Saturday, March 11, 2017
The morning train ride to Kyustendil was pleasant. I stopped in Kyustendil to visit Dimitar Peshev's house. On March 9, 1943, as the Jews of Kyustendil were being gathered for transport into Nazi hands, Peshev interfered to prevent any Bulgarian Jews from being sent out of Bulgaria. He considered Jews to have the same rights as any other Bulgarian citizen. He was the vice president of parliament, and his efforts were successful. He was later made an honorary citizen of Israel, which funded the house museum.
The Peshev House and Museum, Kyustendil
From Kyustendil, there is an afternoon train to Gyueshevo. When I went to the ticket counter at Sofia train station to get my ticket to Gyueshevo, I asked for a ticket to GyueSHEVo with an accent on the SHEV. When the ticket seller did not understand, a nice woman nearby said GYUeshevo, with an accent on the GYU. That worked.
Gyueshevo is a village of only about 275 people located where the tracks end on the Macedonian border. The Gyueshevo train runs only on weekends and Wednesdays and is mainly designed for local villagers to go to Kyustendil for shopping. It takes 1.5 hours to trundle through the various little villages west of Kyustendil.
When I arrived at Gyueshevo (I had been the only one on the train for the last 1/2 hour or so), I signalled to the conductor 1 hour with my fingers, which was the time I had available to visit. He signalled 4 with his fingers, meaning that the train leaves to return to Kyustendil at 4:00. Getting left behind in a tiny village with no food or lodging places for the night (especially when you don't speak the language) would have been interesting.
I was well off the beaten tourist path. Gyueshevo is not in any guidebook; I had found a mention of Trinity Church (1) in Gyueshevo in an on-line resource, which said there is an ossuary in the Church. Because I did not know what the word "ossuary" meant, I decided to go visit (2).
Trinity Church, Gyueshevo
The Gyueshevo train station is enormous; it was designed 100 years ago to be the main railway border crossing from neighboring Macedonia. The line on the Macedonian side has still not been built.
Gyueshevo Train Station
I think the conductor was intrigued that an English speaking tourist was even on his train. He came by to talk during the return trip (I was the only passenger for a large portion of the trip). He waved his hands outside and said some words in Bulgarian, one of which sounded like a cognate for panorama. We were passing snow-capped mountains and fast-flowing rivers. I responded with some of the few words I know in Bulgarian, "da, da, dobre" which means yes, yes, good. This was the best I could manage. As we approached Kyustendil, a snow-capped mountain was shrouded in cloud reflected the setting sun, which had appeared only late this afternoon.
Near Kyustendil
I took the minibus (3) to Blagoevgrad, where I stayed for the night.
(1) The church was built in 1930 to commemorate the many soldiers who died nearby during the Balkan wars of the 1910s, including WWI, which started as a Balkan war after the assasination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo.
(2) I could have just looked up the word "ossuary" but then I would not have had a nice train ride through the mountains and villages of Western Bulgaria.
(3) Judging by the signs inside most of these minibuses, they were originally used in France. Based on the expiration dates on the (expired) fire extinguishers, the minibuses came from France 2 to 3 years ago.
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