Buzludzha

Shipka, Bulgaria

9 min readJul 28, 2014

Startled by the symbol grasped in the talons of an eagle, she picked up the bronze canister from a small market stall in Sofia…

The menacing eagle has its wings flared, its natural, organic shape contrasts the rigid angularity of the swastika. Turning the item over, embossed Olympic rings sit above the proud declaration, “Berlin 1936”. Unlatching the worn and fiddly clasp, the canister opens revealing an ornate compass, swinging tenuously. The etched script on the inside lid begins “Once a jolly swagman…”.

This is the first verse, and chorus, of the famous Australian poem, Waltzing Matilda. To find it etched on a nazi-era wartime souvenir, on an average Wednesday Spring morning in a pokey little market stall is downright weird.

To put it mildly, Bulgaria is … compelling.

All is not as it seems in Bulgaria.

Each person we met was warm-hearted, curious about the world and keen on our perception of Bulgaria. Yet each would lower their voice, look around nervously and warn of the all-encompassing corruption at every level in society; from the highest official, to the humble taxi driver, to a jovial street vendor.

Each city we visited had the regular shopping and modernity expected of an EU member state. Yet it also felt that much of it was for show. For all the mobile phones we saw, extremely few were smart phones. Who then is buying the fancy electronics?

For every snow-capped mountain range there is a valley, and in Bulgaria, for every newly-built highway, there are a hundred roads full of potholes.

And it’s along one of these pocked roads, we find ourselves twisting and turning up a mountain side.

A road, the GPS assured us, didn’t exist.

The wind howls. It’s dark — the kind of dark you only get in the countryside at 3 o’clock in the morning.

The banging window and hard bed has made for a restless night. Phantasmagoric images of Buzludzha swim around my head. I think back to the years ago I first saw photos of the Communist party hall, when it was just a strange place from a faraway land. Would I ever actually stand beside it?

An alarm pierces the silence, breaking me out of my half-sleep.

It’s time.

My fellow traveller and I paw anxiously at the front door of the hotel, eager to be let out by the sleeping owners. Eventually, a silk-gowned silhouette appears and unlocks the catch with a soft click. We rush outside like cats.

It’s a race against time — pre-dawn brightens at a maddening speed. The twisting, 20 minute road up the mountain is a plethora of hairpin turns. Knee-deep snow engulfs the landscape, turning parts of the road into barely a single lane. Black ice-warnings illuminate the dashboard. Trees sway at impossible angles. We park, step out, and i’m slammed against the side of the car. The strong gusts of wind are brutal.

This cold, snow-patched landscape, devoid of trees, is the perfect alien world for the spaceship-like structure. But I pull back my imagination. Behind me, the clouds glow orange from pre-dawn. It’s time to run.

Crunching over patches of snow, we make a mad dash for Buzludzha in the roaring gale, untwisting the legs of the tripod as I run. Using my body to shield the camera from the wind, there is barely a minute to spare before sunrise. I am painfully aware of forgotten items — one glove, one beanie and one scarf between the two of us. My numb fingers are quickly becoming useless in the icy chill.

20 seconds before sunrise, there is an indescribable something in the air. I forget the wind, the cold, the numbness. Fleeting, intense moments — this is the life we remember.

The euphoric glow of sunrise bathes over the immutable coldness of Buzludzha, transforming and familiarising the entity. As the new day has officially begun, the intensity fades and I turn around to realise our casualty. The bone-chilling wind has blown over a tripod and smashed the Nikon against a rock, dislodging the shutter.

The failing, whirring sound is sickening to the ears of a photographer. Bulgaria, our land of contrasts has put on a spectacular show and then taken its price. But despite the set back, we’re well equipped: additional low-fi film camera, a high-end compact camera, and two iPhones are carried between us.

It’s time to go inside.

Buzludzha. Buzludja. Buzluca. This formidable structure has become somewhat of an internet celebrity the last few years.

Translating loosely as glacial — as in icy — Buzludzha’s carefully chosen location is that of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels and the Ottoman Empire. The result was present-day Bulgaria. 90 years later, in 1981, the Buzludzha ‘monument’ was officially opened.

Architect Gueorguy Stoilov designed Buzludzha not as a ‘Communist Party Headquarters’, but rather as a multi-purpose hall, or event space. Meetings with high ranking officials would have occurred here, creating lots of terribly boring administration work. Young members of the Communist Party would have been inducted in elaborate celebrations.

A ‘donation’ was taken from every citizen of Bulgaria to help pay for the construction of Buzludzha.

But Buzludzha is a product of communism and communism thinks big. The gigantic multi-story red star adorning the tower was whispered to be made of ruby. Tonnes of copper coated the roof. The inside floor, walls and ceiling was awash with the finest of red velvet.

