I can’t really remember where I first read about the Soviet era Buzludzha Communist monument but it immediately landed itself on my bucket list.
The grey concrete UFO-shaped structure, abandoned and left to decay on top of a mountain in eastern Bulgaria had some sort of eerie allure.
When I worked out this dream destination was only a five-hour drive from Istanbul – I knew it was something I was going to be able to do fairly easy from Turkey.
After doing a bit of research I decided it was going to be easier to get public transport into Bulgaria and pick up a car once we had crossed the border.
The monument was completed in 1981 and sits where the final battle between Bulgarian rebels and the Ottoman Emire took place in 1868. It’s also where the socialists assembled secretly to form a movement that would eventually lead to the foundation of the BUlgarian Communist Party.
Unfortunately or otherwise, less than a decade later, a wave of reforms swept across Eastern Europe, and the Communist Parties lost their grip.
The Buzludzha momument has slowly been degenerating since.
With our adventure drawing near, I head out to the shops to stock up on batteries, lights, torches and warm clothes for our trip into Eastern Europe.
The monument sits atop a Buzludzha – around 1500 metres above sea level. It’s around 20km from Shipka, 250 km from Sofia, 120km from Plovdiv, and 430km from Istanbul.
We we arrived at the foot of the peak it was warm and sunny. You know you’re on the right track when you see the huge statue at Kazanlak.
We still didn’t know exactly what to expect, or if we’d even be able to find the monument but after about 20 minutes we were close as we came across a big square with statues of giant hands holding up torches.
We were pretty impressed with this alone, and spent ages carrying on, taking photos and fooling around. Then there was a bit of a gust of wind, clearing the clouds momentarily and exposing the mountain peak behind. It’s then that we caught our first glimpse of the Communist Monument.
Had we not been watching, and had the wind not blown at that exact second, we probably wouldn’t have realised we were minutes away from reaching what we’d come to see.
We hopped back in the car and began to wind our way up to the very top of the mountain peak.
I’d read online about a couple of people who made the same trip and had to park way down at the bottom of the mountain and continue by foot because the snow was so bad. We’re lucky that it was just cloudy and windy and the real winter months hadn’t arrived yet. You wouldn’t have guessed it when you leapt from the car though. The wind was FREEZING. It was rainy and wet and grey and terribly cold.
We ran up the grand staircase towards the monument, taking photos at every turn.
There were a handful of randoms there but it was more than easy to snap our pictures without them getting in the way.The monument itself is smaller than we’d expected, but still pretty grand. 
It’s been heavily vandalised, with graffiti right-the way around its grey and austeer exterier but in a way that’s part of its story.
Eventually it was time to take the plunge and decide whether or not we were going to break in.
We’d read detailed instructions on such the Don’t Complain Blog – and so were pretty confident we knew what we had to do.
We found a small opening around the side of the monument and started to weigh up whether or not we were going to do this. 
We weren’t exactly sure of the legality of going inside the monument – that had quite obviously been sealed off to the public. We also weren’t 100% certain of the safety of doing such a thing. We were pretty sure that Bulgaria was one of those countries that would probably put you in gaol first and ask questions later and so we knew we were taking a bit of a risk.
But it was freezing, wet and windy outside and so we legged it.
We climbed in through the tiny opening and trapized down a set of crumbling concrete stairs into the main entry. It was big and dark and wet, and the floor was littered with rubble and debris.
For some reason we decided to go down, deep inside the bowels of the building, before exploring the more photogenic main hall.
We found ourselves in a room that once upon a time probably housed maintenance equipment. There were air-conditioning ducts and kitchenesque areas and lots, and lots of expose asbestos (we assumed).
There was not shortage of creepy graffiti which did nothing to help calm our nerves.
We were always poised ready (as can be) for some psycho to jump out and terrify us, or worse. We both thought it would be the perfect place to dump a body or live if you were homeless, an outcast, a criminal, or all of the above!
Fortunately the only people we came across were other nerds who had also wanted to explore the monument.
A group of such nerds had pointed us in the right direction of the tower and so we thought we might give that a go.
Not entirely unexpectedly, the lift was out of order, and so we had to climb the icy cold, metal ladder, 30 flights to the top of the tower.
It was cold, dark and tiring, and maybe not really worth the effort, but we made it to the top.
It was too cloudy to see much from the terrace, but through the mist and cloud we managed to make out a few mountain tops and a wind farm.
We spent a bit of time up there, watching a group of “urban explorers” cavorting, and courting death by playing on a rusty metal frame as though it was a set of monkey bars. They’d been climbing over the edge to take extreme selfies and the like, and we figured if one was going to fall, we might as well stay and watch the show.
Eventually we decided to head back down to check out the rest of the monument.
In a way it’s a shame it was so cold and miserable the day we went, but the weather did help add to the experience. It was so eerie and atmospheric with the wind blowing the loose bits of ceiling metal, and rain drops echoing through the cavernous main hall.
We spent the better part of an hour fooling around, taking photos in the main hall before calling it a day and heading to our hotel in Sofia.