Along the River Danube: Ancient Fortresses and Fearless Kings

Romanticized Eastern Europe: Part 2 of 2

Ah, sunshine upon the sparkling river, autumn air tying knots in my hair, stone monuments, and ancient castles. Budapest was only the beginning of this fairytale. And, like most fairytales, this one has a moral at the end. 😉

If you found yourself here without reading Part 1: The Enchanting Medieval City of Budapest, you might want to head back. But if you are all caught up, or you’re just here for photos of castles, then read on!

We sailed along the Danube on a river boat operated by Viking River Cruises. We had a lovely little room and a nice deck to enjoy the sunshine, and, because I had found myself on a cruise with mostly retirees, we usually had the deck (and the slightly breezy weather) to ourselves. It was like being on a private cruise! If anything can make someone feel disconnected from reality, it’s that level of decadence!

Of course, I was doing an excellent job of clutching the trappings of Romanticism tight, so I hardly needed help, but the beautiful countries of Eastern Europe continued to prop up my escapism and I was not complaining.

If you skipped Part 1, or are ready for a review, Romanticism (the movement) was a period during the early 1800s characterized by individualism, idealization, and glorification of the past as a rejection of the age of Reason that had come before. People were disillusioned with being logical, and that’s how I felt as I faced the pressure all American youngsters feel as they near the end of high school. Sick of logic and planning and reality and expectations. Being a kid was so much better (there I go, romanticizing childhood). So I was happy to fade into the magic of eastern Europe.

Budapest, in my previous post, was doing some embracing of Romanticism too (If you’re confused, you can read Part 1: The Enchanting Medieval City of Budapest). With Budapest’s bit of Romanticism, and my absolute denial of the real world beyond my trip, I continued to cast many of our destinations in a Romantic light. It wasn’t hard!

We sailed through gorgeous Hungarian countryside, then passed briefly through a part of Croatia that most westerners never see since it’s far from the turquoise waters that draw in most visitors. Full disclosure, I definitely forgot what day it was floating on the river, eating delicious meals, and taking day trips into the surrounding countryside. Everyone should go on a river cruise at least once because it’s so effortless. Perfect for when you’re trying not to think about the rest of your life!

Memories of Ancient Kings

I’m sure this doesn’t surprise you, but I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan. There is a scene where the Fellowship is sailing down a beautiful river and two huge statues of ancient kings rise above them. The scene is full of nostalgia and awe, and if that doesn’t partially characterize Romanticism, I don’t know what does. Unfortunately, while the exact river exists in New Zealand, the statues are CGI. But, there is a place along the Danube where an ancient king’s face is carved into the cliffside.

I’ve really done you a disservice by making you imagine the LOTR’s statues first, but this one along the Danube, at least, is real.

Castles that Remain

We can’t escape reality forever. Even the Romanticism period was quite short compared to other periods of thought. While I was still keeping those looming questions back (“Where are you going to college? What are you going to study? How is the entire rest of your life going to look because you have to decide RIGHT NOW?”), my Romanticized tapestry of Eastern Europe was beginning to fray. The unpleasant truth began to nip at my heals…but I ignored it a bit longer. After all, now we were starting to see castles!

Fortress Among the Spires: Belogradchik Fortress

A short ways from Vidin, Bulgaria is the imposing Belogradchik Fortress. In the 3rd century AD, Romans constructed a small fortress atop the Belogradchik rocks. During the Byzantine era, Emperor Justinian I made further additions to the fortress, but Slavic invasions left it in ruins.

It was reconstructed in the 14th century by the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Stratsimir.

Beolgradchik Fortress featured again in 1850 when Bulgarian peasants opposed to Ottoman feudalism marched to the fortress but were unable to take it. Instead, they were decapitated. Lovely.

Baba Vida’s Fortress of Solitude

Baba Vida Fortress (sometimes called Babini Vidini) in the Bulgarian town of Vidin was built in the 10th century over the remains of a Roman watchtower. Built to be defensible, it withstood numerous attacks and sieges, and also has been repaired and added to over the ages. For a time, it was the royal residence of Ivan Stratsimir just before Bulgaria fell to the Ottomans.

It is named Baba Vida after a legend about three daughters, the third of whom locked herself in the castle after her father’s death to keep her independence. She lived out all her days in the castle unmarried. I mean, if that’s what it takes to live in a castle…

Despite the ability to explore these beautiful ruins by ourselves and imagine a medieval-style life (correction: a Romanticized medieval life–I do not dream about dying at 30), this is the first location where I no longer felt like I was living a fairytale. The real world demanded to be seen and understood.

It was September, so “shoulder season” in Europe. And most visitors to Europe head to Central Europe. But Baba Yaga Fortress is on the edge of the Danube in the middle of the town of Vidin. It was a warm day; there was a park nearby, yet autumn leaves were the only thing scraping on the sidewalks. Later, while I was exploring this amazing fortress, I saw an old man with a cane walk slowly by. He didn’t look up from the ground.

Unlike Budapest, there is no one left in Vidin to paint it with a Romanticized sheen.

