Issue 138

Turkish Airlines has scores of international awards for the outstanding quality of its services in both economy and business class. However, it only takes a single flight with the company to realise that all those awards are more than well-deserved. Turkish Airlines takes hospitality, comfort and efficiency to a whole new level, and its extensive network of flights to 302 cities spreads over the planet, making the company the largest carrier in the world by number of countries.

However, as so often happens in Bulgaria, appearances are deceiving. Leave the main road and you will discover that the rolling hills hide intriguing natural phenomena.

The Krushuna Waterfalls is one of the best known. Located by the eponymous village, near the town of Letnitsa, the waterfalls started to attract visitors in the 2000s, when an eco trail was built around them.

The Krushuna Waterfalls is a cascade carved by the Proynovska River into the soft travertine rock, the largest formation of this sort in Bulgaria.

Photography has of course changed beyond recognition since the digital revolution. Everyone with a smart phone now considers him or herself to be a photographer, and there is already a generation of young people who not only have no idea what a "darkroom" as opposed to Adobe Lightroom means, but who take Instagram to be the ultimate tool for disseminating visual statements ranging from the political to the selfies taken in front of some sunny beach or secluded waterfall.

Victor Blagoev is an up-and-coming Bulgarian/American bassist born and raised in Prague, Czechia. He is quickly expanding his repertoire, playing with internationally renowned musicians such as blues singer Diunna Greenleaf, and some of Prague's biggest names including Martin Kratochvil, Rene Trossman, Cyrille Oswald and more. He is also set to work with, and eventually create and record music with the Rene Trossman, as well as developing a unique musical project with a modern neo-soul, Latin, R&B, jazz group, Skeptemistic.

I wake up with the increasingly sticky morning heat and the crushing smell of the traditional feijoada's black beans with pork that Suzanna is already stirring in the tiny kitchen. Suzanna is the live-in maid. All middle-class households have one here – just because they can. Ours is 22, with warm sparkly eyes and three kids, the youngest of whom she had at 16. Preta (Portuguese for black), she says, poking an index finger at her chest.

History sometimes moves in mysterious ways, as indicated by the story of the role two bridges played in two revolutions, a century and an ocean apart.

Most of the tourists visiting Koprivshtitsa, a town of beautiful traditional houses in the Sredna Gora mountains, pause at a certain bridge. Small and humpbacked, it does not look that important.