It is difficult to dissociate the Balkans with bloodshed and disorder.
Insensibly the mind is tempted at every turn to direct attention to the
last battle or the future campaign which can be seen threatening. But
if the storm-racked peninsula could be granted a term of peaceful
development, there is no doubt at all but that it would be much
favoured by voyagers seeking picturesque beauty and wishing to go
over the fields which have been the scenes of some of the greatest events in history. Mountain resorts to rival those of Switzerland, spas
to match those of Germany and Austria, autumn and winter seaside
beaches of great beauty and fine sunny climate—all these exist in the
Balkan Peninsula, and need only to be known, and to be known as
peaceful, to attract tourists.
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The Adriatic coast has charms of rugged coast-lines and bright
waters; the Black Sea littoral, though flat and sandy, has a warm sunny summer or autumn climate; the Aegean is a sea of brilliant
purples and rosy mists, in which air, rock, and water mingle to greet
the eye with a great opal jewel. A November sunset on the Sea of Marmora gave to my eyes such a feast of suffused colour as I had not seen since I left the shores of the southern Pacific. The rocky hills
had the rich red of the Jersey cliffs, but the sea and sky were incomparably warmer and deeper in tone. Across the sea the shores
of distant Asia shone dimly through two veils of mist, one of the tenderest rose, the other of the palest gold. The greater part of the Greek coast has the same deliciousness of colour in autumn and in summer.
A few travellers bolder than the ordinary search out nowadays the
shores of the Adriatic, the beautiful coast of Greece, and even the margin of the Sea of Marmora in quest of beauty and relief from the
tedium of civilisation. But they must face poor means of
communication (though to Constantinople and to Trieste there is an
excellent train service) and scanty accommodation of any kind—
almost none of good quality.
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Within a very few years, if the Balkans could settle down to peace and the legalised plunder of foreign visitors—a pursuit which is as profitable as brigandage and far more comfortable,—the seaside
resorts that would spring up within Balkan territories would of
themselves provide a handsome revenue. The shores of the Aegean
and of the Sea of Marmora in particular would attract tourists wearied
of the air of hackneyed sameness which comes after a while to
pervade seaside haunts in Italy and France.
From another attraction the Balkan States could hope for a great
tourist traffic. I have caught but fleeting glimpses of the Balkan range
and of the Rhodopes and the Serbian mountains, but have seen
enough to know that they offer boundless delights to the climber, to the seeker after winter sports, and to the lover of the picturesque; and
the Swiss Alps in these days are overcrowded, and the Tyrolean
mountains and the Carpathians begin to receive a big overflow of
people who have a taste for heights that are not covered with hotels
and funicular railways. But the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula
offer prospects, I believe, of greater beauty, certainly of greater wildness, than any other
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ranges of Europe. Of the Rhodope mountains, in particular, one gets
the most alluring accounts from the rare travellers who have explored
them. Seen by the passing voyager as they stand guard with their
farthest spurs over Philippopolis, they suggest that no account of their
charm could be too glowing. I have promised myself one autumn or
summer a month in this range, exploring its flower-filled valleys and its wild cliffs, shining through an air which seems now of rose and now of violet.
For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Albanian mountains,
as well as the chief Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it was
part of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation after the war, which King
Ferdinand had in his mind, to set up great winter hotels in the
mountains of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could with
advantage give hospitality to similar plans. Provided that security is assured—and the Balkan peasant is in my experience the gentlest-mannered kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way at the call of
a mischief-maker—visitors to the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula
would find the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding national
life, very attractive. The picturesque
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national costumes, the national music, wild and uncanny, the strange
national dances, all add to the fascination of the savage scenery. In an age when a fog of dreary sameness comes over all the civilised world, the Balkans have a great asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly European civilisation; indeed, except in the capital cities,
it is not chiefly a European civilisation. Everywhere there is a touch of
the mystery, the fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the Asiatic
steppes. For centuries the hand of the Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong stream of his blood courses still through the veins
of most of the Balkan peoples. It is not the East this Balkan
Peninsula, but it is not the West, nor will be for some generations.
