Melnik, in Bulgaria's southwest corner, is a charming village set amongst odd sandstone cliffs. Once a major trading center many times its present size, Melnik's status eroded during Ottoman times. Today, many of its characteristic white houses with brown wooden trim and red tile roofs house guest rooms and "mehanas," or taverns, where visitors while the night away with drink and food. Melnik is part of the Bulgarian section of Macedonia (the region [see below], not the country). The Monkey visited Melnik on several occasions.

At one point or another, most visitors to Melnik find themselves having a glass of wine and a chat with "Six Fingers," a local winemaker who runs a bar in his cave cum wine cellar (see below). The Monkey was no exception (not that you can tell much from this photo!).

The landscape around Melnik can be beautiful, desolate, and otherworldy all at the same time. Here the Monkey looks out over some of the vineyards that produce the grapes that make Melnik's famous wine, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once ordered especially for his son's wedding.

Though not yet as renowned as other Eastern European producers like Greece and Hungary, Bulgaria is in fact one of the world's oldest vinicultural locales. Archaeological research, including finds of primitive wine presses, suggests that vines were first planted and wine first produced in present-day Bulgaria between 6000 and 3000 BCE, and ancient Thracian wines (most of Thrace, an early civilization that bordered ancient Greece, is Bulgarian) were praised by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. And Dionysius, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, is supposed to have come from the Rhodopi mountains of southern Bulgaria.

Back in Melink, the nearby Damianitsa Winery has been turning out some impressive wines in recent years that are slowly earning their rightful place among the world's other fine wines.

The vintner known as "Six Fingers" in his cave standing by a few casks of his wine, which usually comes in three simple varieties: dry red, sweet red, and white. With cheese and bread, the wine tastes even better!

Near Melnik is Rozhen, home to the Rozhenski Monastery visible in the flats behind the Monkey. Further off are the jagged Pirin Mountains. This is the heart of Bulgarian Macedonia.

The Monkey isn't crazy enough to try to summarize the history of the Macedonian Question in a photo caption. But with this photo, he acknowledges this topic which became especially troublesome after 1878, when the Great Powers rescinded the Treaty of San Stefano that had granted control of Macedonia to Bulgaria. With the territory once again "up for grabs," various nationalist movements began a bitter fight in the region. The most notorious of these was the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which, as historian James Pettifer notes, was "the most feared secret society and terrorist organization in Europe" during the early 20th Century. IMRO at that time was an ultra-nationalist group whose goal was to foment a mass uprising to establish an independent Macedonian state. Because the ancient region of Macedonia had been split among many of the post-Ottoman Balkan states, IMRO's aim brought it into conflict with authorities in Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (which later became Yugoslavia). Southwestern Bulgaria—that is, Bulgarian Macedonia—has a strong tradition of support for IMRO, which the Sofia government has repeatedly sought to repress. One IMRO leader, Yane Sandanski, is buried near Rozhen Monastery, the symbolic center of Bulgarian Macedonia.

The Monkey inspects a number of martenitsi hanging from a tree in Melnik. The exchanging and wearing of red and white martenitsi to celebrate the arrival of spring each March 1st is just one example of Bulgaria's lively folk traditions. Tradition holds that upon seeing a stork, you must remove your martenitsa and tie it to a blossoming tree. If you don't spot a stork (a symbol of spring's onset and fertility), you should remove your martenitsa at the end of March and tie it to a tree, or you might face the curse of Baba Marta, the mythical old lady of spring who can be either a purveyor of good tidings or bad luck. Throughout Bulgaria the Monkey encountered tree branches decorated with martenitsi old and new.

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