The Height of Empire: Tsarevets Fortress

We left Vidin by way of the river and sailed deeper into Bulgaria. We had to take a bus to Veliko Tarnovo, but this town, at least, was bustling.

The hill above Veliko Tarnovo where Tsarevets Fortress sits had been used as a defensive location for the Thracians and Romans, but the first structure was built in the 5th century by the Byzantines. It was rebuilt by the Slavs and Bulgars in the 8th-10th centuries and the Byzantines in the 12th.

For a while it was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire (12th-14th century), but it was sacked in 1393 when the Ottomans invaded.

A Brief Historical Timeline (a.k.a. Inserting Bulgaria into the narrative of the Crusades)

1018: the Byzantine Empire conquered the First Bulgarian Empire

1185: Two Bulgarian brothers called for a rebellion after years of heavy taxation by Byzantium. The older brother, Theodore, was crowned Emperor of Bulgaria and named Peter IV. He declared Tarnovo the capital.

1190: After years of fighting, the Bulgarians finally have a strong victory, one the Byzantine Emperor only just escaped, but the Byzantine crown and cross were captured by the Bulgarians. Theodore steps aside and his brother, Asen Ivan is crowned emperor.

1196: The Byzantines are dealt another decisive defeat, but when Asen Ivan returned to Tarnovo, he was murdered by his cousin in a plot supported by the Byzantines. So Peter I (the older brother) lays siege to Tarnovo, runs his cousin off to Byzantium, and rules again as Emperor, but is murdered less than a year later. The youngest brother, Kaloyan, took control.

1204: After more years of fighting, Kaloyan knew the Byzantines would never accept him as the Bulgarian Emperor, so he turned to the Catholic Church to support his claim as king. Finally, Pope Innocent III agreed, on the condition that the Bulgarian Church would submit to Rome and Kaloyan was crowned. But the agreement was in name only and the Bulgarians did not change from their Orthodox ways.

1204: Also in 1204, the Fourth Crusade did not make it all the way to Jerusalem and instead turned on Constantinople. The Byzantine government fled to Thrace and finally the Bulgarians and Byzantines had a common enemy.

1205: The Latin Christian Crusaders were defeated and Byzantium was returned to the Byzantines. Baldwin I, the crusader who had crowned himself Emperor of Byzantium, was captured and brought back to Tsarevets Fortress to be executed.

Sometimes history is crazier than any novel!

We did not spend enough time in Veliko Tarnovo for me to get a sense of the town, but how can you not be enamored by the past when a sprawling fortress crowns the hill above your home?

The busy, beautiful town rising and falling on the hillsides. The beautiful castle with the fascinating history. It revived my Romantic spirit, but alas, it was not to survive. Just as I could no longer ignore the nagging pressures of deciding my future, my ability to Romanticize Eastern Europe was fading, and our final destination would banish it completely.

Bucharest: the Ruins of Romanticism

I’m not being fair to Bucharest. Not at all.

You’re a different person every time you visit a city, and it’s possible that next time I visit Bucharest, I will find a million things to love. The flowers will be blooming, excitement will be in the air, I’ll have fun, historical things to see and do. Maybe I’ll even be on my way to Transylvania–which would definitely have my spirits high.

But on that early October day, it was gloomy. I couldn’t tell you if the weather was gloomy, but it was gloomy inside my head. All those things I’d pushed aside were clamoring to make themselves known and Bucharest, with it’s cement buildings and dark streets (and it being the end of the trip), just pulled me down deeper.

Of all the cities we visited, Bucharest felt as though it was still in the throes of the Soviet Union. Budapest had escaped those days–and then painted a medieval veneer over the whole city so it was like those days had never existed. Veliko Tarnovo, too, seemed free of that stain. Vidin still reflected that desperation and desolation, but on a much smaller scale. Bucharest was large scale. Bucharest was stuck in their unpleasant present, and probably pessimistic about the future, as I was.

Of course, that’s simply how I felt. All of this is how I felt, how I cast my own emotions, my own biases upon the places that we visited. Even in my memories, the feelings are still so strong.

I Romanticized this trip to Eastern Europe because that’s the stage of my life that I was in. I was Romanticizing my past to avoid thinking of the future, just as I was Romanticizing the medieval days of Eastern Europe because it’s an escape. But in the end, I know that there is no one right way to see the world, no way at all to stop the onset of the future, and certainly no way to keep things the same. There is no way to return to the past whether we paint it in shiny, golden hues or try to erase it.

I’ve actually thought about this a lot. It’s not just young people who don’t want to make decisions about college who romanticize the past, and it’s not just history- and fantasy-obsessed travelers who romanticize the medieval ages (or other eras of history). We do it all the time. For example, what else is Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign other than a revisionist history of a golden America that never existed? In every history, there are always things that are romanticized and things that are erased. We can’t forget either of them.

We should remember the past, but we shouldn’t forget the problems that existed then too.

Just as I need to see Eastern Europe for the medieval marvel that is was, but also take time to appreciate and understand more recent history, even if they didn’t build castles. It’s ok to romanticize sometimes, but I still need to keep one foot in reality. As a writer and traveler, that’s awfully hard to do sometimes.

But everyone needs an escape sometimes, as long as we’re not trying to escape everything.