Balkans day 19: Sredets

I made a mistake in my post yesterday! It’s not the Serd- in Serdica that’s cognate with heart – it’s the Sred- in Sredets, which is another historical name (this time medieval) for Sofia. So today is/was Sredets day.

B. was kind enough to give me a tour of Sofia University today. Sofia is a glorious riot of architectures, from Roman ruins to fourth-century churches to Austro-Hungarian interpretations of Byzantine architecture to Art Nouveau to massive Communist oblongs to “glass-fronted shite”. The university itself is also a mashup of different styles, but the old central building – which still houses the humanities – is elegant as well as imposing, and its interior is a delight.

Card indexes in the central library

St Kliment watches over the books

The English resource centre

One enjoyably nerdy moment was visiting the former study of Andrey Danchev, a prominent Anglicist. This room is hidden away under the English resource centre: one only has to open a tiny locked door, hasten down a narrow spiral staircase, along a short, book-filled corridor, and round a corner. The collection is largely as it was when Danchev died in 1996, and is incredibly impressive, especially given that he was working behind the Iron Curtain for most of his life.

Part of the Danchev collection and the man

We also saw a palaeontological highlight of Sofia’s collections: a deinotherium skeleton!

It’s a big one

And it would be remiss of me not to mention the highlight of the day: the mighty Perlovska river, equal in its majesty and epic scale to the very Rhine itself.

The Perlovska river

Well, almost.