Issue 214

How clean is really clean? During the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of companies and individuals around the world were anxious to get the answer right. Many of them found it in the products of a global company that has been a pioneer in the field since its establishment in Germany in 1935: Kärcher. Its distinctive yellow equipment for cleaning provides excellent results for a wide range of spaces and sites – from homes to industrial facilities to public spaces and culture sites.

As the seventh general election in two years seems unavoidable, Bulgaria is faced with yet another uncertainty. Will the Constitutional Court approve or reject the changes to the basic law pushed through at the end of 2023 at the insistence of the now besmirched PP-DB-DSB, or Changes Continued-Yes Bulgaria-Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, but accepted with the support of other political parties, including Boyko Borisov's GERB and the Turkish-dominated DPS, or Movement for Rights and Freedoms, that the PP-DB-DSB had been representing as their chief political foes?

Until the 1950s-1960s, Bulgaria was a rural country. The majority of Bulgarians lived in villages, as had their forefathers for centuries before. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation under Communism sucked the life from Bulgarian rural communities. The hardships of the transition to democracy and the free economy post 1989 worsened what many see as rural depopulation.

With a wide-ranging experience in Berlin, Brussels, Kinshasa, Rabat and Seattle, Irene Maria Plank seems like the perfect diplomat who can with equal ease discuss serious political issues and sample wine, analyse classical music and discuss religion, travel through remote mountain ranges and tend to her cats. Her tenure in Bulgaria started in 2023, but this is not her first time here. Frau Plank was already in Sofia the year before, serving as an interim chief of mission.

Some wars and rebellions, like the First Sioux Wars of 1854 and the 1903 Transfiguration Uprising in Eastern Thrace, and some seemingly small events that had significant repercussions, like the results of a German referendum that approved Hitler as the Führer – 19 August as a date is not without interesting history. However, for the thousands of people who on 19 August gather, dressed in white, above Babreka Lake in the Rila mountains, the date holds special importance.

Psychoanalysis and film making are connected in more than one way. They were born at approximately the same time and are based on dreams and the unconscious. There is hardly a person who has not tried to decipher either their own dreams or a movie. It is not surprising, then, that there is a whole field in modern psychology dedicated to film psychoanalysis.

When she saw Bulgaria's "Flying Saucer," the bizarre-looking monument on top of the summit of Buzludzha in the Stara Planina mountain range, Dora Ivanova was 12. A native of Montana, formerly named Mihaylovgrad (after a local Communist functionary), she was taken to the nearby Freedom Monument at Shipka Pass and the set of monuments commemorating the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War by her parents. She saw the oddly-shaped Memorial House of the Bulgarian Communist Party, as its official name was, from a far distance. Her parents never bothered to do the steep drive up the mountain.

It was destroyed by the invading Ottomans, reviving itself in 1660. The compound you see today is a fine example of Revival Period architecture with a 1844 church with a fine woodcarved iconostasis. As is the custom with many holy places in Bulgaria, the monastery holds a number of macabre stories. Folk etymology indicates that its name is derived from cherep, or skull. The monastery is surrounded by white cliffs that do look like skulls with their black eye sockets.

We pray for rain.

Newly-elected Patriarch Daniil on July heat wave

Top of the agenda is the natural disasters. The political ones come second.

President Rumen Radev

I do believe this National Assembly can produce a viable technical [sic] government.

General Atanas Atanasov, leader of the rightwing DSB

1. What is a favourite summertime snack in Bulgaria?

A. Deep-fried sprat

B. King prawns cocktail

C. Crab legs

2. Which highway will take you to Greece?

A. The Hemus

B. The Struma

C. The Trakiya

3. For combination of stunning cliffs and sea you go to...

A. Burgas

B. Sunny Beach

C. Kaliakra Cape

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."

The world today more than ever needs visionary leaders in all spheres of life – from business and technologies to politics, science and art, to social relations. Why? In the course of millennia, during the greater part of the history of humanity, people had relied on natural leaders – the chieftain, the shaman, the elders in the village or the town, the priest, the local monarch.