Tour de force: last leg

The finale of the London Bulgarian Choir's tour is a monastery town called Troyan, where former choir members, Tsenka and Rolf, have organised a concert, as well as places for us to stay. 

To get there, we cross the Balkan mountain range that stretches all the way from Serbia to the Black Sea. It's a steep, winding road and we make the most of the views – and a break from the hairpin bends – at the top of the pass. 

The point of no return

We visit the monastery, a tranquil retreat with a chapel decorated with delicately fading frescoes. We're invited to sing some of our orthodox songs inside and the monks, visibly moved, lead us to their guest quarters for some hospitality – their own homemade rakia. 

Monastic peace and quiet

A matter of life and death

Going inside to sing

The concert that evening is outdoors and we're joined by a local choir who sing in a classical style, a real contrast to the folk melodies and chorals we've just experienced at Koprivshtitsa. It all goes well, and is followed by a slap-up meal laid on by the town council. Several raucous songs later, we slink off to bed. The tour has reached its end. We're hoarse, sleep-deprived and hungover. But we'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

Time for the bus home...

Tour de force: hill folk

The next stop on the London Bulgarian Choir's tour of its cultural homeland is the heritage village of Koprivshtitsa, in the forested hills east of Sofia. It was once a hotbed of revolutionary zeal and passionate anti-establishment plotting. This weekend this rustic and otherwise sleepy community is filled to the rafters for the national festival of Bulgarian culture, held every five years. 

Circle of life

Hair extensions

They drew the short straw

We're here to soak up the atmosphere, but also to open the festival with a performance on the international stage. We have brought the Swiss Bulgarian Choir with us and our collective singers are in guest houses scattered around town. I'm staying in the 'goathouse', or it may be the gatehouse, as there's a giant wooden entrance to the garden compound surrounding the place. Our luggage is transported by taxi while we walk to our digs up steep, cobbled lanes.

Precarious transfer

After a quick pit-stop a few of us head off to explore the music stages. Scattered across the hillsides above town we find all manner of folk life and music. People come from all over Bulgaria to represent their villages and regions, and to show off the songs and stories they've grown up with. There are bright young things in dazzling costumes, but just as plentiful are choirs of grannies whose years are numbered, along with the songs they proudly share.

Gaida (bagpipes Bulgarian-style)

Singing 'on high'

Dressed to thrill

So proud to be here

Linking it all are pathways lined with handicrafts and souvenir stalls, and food offerings catering to every taste, from candy floss to hog roasts to vegan fare (this last a most unlikely addition since our last visit). And everywhere you look there are gaggles of women resting in the shade, eating lunch, joining in the circle dances that break out all over the hillsides, or changing into costume in the bushes. Needs must.

Changing room: women on the verge

Keeping their cool between sets

When our concert rolls around it feels a little ramshackle – the sound is poor – but the audience love us and erupt in wild cheering all the same. Following our set, a couple walk on hot coals – after a two-hour build-up – then the whole square fills up with a giant circle dance. 

Waiting to go on stage

For anyone looking for respite from the music and drama, Koprivshtitsa has some beautiful old house-museums where all manner of revolutionary activity was hatched in the late-19th century. Nosing around their peaceful cobbled courtyards and prettily painted interiors is a world away from the festival throng up on the hill. 

An oasis of calm awaits

Inside it's richly decorated and agreeably shady

Tour de force: central Bulgaria

The London Bulgarian Choir moves inland from the coast to Stara Zagora, home town of our musical director Dessi. According to Wikipedia it's a town of wide streets, linden trees and poets. And it's paired with County Down in Northern Ireland. But we're not really here to explore. It's a flying visit to perform a joint concert with the Swiss Bulgarian Choir (also coached by Dessi) and children's folk music troupe Zagorche. 

Me and those pesky talented kids

It's an action-packed gig for the audience, full of vibrant colour and movement. Kiril Todorov, our favourite composer, is in the audience, and that's always nerve-wracking. The Zagorche kids, in particular, leave us breathless with their energetic routines.

The Swiss choir rehearsing

b

Backstage and the heat is on

Back on the tour bus the following day we start on Kiril's homemade rakia brandy and while away the journey with songs, games… even a bit of dancing up and down the aisle. 

We're heading for the hills north east of Sofia. Our next stop is Koprivshtitsa, a very special folk festival…

Rakia-fueled moves on the bus

Tour de force: Bulgarian riviera

From the fringes of the Black Sea to the Stara Planina mountains, this year's concert tour of the London Bulgarian Choir's spiritual homeland is a wonderfully varied and eventful one. It's my third tour with the choir but I'm visiting the Black Sea for the first time.

