Not far from the town of Tran near the Bulgarian border with Serbia lies the town of Breznik that even Bulgarians know very little. In spite of preserved archeological finds from the times of Thracians and Romans in the Classical Antiquity the town has not yet become popular with tourists.

Aniela Asenova is a local researcher and historian. For many years she has toured the Breznik field with the children from the local school in search of evidence of the millennial history of the small town. The school museum arranged by her features among other objects, a Thracian votive tablet. "Historians who come to Breznik say that there is nothing interesting in our region, but this is not the case" Asenova contends.

„With my pupils we have discovered old churches, shrines, votive crosses that we have described in detail. Votive crosses are placed in locations where there were old churches and monasteries. When a church was reduced to rubble during the Turkish yoke people left in its place a stone cross for the sake of posterity. These crosses are very interesting. They represent a circle with a cross in it. In Breznik we had visitors from Italy and they were impressed with the crosses. These are typical of our region, Western Bulgaria, but they have not been studied. We set out to mark on the map the locations of such crosses. Now archeologists, if interested, can come to study them. Regrettably, tomb looters always move one step ahead of us. Once we came across excavations made by them that were 50-60 cm deep. Their shovels, pickaxes, everything was thrown around on the ground”, Aniela Asenova goes back in time. She makes a point that the town has other things to pride on apart from historical sites:

„We have many healing springs in the area. We have made a list of them after researching local legends told by elderly people. Most of them are very good for treatment of eye diseases.”

One very famous spring is a mineral spring with water rich in iron. Its location is the nearby hill of Bardoto. In 1907 the Breznik people presented the iron water at the London Fair and were back with a gold medal. The same water with probably slightly lower iron content is the water of the tap outside St. Petka Church, at the foot of Bardoto.  Until recently few tourists were aware of the church though it is in fact a national monument of culture. Today it is more popular owing to Aniela Asenova and her pupils who meet tourists in the town square and invite them to visit the church and listen to its fascinating story.

„This was the location of a Thracian sanctuary. In 15 c. a church was built in this place, but the local Turkish vagabond Kara Feiz destroyed it. The local Christian priest however built the church again. In the churchyard there are a few Turkish tombstones. When the mosque in the town was destroyed, the tombstones were brought to the churchyard”, Aniela Asenova says.

It could come across rather strange that Islamic symbols are kept in an Orthodox Christian churchyard, but Aniela says that they are viewed as handmade paragons of Ottoman art. And she adds that foreigners who come to visit see them as examples of the tolerant relations between Islam and Christianity.

Aniela Asenova tells us the story of the 1858 earthquake when the domes of St. Sophia Church in Sofia collapsed. The Breznik people went to Sofia to help - the rich with money, the poor with hard work. As a token of gratitude they received a body of liturgical books dated to 1765.

It is also interesting to know where the name of the town of Breznik comes from.

„The eastern part of Bardoto hill was dotted with birch trees - breza is birch in Bulgarian. So we live in Breznik, the town of birch trees. There was a Thracian shrine there described in the works of Prof. Dimitrina Mitova-Dzhonova. It features stone circles and there are also spouts most probably for consecration with wine. This was a temple facing the sun and the birch trees.”

English Daniela Konstantinova