Ep21-Buzludzha! (Creepy abandoned communist building in Bulgaria)
“Did you ever find yourself believing in something you didn’t fathom before?”
<Kirby theme in Budludzha>
“Old communist building… I’m going to pause and put this in my backpack because I’m climbing up stairs one-handed… and it seems smarter to use 2.”
<Silence>
<Creepy atmosphere>
I’m currently in an abandoned communist building that sits on top of a mountain outside Shipka, Bulgaria. The name of this building is Buzludzha.
It took seven years and over 6,000 men to build this massive meeting place. It was finished in 1986 and cost around 7bil euros. Sadly, wasn’t used all that much- since the party dissolved three years later.
The day my adventure friends and I went was super foggy. The car winded up these pot-holed roads that the forest was trying to reclaim and all of a sudden, the road just…ends…
We look up and see something straight out of the movie “Independence Day”… A flying saucer peeking through the fog. We walk around looking at all the graffiti and other writings on the wall. This one was part of the original building… It transcribes as:
“ON YOUR FEET
DESPISED COMRADES
ON YOUR FEET YOU SLAVES OF LABOUR!
DOWNTRODDEN AND HUMILIATED
STAND UP AGAINST THE ENEMY!
LET US WITHOUT MERCY, WITHOUT FORGIVENESS
YES, WE TAKE DOWN THE OLD, ROTTEN SYSTEM…
WORKING MEN
WORKING WOMEN
FROM ALL COUNTRIES COME TOGETHER
FORWARDS! COMRADES WITHOUT FEAR.”
The front door was locked… and we didn’t have the tools necessary to take down the old rotten system…. Ahem… so we found another way in. A broken window around the side.
<Tape of us breaking in>
The great hallway that flows the entire circumference of the saucer is mostly destroyed by weather and vandals. The glass in the windows were broken and the ceiling is caving in. There were once gold, red and black mosaics on the inner-wall that depicted battles and harvest and other scenes- but most of the tiles have been stripped probably for souvenirs.
The main chamber was pretty breathtaking- and would have been doubly so back in the day. The ceiling, is now a bare rusting shell of metal beams and asbestos, had a hammer and sickle decoration in the center.
Around the walls are even more mosaic designs which all centers on three heads of ex-communist leaders: Marx, Lenin and… someone else. The last head was removed and graffiti taggers wrote “It’s just a head” in its place. In English, no less! All the cool stuff was in English. Like the big sign that said “BLOOD GAMES”
<BLOOD GAMES>
Ok…. Let’s go down into the belly of the beast.
<SFX: climbing down stairs>
Wielding my headlamp and recorder, we set off down one of the non-crumbling staircases to the basement. The weirdest thing was that there was NOTHING living in here. No rats or rodents. No poop or any other signs of life. The only thing that WAS abundant were these bugs that we nick-named commie bugs… because they seemed to thrive off the darkness.
<Bugs>
No spiders, though. Huh. Missed opportunities, guys.
The very last room in the basement was a set of metal fire-escape-ladders.
<Come on!>
<CUT: tape from before>
So… we climb up. And up…. And up….. 44 stories.
The top was.. Foggy. Just like the bottom. We couldn’t see much except that we were pretty high up. Like, oh. 44 stories?
There were a bunch of really cool rusty door sounds, though.
<Rusty door sounds>
And empty elevator shafts.
<Empty elevator shafts>
The whole experience was…. Thrilling! Besides the whole “I’m breaking into a dark abandoned place” thing- there is also the fact that it’s an old communist meeting place… where hundreds of people who would, by un-written-law, HATE ME, just because I’m American. Yet, I’m on their stomping grounds.
Hmm…. Maybe I should have kept that to myself, because on the way back, our car broke down…
<day 1… stranded on the side of the highway> Which you probably heard in a previous podcast.
Now… In going back over the tape, I kept hearing this thing…
<Screaming dogs>
I tried to make it more clear by just applying an EQ filter.
<More clear>
I have no idea what my microphone picked up. I have no idea what makes that sound. All the guys were in the same room as me when I recorded this- so it wasn’t them. And nothing lived in the building- except commie-bugs, and nothing outside could have been picked up by the recorder.
I don’t know if I believe in ghosts or not… But mental note: If I ever become a ghost- I’m totally going to screw with people this way.
<MUSIC>
Wanna see pictures of this place? Go to the shownotes and follow the links to LNLurie.com. Thanks to Chris Allen for helping me edit. Thanks to Dan, Nick and Matt for being my adventure buddies and thanks Bulgarian Communists for throwing a great party, and then building and abandoning the coolest building I’ve ever been in.
Wanna know what a Bassoon recording sounds like when it’s all stretched out? You’re listening to it.