THE PICTURESQUE BALKANS
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.
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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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.
[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
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 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: _Exclusive News Agency_
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.