The mountain is calling: Susanne Arndt on her way to the summit of Botev in the Central Balkan National Park.
© FLORIAN JAENICKE / Brigitte
by Susanne Arndt 14.08.2025, 08:14 – 7 mins
Just let go! Nothing is better for this than a holiday home in the Stara Planina, the Bulgarian Balkan Mountains – far away from it all.
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“With luck, you’ll hear the jackals howling at night!” Kalin, the man from whom we rented the hundred-year-old house in the Bulgarian mountains, is visibly thrilled. Jackals? I shudder. We’ve just arrived, sitting in the garden with our host, and he tells us how he and his wife Maya fell in love with the half-ruined house on the hillside.
In the middle of nowhere
Kalin’s holiday home is located almost exactly in the center of Bulgaria, in the foothills of the Balkan Mountains, overlooking Mount Botev, the highest peak at 2,376 meters. In other words: the middle of nowhere – and that’s been my absolute dream destination ever since the state of the world has been robbing me of sleep. Photographer Florian also needed a break, so we traveled here together. After all, where better to escape the world than in the mountains of a sparsely populated country? Only around six of Bulgaria’s almost nine million inhabitants still live here. “The educated people left immediately after the fall of communism,” says Kalin, “I’m one of the few crazy people who stayed.” Kalin has worked as an interior designer in Sofia and Copenhagen. His profession is evident in the house, which he restored with style and dedication.
Beautifully hidden: Kalin and Maya’s holiday home with barn
© FLORIAN JAENICKE / Brigitte
The nowhere around us looks something like this: A few hundred meters down the road, the half-abandoned village of Selishte dozes in the sun, and before our eyes lies the Stara Planina mountain range, as the Balkan Mountains are called in Bulgarian. It means “old mountains.”
And even though we got lost on the way from Sofia and missed the supermarket, we’re well-stocked up here: The fruit from Kalin’s gnarled apple and pear trees may not be ripe yet, nor are the grapes from the vine that hugs our house at picking height, but the sweetest mirabelle plums are. A private well supplies the house with drinking water, and at 8 p.m. sharp, Lilia arrives from the village with bowls full of food—we had arranged this before the trip. There’s pork loin with porcini mushrooms from the forest, thick, fragrant yeast bread, pickled peppers, and unusually spicy garlic to nibble on.
Lilia spoils us every evening with home-cooked meals
© FLORIAN JAENICKE / Brigitte
Waking up every morning is so wonderful
And then I sit in our garden with a beautiful mountain view and just stare at my phone again, consuming messages. Relaxing is hard, and digital detox is even harder. But after a while, my mobile data is gone. Good thing, now I have to get clean: To outsmart each other, Florian and I turned off the Wi-Fi.
We go to sleep with the sun, and I rise with it. It’s not even six o’clock when I walk barefoot into the garden with my coffee. It’s like a large clearing, a hill overlooking the garden all to ourselves. But I’m never alone: the village dog Murjy, whom Kalin had already introduced us to, usually sits next to me. Together we allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the morning sun, which warms my feet, still cold in the dewy grass; sheep bells jingle; a rooster crows. Waking up every morning is so wonderful now.
Dive in and switch off
Much time passes reading, dozing, and eating. But because our minds, accustomed to distraction, crave stimulation, we occasionally leave our refuge to escape elsewhere. For example, at the Orthodox Batoshevski Monastery on a nearby mountain: The morning light falls gently into the cave-like space of the monastery church, and the colorful carpets absorb our footsteps as we admire the frescoes and icons. It is reverently silent until the old man, who let us in without a word, turns on the radio. Why on earth is he doing that?
Better than a ball pit: sunflower fields as far as the eye can see
© FLORIAN JAENICKE / Brigitte
Another time, we drive through wooded hills and sunflower fields to Devetaki Cave, where people sought shelter from the world 70,000 years ago. Stepping out of the blazing sun, we enter the vast cavern and are greeted by the chirping of thousands of swallows. So much sunlight streams through the openings in the cathedral-like cave rooms that not only birds nest inside, but even trees and flowers grow inside.
Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris fought in the spectacular Devetaki Cave for the film
– Expendables 2
© FLORIAN JAENICKE / Brigitte
There’s even more going on at the cascades of the Krushuna Waterfalls, where we want to cool off. But it’s forbidden to swim in the rock pools – instead, people are queuing up in front of an Instagram hotspot to photograph their loved ones through a curtain of water. It’s all way too much for me. Luckily, we discover the Rossitsa River at the end, where we swim and dive all by ourselves, its mini waterfalls massaging our shoulders before we lie down on the rocks in the sun.
At night, I sleep like a log. And during the day, our garden increasingly reminds me that you can learn a lot without Google, just by observing: that chamomile flowers close at night, for example, and open again in the morning. Or that fat stag beetles can fly, preferably at sunset. I’m thrilled to discover that I can even fall asleep under a tree when the buzzing of the insects drowns out the humming in my tinnitus-plagued ears—along with the rustling wind in the leaves.
I have never been so close to heaven
After countless hours of staring at the Botev from our viewing hill, Florian finally asks the inevitable question: “Do we want to go up?” Why not? We agree to hike the one-hour climb to the Pleven Hut and then see what’s next. We stock up on provisions at the market in the nearby small town of Apriltsi, where lace lingerie and bear traps are sold amidst melons and blackberries. But from the hut, with its socialist look, the summit looks so close and tempting that we absolutely want to continue.
Snack station: The Pleven Hut in the Central Balkan Nature Park
© FLORIAN JAENICKE / Brigitte
The ascent through beech forest and wildflower meadows, over hill and dale, is quiet, steep, and varied. Still below the summit, I climb a conical rock, spin around, breathe in the fantastic mountain scenery around me, and gaze up into the blue sky. Directly above me hangs a perfect little cloud, seemingly whispering to me: “Hold on tight, I’ll take you with me!” It’s truly close enough to touch, and I stretch out my arms to it.
When Florian shows me the photo that captures this moment that evening, I can’t believe it: “Seriously? The cloud was that far away?” He laughs: “Well, it was just in the sky.” I still maintain: I’ve never been as close to heaven as I am here, in the middle of nowhere.
Our travel tip for Bulgaria
Getting there & around
Fly to Sofia, then take a rental car to Selishte in the Gabrovo Oblast region (about three hours). The “Karashka” holiday home is located a few hundred meters above the village.
Stay overnight
Kalin’s rustic and very tastefully furnished house ” Karashka ” near the Central Balkan National Park has two double rooms and one single room (min. 2 nights approx. 200 Euro/night, Gabrovo, Selishte, Tel. 08 98 / 76 70 05)
© FLORIAN JAENICKE