North beach, unusually empty… if you walk far enough 

Pool-bar shenanigans

The party animals among us make the most of Primorsko, our first stop, a brash and bustling resort about an hour south of Burgas. Our hotel is basic with sheets like tablecloths and pillows like bricks. At least the aircon works and my all-in-one toilet shower is reasonably clean. Others are not so lucky. 

We enjoy the blue sea and the hot sand, and the beach trade with vendors selling everything from salty corn-on-the-cob, to the chance to have your photo taken with a tame snake/parrot/iguana.

Crowds – mostly Bulgarian – throng the beaches by day and pack out the bars and restaurants by night. Drunken teens shriek their way around town, while we singers take refuge in the few quiet bars we can find. Our local, the Follow Your Dreams bar, is down a side street and relatively tranquil. Otherwise, we head down to the sand for guitar strumming and moonlight swims.

Songs by moonlight

Launching a lantern

We escape the hoards on an excursion to Beglik Tash, a sanctuary of sacred stones. The rocks are curvaceous and eerily atmospheric, especially when we sing out from niches in the rock. We also take a boat trip along the Ropotamo river nature reserve, all the way to the 'tseluvka', the place where the river 'kisses' the sea. The breeze is lovely. We sing together and enjoy the calm. It's all helping us to bond as a touring group.

Climbing curvy stones

A river reserve cormorant takes off

Our first concert, on an open-air stage in the town centre, attracts a smallish audience, and the speeches by local worthies last almost as long as our set-list. We are feted with flowers and trophies, and treated to an after-party in a nightclub. One of the local dignitaries says to me, "You can only sing the way you do if your heart is in your hands." Very humbling, particularly when it turns out she is no mean singer herself. We eventually escape beachward to sing folk songs by the light of the moon.

Pre-concert rehearsal in Primorsko

Apron chic – despite the soaring temperature

The second concert of the tour is in Sozopol, a picturesque seaside town with an old, cobbled quarter crowded onto a jutting headland. The vibe here feels quite different – the buskers sing Bob Marley! – as we browse chic boutiques and the hushed interiors of churches, finally coming to rest at a stylish eatery perched on the perimeter wall with spectacular views out to sea. 

We sing that night to a packed open-air amphitheatre – perhaps they've seen the full-page article about us in today's national newspaper. 

Found. The only naff stall in Sozopol

We make page 3 of a national tabloid!

London to the Black Sea… by train

Every five years the choir I sing in (the London Bulgarian Choir) tours Bulgaria. The tour has come round again, and this year things are kicking off at the Black Sea resort of Primorsko. When fellow singer Bernard, ever mindful of his carbon footprint, suggests travelling there by train, I don't hesitate. My first job in London was working for an international train company and I can't think of anything more fun than reliving the days when I'd criss-cross Europe by train in my time off. 

The train crew

The first leg of the journey is Eurostar to Paris, where I'm meeting the other five singers who are joining the overland adventure. I find them at the end of the platform.

All aboard at Gare de l'Est

The second leg is a fast train from Paris to Munich. We while away the hours playing Scrabble and watching Germany whizz by from the bar car. Following a slap-up meal of Bavarian carbs, washed down with giant glasses of beer, in a great restaurant inside Munich station, we go off to find our overnight train.

Sleeper to Zagreb and the gymnastics begin

The third leg is from Munich to Zagreb, Croatia, in a six-berth couchette. It's a bright, clean space, with bed linen provided for the three fold-down bunks on each side. But it's incredibly cramped, so it's one at a time as we sort out our bags, extract nightwear and toothbrushes and take it in turns to slot ourselves in. It's like a game of human Jenga. Since Zagreb is around the halfway point, in time and distance, we've booked an apartment for the night. But it's early in the morning so we cram our collected baggage into some lockers and head off in search of breakfast. 

Zagreb old town

Zagreb turns out to be a delight. The civic buildings have the feel of central European capitals with expansive cobbled squares and grand facades, while the churches feature onion-dome steeples and patterned roofs and remind me of Vienna. 

Getting high

I climb the tower for a view over the pretty red-tile roofs of the city centre and we all meet up in the Museum of Broken Relationships, a stylishly curated collection of mementos provided by contributors from all over the world, with the story of the ending of the relationship alongside. Visiting the museum is quite a journey – sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but often heartbreakingly sad. 

