On the day Bulgaria was told it could join the EU in 2007 (probably the most ardently awaited report in history since the press releases for the Treaty of Neuilly), I got a call from a friend who was stuck in a mid-afternoon traffic jam. Nothing particularly noteworthy, I thought, traffic jams are hardly anything to write home about these days, unless you are driving to the Mediterranean and end up spending half your holiday on some Italian motorway.
The area was proclaimed Bulgaria's first natural park in 1937. Scientists are still arguing over how the "stone forest" was formed. Some think that it was the result of a process similar to that by which cave stalactites are formed, others that it is a fossilised coral reef. The stones date back at least 50 million years, and cover about 653 acres.
The first drawings of the stone forest were made by the Englishman Thomas Spratt, a geologist and a sea captain, who visited during the Crimean War.
Where in Bulgaria are you?
Builders are swarming over scaffolding, busily hammering, drilling and sawing away. It sounds like a Black Sea developer's dream, but we are not in Varna or Burgas, we are on the edge of Sofia, in Boyana, where the set for a new John Cusack film is under construction. In the middle of this industrious scene stands David Varod, Nu Image's man in Bulgaria.
First-time visitors to Bulgaria are bound to spot them at some stage: little metal plates hung at street corners, in parks, in Communist-era office corridors, perhaps in a ramshackle old factory or two (if you happen to wander round any of those).
The plates are neatly written in indecipherable Cyrillic. Who devised them, you may ask yourself? If you happen to come from one of those countries where signs are actually supposed to mean something useful to the public, like "Mind the gap", or "Push the bell only once", you may well wonder what they are meant to convey.
To most foreigners, the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant represents another Chernobyl, a Soviet time bomb. Wrong.
Most Bulgarians, various polls suggest, consider the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant to be a source of national pride, a miraculous moneymaking machine, the loss of which would be an outrageous price to pay for EU membership. Wrong again.
In modern Bulgarian history there is no better example of stubbornly held misconceptions than the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant. At home, it is overvalued while abroad its relative safety is undervalued.
What prompts one of sport's legendary hard men to skulk and scream at the edge of a football pitch accompanied by one of his daughter's cuddly toys? Well it wasn't FIFA or FA directives, leastways not yet, which drove Stuart Pearce to reach for the stuffed pony called Beanie. It was that old sporting helpmeet: superstition.
In Pearce's case the team he manages, Manchester City, had, pre-Beanie, lost all league games bar one. They had also been dumped out of the Carling League Cup by lower-than-lowly Chesterfield.
In a ritual every bit as rehearsed as his dance steps, my father carefully prepares for his weekly Sunday engagement. Impeccably dressed in his tailored green gabardine jacket, a present from a friend in London in the early 1990s, he goes dancing.
The venue is always the same: a live music hall in Sofia, but the dance and the day can vary. The tango, waltz, rumba, or foxtrot - sometimes on a Saturday, sometimes on a Sunday, although my father prefers the latter. Dancing starts at half past two and goes on until six.
Sitting on my balcony last weekend, all seemed pretty fine in my universe. It was a lovely afternoon. I had a good book open. My coffee was steaming. Yet, for some reason I couldn't concentrate and felt that I was missing something. Went through a few little checks... Work? No. Family or friend's birthday? No. Date? Nope. So I shrugged and went to take a shower. When I finished my ablutions I noticed that my phone was showing a text message. I checked it and saw that it was from a good mate in Paris.
A Bulgarian friend told me an interesting story about Ireland today. There is a well known poster "The Doors of Dublin", showing the city's Georgian doors in all their colourful splendour.
On the internet she had found the explanation for this profusion of colour. An Irish tour guide had told a party of visitors that on the death of the English queen (unspecified) the citizens of Dublin had been ordered to paint their doors black as a sign of mourning. The rebellious Irish decided instead to paint them anything but.
"She probably studies medicine," a young man says to his friend as their eyes appreciatively follow the pretty girl in a headscarf as she crosses Dzhumayata, Plovdiv's central square.
This presumption is probably correct as the Medical University in Plovdiv attracts students from Turkey who don't feel they can comply with the ban on wearing headscarves in educational establishments in their native country.
There are two things about Bulgaria that are so closely entwined that you rarely see one without the other: wild dogs and rubbish. The two are an integral part of Bulgarian life, although it's safe to assume that both their days are numbered.
Being kept awake during your first few weeks in Bulgaria is a rite of passage that only the luckiest of expats manages to avoid. Once you've become accustomed to the nightly dog fights and howling, your only reminder of the nuisance comes via bleary-eyed house guests who complain about the incessant racket.
The first interview attempt was a disaster. In the summer of 2001 Thea and I were sitting across from each other and awkwardness slowly cast its web over Thea's vision of art as a world-changing force. It was hard for me to comprehend.
"Intense," I thought, "but insane."
A Palestinian in Sofia
Outside the Banya Bashi mosque in Sofia, we were taking off our shoes to have a peek inside, when a well-fed middle-aged man with Arabic features said in English: "It's lunchtime but I let you go in, just for you. Where you from?"
"I'm from here," I said, "and Michael is from New Zealand."
"Ah, you life here and your boyfriend visiting you," he interpreted.
"No, we live in England," I said.
For some, this is not an empty question. The going rate is about 16,000 pounds, if you're looking to buy. A mother can expect to see about 1,000 pound of this, according to an article published in The Sunday Times last month.
In "Revealed: Bulgaria's Baby Traffickers" a female journalist posing as a childless Western woman looking for a "fast and easy way" to adopt a child goes to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city. There, in a Roma neighbourhood, the baby's grandmother offers baby Kalinka: hers for 11,000 pounds.
There is something that at the same time unites and disunites the Bulgarians to a much greater extent than politics, the economy, education, other people's wealth, public transport, football, international relations, or the former king's properties. It is nothing that is written about in books or featured in films; it is not the product of religion, ideology, or even of culture. I refer to a dish that a large group of Bulgarians swear by, but the very thought of which sickens others.
While the phrase "Peace Corps" might conjure up images of sun-tanned Americans teaching English, purifying water, or planting corn with villagers, the Peace Corps has evolved since JFK's initial proposal nearly half a century ago. In addition to those assignments, volunteers now help build organisational capacity, write grant proposals, teach English, bridge technological gaps, encourage entrepreneurship and improve health care.
DEAR VAGABOND,
It is wonderful that we now have an English-language magazine catering to the expat population of Bulgaria. I suspect that I will continue to read your periodical for many years - keeping up with what's going on in what has become my temporary home - even after I return to the United States.
I wish you much success.
Joel Froese,
Consultant, MBA Enterprise Corps
Sofia, Bulgaria