There is yet another possible means of attracting great streams of visitors to the Balkan regions. Throughout the mountains there are
numberless medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the water of
two springs is being exploited for table use, and in Bulgaria the warm
medicinal springs are being developed for bathing resorts. At Sofia there are now in course of erection great public baths which will be equal to any in Europe when they are completed. In the mountains
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above Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and quite a large spa village has grown up. King Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial
instinct whatever the failures of his war diplomacy, has done good service to his kingdom by developing its baths and springs.
The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula is but little attractive. Under
the Turkish rule nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed, and a
general air of desolation was maintained. Since the Turk left,
cultivation and development have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and
there has been little chance for gardens or woods. The eye of the voyager misses them, and misses also the sight of castles, churches,
or great buildings. The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by forests.
The rivers flow sullenly along without a bordering of trees. The
Thracian plain—the greater part of which has now gone back to
Turkey and thus lost hope of a redemption of its really fertile soil—is
in particular desolate and forbidding. But even there, and more
frequently in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there is now and again a charming village in some dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The average village, however, is a collection of hovels,
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their roofs lying so close to the ground that they seem to be rather burrows than huts, their aspect suggesting that they are hiding
themselves and their inhabitants from the eye of a possible ravager.
Desolate as this plain country is, it has its attractions at dawn and sunset in the clear colourfull air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where the hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been covered over by a
dense oak scrub the autumn aspect of the plain at sunset is
incomparably lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn frosts come, blazes out in such scarlet and gold as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft climate of England. With the setting of the sun and
the coming of the violet night the earth's carpet seems to be here smouldering, there burning, a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to see its burgeoning reflected in the sky.
I should advise the tourist wishing to see the Balkan Peninsula at its
best to choose the fall of the year for a visit. In the summer there is
great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the winter travel is impossible with any comfort except along the railway lines, and the whole Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful
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season at its later end, but not at the time of the thaw.
As to the route for a voyage there are several alternatives. One may
take the Oriental Express through to Constantinople and work a way
up the Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to Trieste and
approach the Balkans by the Adriatic side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Belgrade, making that the starting-point for a riding trip. Certainly to enjoy the country one must
leave the railways and journey on horseback or by cart over the
wilder tracks. An interpreter who speaks English can be engaged in any one of the capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is very cheap, if you are properly advised by your interpreter and pay the local rates only. Forage, too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country," i.e. bread, cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food can be obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but they are dear.
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SOFIA
General view, looking towards the Djumala Pass (45 miles away).
Taken from the front of Parliament House, showing monument
of Alexander II, known in Bulgaria as the "Tsar Liberator"
Let me suggest a few typical Balkan tours.
Take train to Belgrade: then go by Danube steamer to Widdin. From
Widdin to Sofia go
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by rail, and then back to Belgrade on horseback, sending on heavy luggage by rail, but making at Nish on the way a depot of provisions
and linen.
Take train to Bucharest. Go from there to Stara Zagora on horseback,
crossing the Roumanian frontier at Roustchouk, going over the trail of
the Russian Army of Liberation and seeing the Balkan mountain
passes.
Take train to Sofia, and from there to Yamboli. At Yamboli go on horseback (in the track of the Bulgarian Third Army of 1912) to Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas, Chorlu, Silivri (on the Sea of Marmora), and Constantinople. A somewhat wild trip this would be, but quite
practicable. The most comfortable way to travel would be to take ox wagons for the luggage and the camping outfit. That would restrict the day's march to twenty miles. The horses—(diverging to look at
scenery and battle-fields)—would do about thirty miles a day.
Take train to Constantinople, and from there boat to Salonica. Go on
horseback from Salonica to Belgrade. This would show the most
disturbed part of the Balkan Peninsula and some of its wildest
scenery.
Take train to Philippopolis, and from there go
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on horseback and with ox wagons for a tour of the Rhodope
mountains.
