Issue 17

In 2004, Englishman Edward Vick, head of the German-based translation company EVS that also has offices in Bulgaria, created the Vick Foundation to support Bulgarian literature.

The novel of the year award is just one part of the initiative designed to give writers a chance to see their work published in English. In the beginning, Bulgarians were sceptical. Three years later, however, the Vick Prize has become a prestigious award for prose.

More's the pity most of the acquired habits mentioned don't travel well. I was reminded of that at a Christmas reunion back home when I was nodding, apparently negatively, as in incredulously or cynically, when friends were telling stories. That and the slow, deliberate conversation style acquired from speaking to others in English as a second language makes those in New York suspect some terminal brain damage has come from the heat they feel we're getting too much of here.

When he founded MTM GRUP 11 years ago, Manel Riera knew what he wanted to do: help small communities develop. At that time, the Autonomous Community of Catalunya was like Bulgaria: politicians couldn't make longterm plans and ordinary people couldn't turn their dreams into profitable businesses. Riera knew he could help. A lawyer and expert in business and public administration, he had extensive experience counselling Catalunya's administrative, construction and environmental ministers.

A couple of years ago there were only a handful of relocators in Burgas and a few token British families in the surrounding villages. More recently, however, the expat community has mushroomed. Varna witnessed a flood of foreign sun-seekers when the country first came into the limelight, to the dismay of many Burgas natives - the two towns enjoy a longstanding love-hate relationship not unlike that between Glasgow and Auld Reekie.

At the carnival in Rio you'll go Ah!, that's certain, while in Venice you'll go Uhm! when you meet the mysterious ladies behind Neo-Baroque masks.

Instead of Ipanema chicks, however, at the masquerade in Bulgaria you'll be confronted by wild, prancing kukeri, or mummers, with cowbells tied to their belts and horns on their heads. However, the sexual charge of the mummers' games is stronger than in Rio or Venice – because it is much more overt.

Anarchy in the empire

How did the Eastern Question turn into the Eastern Crisis? The answer is complicated, but the seriousness of the problem was clear by 1875.

Odiously for many Bulgarians, this country lags behind Turkey in terms of literacy, according to one of the most influential international surveys on the quality of education, the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. It was conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.When I told a group of experts about these embarrassing results, one of them stood up and said it wasn't true. He said he was in touch with schoolchildren and they could all read and write. Besides, the United States was full of illiterates, he said.

The easiest way to drive Bulgarians crazy is to steal a piece of what they perceive as their cultural or historical heritage – even if they regard it as scrap iron.When military police arrested Germans Thomas Martin and Matheus Meier and Bulgarian army major Aleksey Petrov for smuggling a dismantled tank that had been lying half-buried along the Turkish border, Bulgarians were infuriated – especially when the media announced that this rarity was worth a million euros on the antiquities market.

This horrific story involves a 26-year-old mayor, blood-thirsty domestic dogs and a British woman who was so immersed in Bulgarian culture that she spoke Bulgarian, lived in a traditional house and even owned a horse and cart. Ann and her husband had lived in the village of Nedyalsko for two years before a pack of dogs viciously attacked and killed her. This was not an isolated incident: scars on her legs testified to the ongoing problem that ultimately resulted in her death, yet her neighbours ignored her pleas to control their dogs.

Are you a Hitler aficionado hoping to impress your fellow travellers with some authentic neo-Nazi decorations? Or are you nostalgic for the Iron Curtain era when Brezhnev and other ageing cronies ran the show from the Kremlin? Then you'll like Sofia's antique market.

Elen Koleva is young, but she's already won the National Film Centre's best female role award for her performance in Shivachki, or Seamstresses (see Vagabond No. 14). Despite her age, she has no illusions: Bulgaria won't see the likes of Hillary Clinton anytime soon, thanks to the simple fact that Bulgarian women are not treated as equal to men.