JOKE OF THE MONTH

Former chairwoman of the BSP, or Bulgarian Socialist Party, Kornelia Ninova further stunned already flabbergasted Bulgarian audiences by pointing out "it was too early in the day" to talk about "unorthodox sexual practices" such as fisting. Ninova was being interviewed on a morning show by bTV, a major television station. She resigned her post as leader of the BSP, the heir to the former Bulgarian Communist Party, in the wake of the June 2024 election that brought disastrous results for her party.

The new party, centred around a Disneyland-style theme park with strong "patriotic" connotations and located in northeastern Bulgaria, was represented by two men. Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolay Markov (who introduces himself as "colonel"), who became the leader of the 13-strong parliamentary faction of Grandeur, and Ivelin Mihaylov, the owner of the theme park, whom his ilk presented as Grandeur's "ideologue."

In an election campaign almost entirely dominated by finger-pointing and mudslinging the "genius" PRs of the CC-DB-DSB, or Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria-Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, seem to have gained the top ignominy for the worst election message. In an ill-thoughtover replay of the 1960 ad for JFK targeted at Richard Nixon – anyone remember the Would-You-Buy-an-Used-Car-From-This-Man publicity stunt?

The advisors to Vasil Terziev, the mayor of Sofia, who are supposedly as "smart and beautiful" as the political parties that put him forward, must have swallowed that book several times over and mastered to perfection the craft of losing friends and alienating people...

Atanas Atanasov is a general. He was the head of the Bulgarian security service under Ivan Kostov, the Bulgarian prime minister in 1997-2001, who inimitably prompted just two reactions: love or hate. There are still people who swear by him because they think he was resolute in dismantling the Communist system, and other people who swear at him because they consider all evils to have befallen Bulgaria since 1989 to be directly or indirectly attributable to him.

So what has a senior cleric, Patriarch Neofit, who died in March aged 78, done to deserve a state funeral replete with military salutes and a coffin being drawn by... an armoured personnel carrier?

When it was hammered out last year with the support of Boyko Borisov's GERB (whom everyone left, right and centre of Kiril Petkov, Asen Vasilev, Hristo Ivanov and Gen Atanas Atanasov swore was the godfather of all evils to befall Bulgaria in the past 10 years), it was made clear that the "fixture" would "rotate" every nine months. Nine months since its inception are supposed to end in March.

The cops by far outnumber the construction workers wielding chop saws inside a ladder hoist. There have been no press releases, nor the obligatory information signs to tell the public what's going on. The area has been cordoned off. No media are allowed behind the metal fences.

Ahead of Christmas, the park in front of Sofia University, once known as Freedom Park but now bearing its restored name of Prince's Garden, looks like a melee zone.

The man, who went to his native Haskovo, in southern Bulgaria, to vote in the local elections was turned away by the election authority because he failed to live up to the basic requirement of having had an address in his constituency for at least six months. The Haskovo commission announced the address they had for Vasilev dated back to 2000 and was in the United States.

"Hey, beauty, let's go home and have sex."

" I can't do it just like that. We do not even have common acquaintances."

"Well, do you know Boyko Borisov?"

"Yes, I do."

"So, let's go!"

***

They say there is no unemployment in Bulgaria. That's not true. Look at how many people are looking for jobs as mayors.

***

When you see many people dressed in suits go to church and light candles or plant trees, local elections are in the offing.

***

Two politicians talk to each other.

"Hey, pal, how did you get rich?"

Other angry citizens have taken to the park, where the MOCHA is situated. They have set up tents threatening they will defend with their bodies the pile of stones which they see as epitomising the victorious Red Army's fight against Nazism, for which the Bulgarian nation should be "eternally grateful." In the agencies of the state pen-pushers of all shapes and sizes scurry to manifest why the Red Army moment cannot be dismantled, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Firstly, a bright light appeared in the sky over Vidin, at the River Danube, one dark, hot and mosquito-infested night. It was reputedly followed by a loud explosion. People were mesmerised and slightly frightened. During the following days the media reported a unusually large meteorite burning over Romanian territory, leaving no identifiable debris. But the event, which will probably go down in local lore as the World-Famous Vidinska Event, was the beginning rather than the end of the story.

What led to that is so complicated and absurd that analysts find it difficult to explain while ordinary people prefer just to laugh it off. Here is the story briefly.

Everyone who has had some work to do with the Bulgarian police should have noticed the despicable conditions in which rank and file officers often work. Their uniforms are bad, their offices have been last repaired in the times when the Bulgarian police was called People's Militia, and they often have to pay out of their pocket for fuel to drive their rather old and rusty patrol cars.

Seemingly, some officers have found an ingenious way to drive something better. No, we are not talking about the confiscated Porsche that Sofia police used to patrol with in the 2000s.

Voters are being exposed to a plethora of pledges designed to make them feel good – and cast their ballots for whoever talks louder. Significantly, pundits and publicists try to make their speech acts as concrete as possible, knowing the increasingly wary voters are not easily impressed by nice-sounding but meaningless niceties and empty commonplaces.

"Pretty sure that was in Elden Ring" Musk wrote, possibly without knowing that the photographer, Vladislav Terziyski, had heavily manipulated his picture, and possibly without realising that difficult-to-pronounce Belogradchik was a real town in a real country outside George R. R. Martin's computer game.

Perushtitsa, now a small and offbeat town rarely visited by tourists, is known to every Bulgarian as the sight of a massacre in the failed April 1876 Uprising against the Ottomans. Thirty-two-year-old Ruth Koleva is a notorious jazz, soul and R&B singer who recently signed up with Warner Music. She spends most of her time outside Bulgaria where she has excellent career opportunities. 

Though Dead Souls used to be on the national school curriculum, few latterday Bulgarians, and possibly even fewer English speakers, have actually read it, so here is a short synopsis.

The Flying Saucer, which in recent years has become one of the Top 10 world monuments for urbex, or dark tourism, was constructed in the early 1980s. It was designed to celebrate the Bulgarian Communist Party, in control of this country from 1944 to 1989. It was supposed to withstand the ravishes of both time and nature for several hundred years, as the Communists, who had commissioned it, thought they would be in power eternally.

In early June a small plane flew into Bulgarian airspace from the northwest and landed at what used to be a commercial airport near Vidin. Apparently, the aircraft refuelled. It is unclear whether the pilot or pilots got any on-the-ground assistance from anyone or just poured fuel into the plane's tank from canisters. Guards from a private security company that was supposed to protect the ruins of Vidin Airport, which was abandoned in the 1990s, noticed the activity and alerted the local police. But the aircraft was quicker. She took off before the police arrived.