The Museum of Broken Relationships

We lunch in a vegan cafe – yes, really – and in the evening dine in a highly recommended place in the old town where we are hilariously entertained by the banter between the dry-witted waiter and our friend Slaveia, who ends the evening with an invitation to visit the old lady who supplies the restaurant's outstanding olive oil, on her Croatian island.

Croatian coffee waiter

The fourth leg is from Zagreb to Belgrade, Serbia, the next morning, and the most eventful journey so far. Luckily we've reserved seats because the train is heaving. Much to our dismay, we have to turf out an old Serbian lady in a headscarf, but we find her another seat and she makes our day by donning mirrored Elvis sunglasses and twinkling at us from behind them for the rest of the journey.

Forever young

Two doped up pickpockets try to embark on a thieving spree along he carriage  but are blasted out by an eagle-eyed fellow passenger, and by our Bernard, who bravely fronts up to one of them. Meanwhile, the rest of the chaps are being given a severe dressing down by a female border guard for not having their passports to hand. They're secretly thrilled.

Our ticket office, Bernard 

And as we roll on through Serbia, we sing the only Serbian song we know, Aide Jano, and the rest of the carriage quietly joins in. One woman, her curiosity peaked, starts asking questions. She's sings a bit herself, she says. When we ask her to give us a song, she says she will need a minute or two to prepare. She comes back and begins to sing – something classical. Oh boy, she is good. Her clear voice resonates throughout the carriage and when she finishes everyone bursts into spontaneous applause. What a welcome to Belgrade.

Exploring Belgrade

We have a few hours to kill here, so we stash our bags and go off to explore. If the station feels a bit down at heel, the park outside resembles a refugee camp. Syrians, someone says. But it's before the overland migration hit the headlines so we're really not sure. Belgrade is being called the new Berlin and it's certainly got the edgy street art, the hippies in harem pants, and the stylish bars set in crumbling buildings. It has an iconic landmark that everyone gravitates towards, the castle, and we sit in a bar inside the old walls watching the sun set. We grab delicious filled pittas on the main drag, a long pedestrian street heaving with pavement restaurants and Saturday night crowds.

Alley cat 

King of the castle

The fifth leg is from Belgrade to Sofia, overnight. Back at the station, we wheel our luggage to the platform and wait for the graffiti-covered heap of junk that's sitting there to pull out. Then we realise it's not going to pull out, because it is our train. 

All we can do is laugh

It's worse on board. The compartment dimensions seem to have shrunk, the ladder is broken so we can't reach the top bunks, there's a massive hole in the ceiling, and all the curtains are hanging by a thread. The toilet is worse than anything I've seen at a festival, with a noxious gas in the air that has clearly been created by all the waste matter that is never cleaned away. Ugh. On the plus side, the train is so decrepit that the windows don't close, which means a cool, relatively refreshing breeze blows through the carriage all night.

More human Jenga

The next morning we wake up expecting to see the outskirts of Sofia. Slaveia talks to the guard in a hybrid Serbian/Bulgarian and we learn that we're still in Serbia. In fact, we're only a couple of hours out of Belgrade. The train had broken down in the night and by the time they fixed it, all the slots on the single-track line had been missed. Worse still, we'd been expecting to breakfast in Sofia, so have nothing to eat. Slaveia charms the guard into brewing us coffee, and parting with some of the fizzy drinks in his private fridge, and we survive on those, along with Eleanor's gluten-free snacks. 

Slaveia's hard-won coffee

Dreaming of breakfast

As we cross the border into Bulgaria, a whopping eight hours behind schedule, we sing Hubava Si Moya Goro, a Bulgarian anthem that goes, How Beautiful My Forest. 

Canine welcome at the border

The sixth leg is from Sofia to Burgas. There's a flurry of activity at Sofia station as we run around buying food, finding cash, purchasing new tickets. This train is clean and relatively contemporary – even the loos – apart from the door that keeps spontaneously slamming open. It's late when we pull into Burgas, past a vast and eerily illuminated chemical plant.

Health and safety be damned

Night lights near Burgas

The seventh and final leg is by taxi from Burgas to Primorsko, where we find showers, clean beds, the lovely friendly faces of the London Bulgarian Choir and, the following morning, a symbolic paddle in the sea. After four days, six trains and a distance of almost 1,800 miles, I think we've earned a rest.

Dipping my toes in the Black Sea