“Once, before the plow appeared and before the railways and ports were built, Dobrogea was a cultivated and virgin field. The pastures were vast and endless, like the prairies in America and the steppes in Russia. (…) Cattle breeding has experienced its golden age here. Only this distant time knows the magnificent herds of several hundred heads of cattle.”
This is how the famous Bulgarian writer Yordan Yovkov describes his favorite Dobrudzha in the years when he writes about almost every village here. Today, only in Dobrich, three monuments to Yovkov remind us of his literary heritage and we will see them during the gastro tour “Taste Golden Dobrudzha!”.
Dobrudzha is a historical and geographical area in Northeastern Bulgaria, called the “Granary of Bulgaria”. Its territory is 7565 km² and it has a population of 358,000 people. It is mixed in ethnic composition – Bulgarians, Turks, Gagauz, and Crimean Tatars. In Dobrudzha there have been settlements since antiquity. Near the village of Sveshtari, there is a Thracian-Hellenistic tomb from the first half of the 3rd century BC., in which the Goth ruler Dromichet was probably buried. It has been under the auspices of UNESCO since 1985. Near today’s Silistra are the ruins of a late antique, medieval, and Ottoman fortress. The southern part of the geographical region of Dobrudzha is part of the Principality of Bulgaria from the time of the Liberation of Bulgaria until the Balkan Wars. In 1912 Romania made claims and captured Southern Dobrudzha, 4 years later Dobrudzha was liberated after the Tutrakan epic. Many crafts are developed in Tutrakan, and the established port contributes to Tutrakan’s foreign trade contacts with Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In the 19th century, there were over 250 windmills in Dobrogea, in which people ground corn flour, wheat, and bulgur. We will see some of them, and everywhere we will have the chance to try the traditional Dobrudzha dishes and drinks.
