Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe

Author/Guide: Kapka Kassabova

Why a Booktrail?

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2018

ISBN: 978-1783783205
Genre: Adventure, Travelogue

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What you need to know before your trail

When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the borderzone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece was rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall so it swarmed with soldiers, spies and fugitives. On holidays close to the border on the Black Sea coast, she remembers playing on the beach, only miles from where an electrified fence bristled, its barbs pointing inwards toward the enemy: the holiday-makers, the potential escapees.

Locations

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Turkey
F: Edirne

Travel Guide

Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece

Rhodope Passes, Greece

On land, it was once a Roman route that connected with the Danube with the Bosphorus. In the sky, it is still a migratory role for birds. Via pontica takes its name from the Black Sea

Strandja, Bulgaria

It missed the last ice age apparently but it’s the last mountain range of south East Durope with a surface area of some 10, 00 square kilometres and is about 300 million years old The highest peak is only some 1031 metres burt the author states that this is where she feels close to the stars. On the Turkish side they call the range Yildiz, the starry one.

Thracian Corridors

Thrace today denotes a large geographical area on the map But Trace is also a dead civilsiaton, a contemporary of ancient Greece, Madednia and Perisa. The Thracians who never formed an empire and who we already met in Strandja, are perhaps the least known of the Ancient people of Europe

Ancient Thrace sprawled across what is today the territory of north-east Greece, including the islands of Samothraki and Thasos as we as the European Park of Turkey and al of Bulgaria; across the Danube it covers Romania up to the Carpathian Mountains, and some of Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia and some of Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia. The Thracians left no written traces but a great deal of material ones.