Europe 2019 - Day 38 (Part 2)

13 June 2019, Thursday

Then we went to change some money at the money changer, and had lunch at the same place as yesterday - all things grilled. This time I had ground pork mixed with spices and grilled, together with grilled vegetables.

After lunch we went to the Market Hall to just walk around. There were lots of local stuff being sold there such as fresh meat, seafood, nuts, sweets, cakes, souveniers etc. Then we stopped for my favourite drink - beer! We tried some local Bulgarian draught beer and it was lovely swallowing the golden liquid on a hot summer day.

Then, with my head slightly buzzing in a good way, we went to the St Sophia Basilica as I wanted to go inside the oldest church in Sofia. The accession of Roman Serdica to the First Bulgarian Kingdom saw the St Sophia Basilica severely damaged between the 10th-11th centuries. During the Byzantine rule, it was repaired and in the 12th century became the Bulgarian Metropolitan Church. After the conquest of Sofia by the Ottomans, the Church was long used as a warehouse for war trophies. At the end of the 16th century, it was converted into a mosque. However, 2 serious earthquakes (1818 and 1858) caused serious damage and the Church had to be repaired. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it was reclaimed by the Bulgarians as a church and since 1900 it has become a symbol of the city of Sofia. 

The church has preserved numerous tombs dating back to the 3rd to mid-5th century and the remains of several smaller and earlier churches in its foundations. The construction of the first church was most probably in 311 when Emperor Galerius issued the Edict of Tolerance which allowed Christians to profess their faith. After the Edict of Milan in 313, the Church was expanded. During the reign of Theodosius (379-395), the Church was replaced by a second, larger church which remained until it was destroyed in the 4th century. The beginning of the 5th century saw the construction of the third church which was even bigger. The final phase of its existence is associated with the greatest Hun invasion of the mid-5th century, so in the late 5th or early 6th century the final building was erected on top of the earlier one - the St Sofia Basilica!

The last place we went to was the Vasil Levski National Stadium. Vasil Levski was a Bulgarian revolutionary and is a national hero of Bulgaria today. Dubbed the Apostle of Freedom, Levski ideologised and strategised a revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Ottoman authorities, however, captured and executed him by hanging in Sofia. There is a monument of him near the place where he was hanged in 1873, but we didn’t go and see that.

In the vicinity of the stadium there were promoters giving away free Heineken beer with 0% alcohol. What the hell. An atrocity, that’s what it is!

Then we bought some food (and more beer for me) and back to the hostel.