The trip to see the remains of a saucer-shaped monument on the peak of Buzludzha certainly was a highlight of my time in Bulgaria. The ride provided plenty of tree-lined curves and led me to one of the most bizarre places I’ve been to in a while.
The monument was erected in the late seventies to commemorate the events in 1891 when the socialists assembled secretly in the area to form an organised movement. On the design of its murals alone, over 60 artists had collaborated. Until the government’s fall from power in 1989, the building served as the symbolic headquarters for the Bulgarian Communist Party, and since then, it was abandoned and left to crumble.
While entry to the building is prohibited for safety reasons, it is not impossible if you can crawl through a small ventilation opening in the back, pull yourself up to the darkness of the floor level, scale a wall and squeeze through another opening to get to the other side, which eventually leads to the pile of debris that used to be stairs. When you finally get to the main auditorium, you find that it really was worth all that trouble. That is, unless a piece of that roof falls on your head 😉
Michacha posing in front of Buzludzha monument.
