Thick in the Red

We wind through the gently rolling hills on a road cut into an obscure part of the Balkans mountains. “Look!” I exclaim, rounding a bend. I feel a sudden spur of excitement. I've wanted to visit this place since I've been a kid. A tower adorning a huge, saucer shaped construction can be seen crowning a hilltop perhaps 20km away. Yep, its big. The road takes a convoluted route, cut into the gentlest of the undulating terrain. The road sticks to ridges, taking us south before we can progress east. Every so often a glimpse of it emerges through the trees or just popping up from behind another hilltop, teasing. 

.

 As you're driving there it still feels somewhat illusive. It commands a high strategic knoll yet there's not too many places on the road where you can see it. Then you come round a hair pin and are suddenly confronted by two huge fists bearing torches, perfectly framing the building behind which is still two-hundred odd metres above. The place doesn't look as big as I said. But few things do when you're viewing them from below with a forty-five degree gradient between you and it.

Up until the collapse of Bulgarian communism this was a meeting house for party members, known as Buzludzha after the mountain it sits on, some 1441m high. Every part of this building was though out. How it sits in the landscape, the placement of the torches beneath it and most of all, its location. Bulgaria's communists liked the idea of alining themselves with symbols of their national identity, choosing the site where the Bulgarians ousted the last of the Ottomans from their country over one hundred years before. Buzludzha mountain was a profound choice, carrying both nationalistic sentiments and significance to Bulgarian communism. Socialism in Bulgaria, the precursor to the latter, was practically born on this mountain.

I got out of the car and walked across the road onto a square of sorts, sitting down right in the middle. The scene is like something out of a science fiction movie with Buzludzha's UFO-shaped main meeting hall. I felt overwhelmed by the sheer strength the building conveyed but at the same time slightly disturbed by the period it represents. No matter which way you look at it, its undeniable that too an extent it stands as a simple of oppression and suffering.

I gaze up for a while, at the building, at the industrial size sculpted works of art in front of me. The juxtaposition is striking. The colours and the lines interact with the landscape in a way that's almost hypnotic. Against the tinge of the grass the gray concrete so commonly associated with communist era architecture doesn't seem at all sterile. Somehow the metallic tones of the torches seem to be in the same tonal range as the landscape around it. Its uncanny. 

Before reaching the base of the structure itself the road doubles back once more, more than necessary considering the gradient you need to gain. I quickly put enclosed shoes on. There's no chance in hell that I'm entering a monument that has been through twenty five odd harsh winters without maitanence in thongs. Two strange concrete shapes with metal protruding mark the the base of the stairs, beckoning you on.

I stride slowly up the stairs, fixated by the Cyrillic covering each side of the once grand main entrance. Having previously read a translation of the archaic Bulgarian I feel the power of what this building represents. “On your feet despised comrades...” Its like being transported back to another era, an era where I shouldn't be standing where I am right now. Not necessarily shouldn't, rather couldn't. An era where everything east of Berlin and south to modern day Macedonia and Albania was red.

As Dan joins me we head round the right side of the building. The main entrance was boarded up long ago and the only way you can get in now, a smashed hole in the wall, is exactly where I expected it to be from prior reading. I poke my head in. It pops out onto stairs leading up from the main foyer, dark and ominous, covered in layers of god knows what. I squeeze through gracelessly, having to use a knee to easily push through the small gap. I'm inside.

I wait for Dan, grabbing his bag which wouldn't fit through the small squeeze hole while on his back. I walk a couple of steps to a Balcony. The once grand entrance hall lays shrouded in darkness, only a little light finding its way in, a shadow of what it once was. In places a foot of silt is built up in the corners. Some of the stairs have become impassable.

After a quick look I continue up the stairs, unable to contain the excitement. I walk slowly, not wanting to be rash and ruin it, savouring the mystique of the place. On the last landing I see it. A circle, decorated with the classic interconnection of the hammer and sickle, surrounded by a slogan. “Proletariats of the world unite,” or something similar. This sits in the dead centre of the main antechamber's ceiling. 

As I progress up the stairs I make out more and more. Light filters through the broken ceiling, shingles and pieces of insulation hanging precariously from the roof. And then there's the murals, outstanding works by the collective efforts of sixty artists. Quite possibly “volunteers”, like most of the people “commissioned” to help in this building's construction, but stunning works of art all the same. Slightly to the right on the opposite side of the room stands three easily recognisable faces. Engels, Marx and Lenin.

I am standing on the chamber floor now. Puddles sit in the depressions in the ornate limestone floor, slightly reflecting the bright colours from the mosaics around the room. I move a couple of metres more, emerging from the small tunnel in the ampitheatre like seating that delivers you from the stairs into the meeting room.

Mosaics line every inch of the circular wall above the seating, some now in a pretty bad state, prized apart by the tendrils of central Bulgaria's bitterly cold winters. Opposite the faces of Engels, Marx and Lenin sit three more faces, one of them curiously having been removed. With utmost precision too. It used to be the face of the man that ruled Bulgaria for a pretty solid chunk of the 20^th century, thirty years or thereabouts. It's not certain why his face was removed or by whom but its not hard to come up with theories considering the forced labour he initiated and the fact that he drove Bulgaria into economic depression. 

 Over the two days we stayed in and around Buzludzha I probably spent a total of three hours in the main antechamber. The place is fascinating with its side by side depiction of the ousting of the Ottomans with symbols of Communism and memorials to Bulgarian- Soviet friendship. Each time I went in I realised more and more that I hadn't noticed before, learning a little more about what exactly drove Bulgarian communism.

Mosaics also cover the wall of the balcony

After our first visit to the chamber we went up the tower with three Bulgarians. To get to the tower you drop down into the foyer and walk through a very dark, narrow passage way to find a heavy steel door that's been bent open. Beyond this are the stairs. Well more like ladders. You're not walking on rungs but they'd probably be at an eighty degree angle and the use of hands is definitely necessary. We climbed up many flights of theses in complete darkness because for some strange reason the power wasn't on to use the elevator.

We climbed some twenty two of these ladders then two proper ladders before entering the space behind the star. The star is huge, some four stories high on its own. The light filters through the red plastic, most of it long gone, bathing the space within in red light. After the star two ladders delivered us and our new found Bulgarians on top of the tower. We climbed up the rusty Soviet era scaffolding. Now above the concrete walls that guard two sides I can tell you the tower is well and truly the claimed 107m. Standing above the wall on old scaffolding definitely felt a little “airy”.

After talking to one of the Bulgarians for a while I asked him what he thought of this monument. “This monument to communism?” he asked, straight away catching on to what I was getting at. “Yes.” I replied simply. It turned out that he actually sympathises with his past. Don't take this to mean that he's a communist. No. Simply he looks at the wealth disparity in Bulgaria today and the employment rates and sees that welfare was better when everyone was equal. And fair enough. I don 't blame him. He basically suggested that both are poor ways to live.

Looking down on the main antechamber

Earlier in the day we were worried about descending the tower in the dark but now we know that it doesn't matter because most of the way is in pitch darkness anyway. We watched the sunset from the top and carefully made our way down through what is essentially just a concrete shaft with a series of metal ladders and platforms to get you up and down. Thankfully this part of the building felt completely structurally sound.