Unlike Turkish customs, who take only two minutes to check your car, (Marhaba!, Pasaport! and Tamam!), their Bulgarian counterparts have never been very fast, especially when it comes to lorries. This is why I was not particularly worried by the five-mile long lorry queue approaching Kapıkule. I thought I would drive through Kapitan Andreevo through the EU-only counter, smile at the customs officers and continue on my way to Sofia.
It didn't work like that.
There are three theories about how this popular idiom entered the Bulgarian language. The first dates it back to the 7th Century, the time when the Bulgarian state was founded by the proto-Bulgarian tribes who came to the Danube and first settled in what is today Romania. Khan Asparukh's horse went to the river to drink some water but slipped and fell in. The strong current hurled it downstream and Asparukh himself jumped into the torrent to rescue it.
Vagabond, Bulgaria's English Monthly, sponsored the national photographic exhibition Kukerlandia 2007, held from 17 February until 3 March in the George Papazov Art Gallery in Yambol. The event, organised by the Yambol and Tundzha municipalities and the Regional Tourist Association as part of a national Mummers' Festival, comprised 50 photographs of mummers' performances by 35 Bulgarian and foreign authors.
The first prize went to Krasimir Andonov from Sofia. Tihomir Penov and Desislava Genkova, both from Sofia, got the second and third prize, respectively.