". But I would better stop here because I am neither a philologist nor that well acquainted with the modern Macedonian.

Similarly, they invented an official Macedonian history. A nation should have its language and history; as long as you do not have them, invent them. The doctrine of the Macedonian nation is based on that principle, and I think they are almost through with the linguistic part of that process, because most of the old people who spoke a different language have died, and the young people have been taught the new way. Moreover, Serbia has come to their aid in creating a language. Quite differently, they are likely to have problems converting the history, because regardless of what their historians say, historians from outside the country are not inclined to overlook historic facts. Well, of course, the Macedonians are stubborn…

One side of the issue is that I acknowledge everybody’s right to determine his or her nationality. But the other side is that I cannot put up with the theft of history and language. Moreover, the thieves are actually people of my ethnicity. Our motherland has lost many lives in order to rescue its people from other nations’ tyranny. Bulgaria went through three national catastrophes for the sake of that. Now that those people have gone through ideological propaganda, they think of Bulgaria as foreign, hostile and threatening their sovereignty. This was once the Yugoslav doctrine which has still remained unchanged now that the country is called Macedonia.