FUN

Ahead of the 14 November general election some parties – notably the DB, or Democratic Bulgaria, and the ITN, or There Is Such a People party – insisted on taking away the good old-fashioned paper election ballots that you had to use a pen to put a cross against your preferred candidate on, and substitute them with "election machines": small and not-very-difficult-to-operate contraptions where you press a series of buttons and then the thing spews out a supermarket-style receipt which you have to fold and put in a ballot box.

In the neighbourhood, I asked a retired woman, who habitually makes a public nuisance by throwing bread crumbs out of her fourth-floor balcony to feed Sofia's uncontrolled population of pigeons, to stop doing that because a uncontrolled population of pigeons carried many diseases that directly jeopardised the health of the other residents.

A sober look at the current mess of Bulgarian politics in the aftermath of 12 years of Boyko Borisov may produce some unexpected if slightly idiosyncratic explanations. Perhaps Bulgaria's political parties are where they are at – namely, at each other's throats – not because they really want to "scrape off" each other from the face of the earth but because... the publicists who invented their names badly miscalculated in the first place. If you, as a foreigner, has trouble understanding what the difference between Stand Up! Mafia Out! and Stand Up.BG! We Are Coming! is, do not worry.

As even the most enthusiastic diners in Sofia have discovered, bad restaurants in the capital outnumber good ones. Happily, for more than 15 years now there has been a place in central Sofia where lovers of good food and proper service can feel well – and pampered.

The first historians and archaeologists to survey this nation's past. The builders of some of Sofia's most prominent landmarks. The creators of some of Bulgaria's finest gardens. Artists whose paintings captured the soul of Bulgaria. They defined Bulgaria's art, culture, industry and education at the turn of the 20th century, and what unites them is that they were all... Czech.

A new book, Bulgaria Under Communism, published by Routledge in 2018, fills the gaps for English speakers. Written by Professor Ivaylo Znepolski and historians from the Bulgarian Institute for Research of the Recent Past, the volume covers the most important aspects of Bulgaria as a Communist country. It provides all the background needed for a person unfamiliar with Bulgarian history to understand how and why Communism took over, in 1944. It also explores the profound transformation of Bulgarian politics, society, economy and culture in the 45 years that followed.

A beautiful princess is given by her brother, the king, as wife to the very man who is conquering their lands: The story of Bulgarian princess Tamara Maria and her marriage to Ottoman Sultan Murad I in 1371, as part of a treaty with her half-brother King Ivan Shishman, is a powerful one. It gave rise to a novel, Tamara Shishman and Murad I, written by Anna Ivanova Buxton in 2013.

Dear Vagabond,

I've been pondering about my dog, our little memento from Bulgaria. Do you know what breeds these Bulgarian street dogs come from? Is it a mix of Scenthound and Karakachan? Or international influence, perhaps German shepherd? I have attached a photo of her – she's a little grey around the snout now – nine years old next month! She doesn't really have any English dog friends, she prefers people. We joke that it's because their barks are foreign to her!

I was invited to offer my perspective on Poets & Writers as well as the wider world of literary magazines, and for six days I got to know some extremely talented writers from Bulgaria, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States while learning about the literary culture of Bulgaria – first in the capital city of Sofia and then in Sozopol, an ancient town on the Black Sea. Truly remarkable.

Balkan traditional music has the peculiar quality to move even people who are anyway not much into what used to be called world music. It somehow gets inside you, infects you with its madness, and makes you dance and cry with the joy and the sadness, which you usually prefer to keep hidden even from yourself.