And despite all this grandioseness, Buzludzha, from afar, looks insignificant.

As though a tiny UFO has crash landed on top of the Central Balkan Mountains, the far-reaching valley below diminishes the clean retro-futurist saucer and tower even further. It is merely a blip of triviality to the overwhelming totality of the Bulgarian countryside.

In September 2011, the Bulgarian cabinet transferred ownership of the monument to the Bulgarian Socialist party, and sealed up all the entrances. So began an apathetic game of cat and mouse — one entrance would be blocked, and the myriad of travelling photographers (and locals) would carve open a new one. Buzludzha is technically off-limits, but its remoteness has turned it more into a no-man’s land. As this pseudo-ziggurat decays slowly among flourishing interest and withering protection, its future is uncertain.

A bloodied tissue lies frozen in the ground.

Braving the slippery ramp of ice, we hoist ourselves up into a small hole hacked through the concrete side of Buzludzha. My jacket catches on the daggers of rusting, reinforced steel as I twist into the darkness on my hands and knees.

A deathly iciness hits my skin — the air feels crystalline. The stairwell sparkles from the shafts of light piercing the darkness. Like some deep-space sleep chamber, the air is perfectly still — we are in stasis, protected from the violent wind outside. Patches of red velvet dot the ceiling, harking back to the days when this Communist Party hall was in full splendour.

Patches of red dust roll around underfoot as we unpack our gear inside this sarcophagus. One careful step at a time, we climb up the gelid stairs. A dull banging fills the air as we round each corner.

Craning my neck at an impossible angle, the final flight of stairs leads into a monumental amphitheatre. It’s an unfathomable scene — a portal beyond terrene. Howling winds scream above the domed space, structural roofing bending and twisting to create a cacophonous banging, reverberating through my skull.

Skeletal remains of the ceiling structure lead to the immense symbol at the zenith of the dome — the hammer and sickle of the USSR dominates the massive chamber. It is a harrowingly industrial scene, unforgiving in its inhumanness.

Once, Buzludzha was proudly covered in huge plates of copper, but as the structure fell into disrepair, the extremely valuable scrap metal had no defence. The ingenuous looters removed all the copper in merely one evening: they simply cut the supporting cables which held the roof down. The howling wind was strong enough to lift the tonnes of copper and blow it to the ground.

An iridescent flash catches my attention.

I bend down to pick at the scattered pieces of mosaic on the cold, concrete floor and examine one in detail. As I turn a piece over in my hand — golden metal with a heavy resin coating built to stand the test of time, I look up at the tessellated face above me. I search for wisdom in the eyes, for knowledge in the wrinkles and the confidence of a leader, but a chill catches my neck and all I see is the desolation around me.

A quietening reverberation meanders through the air. It sounds strangely organic and natural — and at odds to the monumental coldness of the auditorium. It repeats, but hours of exposure to the elements has taken its toll on my dulled senses. It takes me a while to realise.

We are not alone.

A toothless grin beams at me from a side corridor. My eye catches another figure across the amphitheatre, chatting to the other photographer. For all the friendly people we have met over the last days, these two carry a certain unease. Perhaps it’s their dishevelled appearance, or their confidence in the way they own the area, but most probably as to why they’re here. Why does anyone climb to the top of a mountain in the early morning to wander around an abandoned structure in the blistering cold, without any bags or obvious tools of a creative trade?

I’m reminded of a local urban legend. Two French backpackers were murdered by squatters while exploring Buzludzha. Details vary, but there is a small memorial placed in the underground levels of the structure commemorating them. The pitch-black tunnels require nerves of steel to explore, furthering the haziness of details to the story. *

A golden light pierces through the disintegrating roof, slowly transforming the iciness underneath.

Frozen pieces of charcoal are freed in pools of water. The new day has firmly taken hold.

As the wind drops, the air becomes warmer and the chamber echoes with the drip of melting ice. Early morning stalactites which appeared cruel and unforgiving, now seem temporary and fluid. I hear the chirp of a bird fly past.

The coma is over.

Nothing came of our encounter with the two men, aside from the reminder of the vulnerability and risks one undertakes while exploring in out-of-the-way places.

Buzludzha is grand in its location, in its ideals and its state of disrepair. But it is also a blip.

A reminder that things pass. And of the fluidity of our world.

* Searching for details on the two murdered French backpackers yielded sketchy results at best. For such a major thing to happen and go relatively unreported in newspapers is odd. The nearby town of Shipka is a close-knit community of 1,500. News travels fast and our hotel owner discredited the tale based on the scarcity of information. Most probably, it was suggested, it’s the dark humour of a few bored locals.