Suppose you have two short winter (November-March) days in Plovdiv, or at least one endless day of summer’s generosity, as they use to be here on the Thracian valley from the beginning of June to the middle of September. If you have already walked through the cobblestone streets of the Old town of Plovdiv, and you wander what else you could get from the place, then go and see two things, very essential for Bulgaria – a Thracian tomb and a vineyard and wine producing facility with a restaurant-hotel complex, - all these in the village of Starosel - some 45 km north west of Plovdiv.
And “north” here means, that traveling only a short distance away from the hot valley, you find yourself right at the foot of the biggest mountain on the Balkan peninsula – the Balkan mountain. The two Thracian tombs at Starosel, discovered in 2008 belong to the family of other about 1000, dispersed through the present territory of Bulgaria, and mainly in the region eastward to Plovdiv- in the so called “Valley of Thracian kings”.
Only about 300 of these domed structures have been so long researched, the Starosel Tomb being archeological sensation of the year 2000. Used as tombs and ritual places by the Thracians (the second largest after the Indians population, according to Herodotus), these structures were for the ancient people some sort of “doors” for the dead to step through, not only their souls, but their bodies entering another dimension. For us, they offer a door to look through into a surprising and amazing understanding of the cosmos. One of the surprising things is that the wine, widely known and produced by the Thracians, was at first place an object of their ritual performances. And only as a secondary use they were drinking it themselves and supplying the participants of the Trojan war . You could taste some sorts of local and common wines here in Starosel.