Of course it is possible to take much tamer tours of the Balkans.
Practically all the big towns are connected with the European railway
systems. But you would see, thus, towns and not the country. The
Balkan towns are to my eye very dreary. There are practically no fine
old buildings, for in the Turkish occupation the greater number of these were destroyed. The modern buildings have rarely any
character. The churches, usually of the Slav school of architecture, alone relieve the monotony of economical imitations of French and
British buildings. In Belgrade, it is true, there has been an effort to carry the Slav note farther, and some of the commercial and public buildings show a Moscow influence.
Mr. Noel Buxton, M.P., that most enthusiastic admirer of the
Bulgarians, can carry his enthusiasm so far as to admire Sofia. He wrote recently ( With the Bulgarian Staff):
Few sights can be more inspiring to the lover of liberty and national progress than a view of Sofia from the hill where the great seminary
of the national church overlooks the plain. There at your feet is spread out
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the unpretentious seat of a government which stands for the advance
of European order in lands long blighted with barbarism. Here
resides, and is centred, the virile force of a people which has
advanced the bounds of liberty. From here, symbolised by the rivers
and roads running down on each side, has extended, and will further
extend, the power of modern education, of unhampered ideas, of
science, and of humanity. From this magnificent view-point Sofia
stretches along the low hill with the dark background of the Balkan beyond. Against that background now stands out the new
embodiment of Bulgarian and Slavonic energy, genius, and freedom
of mind, the great cathedral, with its vast golden domes brilliantly standing out from the shade behind them. In no other capital is a great church shown to such effect, viewed from one range of hills against the mountainous slopes of another. It is a building which, with
its marvellous mural paintings, would in any capital form an object of
world interest, but which, in the capital of a tiny peasant State, supremely embodies that breadth of mind which
... rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more.
But I think that that is a too kindly view. What makes the Balkan capitals additionally dreary is that there is no "society" in the European sense. The Turkish idea of keeping the womenfolk in the
harem survives to the extent that woman is not supposed to frequent
places of entertainment, to receive or to pay
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visits. In Bulgaria the women are secluded with an almost Turkish
strictness: in Serbia, not quite so strictly, but still strictly.
Bucharest is quite another story; but Bucharest would rather resent being called a Balkan city. There is no seclusion of the very charming
Roumanian women, and the atmosphere of the city is a little more
than gay. Plant a section of Paris, a section including Montmartre, into the middle of an enlargement of the old quarter of Belgrade, and
that is Bucharest. It is the one Balkan city which has a luxurious and
to an extent polished aristocracy.
Some of the smaller towns are slightly more interesting—
Philippopolis, for instance, in a position of great natural beauty—but the average Balkan town must be set down as squalid. Its centres of
social interest are the cafés, where men who have the leisure
assemble to drink coffee made in the Turkish fashion, tea made in the
Russian fashion, and occasionally vodka, which is the usual alcoholic stimulant. Tobacco is smoked mostly in the form of cigarettes.
Excellent (and cheap) cigarettes are supplied by the government
Régies in Serbia and Bulgaria.
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BUCHAREST
The wise tourist will keep clear of the Balkan towns apart from the actual capitals, and will carry his food and lodging with him. Under these circumstances a good standard of ease can be maintained if a
train of ox wagons sufficient to the size of the party is enlisted. Ladies
can travel with fair comfort in an ox wagon. As regards the danger of
Balkan travel, in my experience—and that was during war-time—
there is none. Serbian peasant, Bulgarian peasant, Greek peasant,
Turkish peasant, alike are amiable and obliging fellows, if they do not
feel in duty bound to cut your throat on some theological or political point. Being strangers, tourists would have no theology and no
politics. So much for the inhabitants. The officials, provided passports
are clear and the precaution is taken of getting letters at the capital from the authorities of the country you are travelling through, will be helpful. The one district that might be a little dangerous is that corner
of Macedonia where Greek and Bulgar are always playing against
one another the old game of massacre.
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