Findings in Ruse Youth Park

These photos are from about a week ago. I didn’t have time to upload a new blog post until now, unfortunately. But here it is! A… cave? Honestly, I had no idea what I stumbled upon when I went out for a walk on that beautiful sunny day. These photos were taken in Mladeži Park – or ‘Youth Park’. Supposedly, this cave is an artificial grotto / decorative cave built into the park landscaping during the socialist-era redesigns of the park in the 1950s–70s. There were also a lot of rock structures, which seem to be remnants of older stone landscaping and retaining structures from earlier park construction phases. As it turns out, Mladeži Park has a long layered history: before becoming today’s park, there was a stadium and a hunting lodge on this same spot, which were demolished after the bombings by the Anglo-American aviation. After 1953, it was heavily redesigned with paths, monuments, decorative structures, and leisure area. This stone in particular caught my eye. It somehow made me…