Vidin, Bulgaria

Topic: Eastern European Traditions

Christmas On December 23rd families slaughter a pig and then burn the hair off by fire (today, often with a blowtorch). Plenty of plum brandy is drunk during the procedure .The skin and ears are crispy and eaten immediately as a treat. The pig is divided up for ham, bacon, and sausage to be eaten during the Christmas holidays. Hungarians will use the bone to make a soup. The big Christmas feast is on Christmas Eve. Families attend the two hour service ending about midnight followed by a family meal of stuffed cabbage. In the morning, the Christmas tree is decorated.

Easter starts with the midnight service. At the end of the service everyone "takes the light", gets a lighted candle, process around the church three times and then take the lighted candle home. The typical Easter meal is lamb. This will usually last the family about a week. They paint hardboiled eggs, typically red, and each family member eats one before each meal of Easter week. On Easter Monday, it is traditionally for the young boys to visit the girls, read them a poem about spring, sprinkle them with perfume and get a kiss in return. The family will invite the boys in for an egg and cake.

Births, Weddings, and Funerals. In the Orthodox religion, it is customary to keep new born babies in the house until they are baptized at the church. They submerge the baby three times and the boys will be brought to the altar, for the only time in their lives. The Godparents are in charge of the ceremony. Godparents, typically an older couple, are also used for weddings. There is first a civil ceremony with just family and then a church wedding follows. The reception is usually an extended meal with dancing between each course of the meal. In Romania, it is also traditional to steal the bride, and then the Godfather negotiates for the return of the bride to the groom. Funerals are to occur within three days of death. It is considered quite important that a candle be lit upon death. The wake is held at the home for three days with all the mirrors covered (to ward off spirits). After the church service the body is taken to the cemetery with the procession stopping at every crossroad with a short ceremony to ward off the in-between world. There are further ceremonies at the cemetery after 40 days, 3 months and every year for 7 years. At the end of the seven years, the body is dug up and the bones blessed for a final time.

Vidin

Turkish Mosque in Vidin

In the afternoon, we had a walking tour of Vidin, a town of about 35000 people. Bulgaria followed the Communist pattern we saw in Romania. Factories were built in the city, attracting people to move from the farms. But at the end of the Communist era, these factories were not efficient and many of them closed. Unemployment is 25-30%, so over a million Bulgarians work in other countries, sending money home for their families. We visited a local Mosque built in the Turkish style. It was quite small, serving only 30 families. Because the Turks ruled Bulgaria for 500 years, there is quite a lot of discrimination. So the local Imam has been trying to open up the Mosque to help people understand the Moslems. The Imam provided a blessing for our guide, Hunor and his family before we left. We passed a former synagogue built in 1894 which had been destroyed by fire in 1950. The Bulgarian people are well known for saving the local Jews by hiding them in their homes from the Nazis. The highlight of the city is the Baba Vida fortress. The fortress is named in honor of Grandma Baba, who took care of the people of the city in the Middle Ages.







Baba Vida Fortress

In the evening we had a folk dancing troop come onboard for a show after dinner.