Issue 85

I am one of the last ones. Everything has been wiped out. Only ignorance and oblivion remain. And green, so much green. Now that I've seen I know: the eyes of the Devil are green. I am one of the last lettered ones. And I don't have much time. I am a pagan because I worship the Lord. But a new era has come from the west. Whence the night comes. And where Evil feels at home. The conquerers came by sea. With black boats and smoking herbs. More fearsome than Muslims. Now in the churches, they dry herbs, grow mushrooms and breed bees.

Coming across bones in a major cathedral like the one in Wawel, the historical hill in Krakow, is only natural. After all, holy relics are essential for shrines of significance and Wawel Cathedral is no exception. In it, interred in their sumptuous sarcophagi, lie the remains of Saint Stanislaus the Martyr and Saint Hedwig the Queen.

However, at the main entrance of the 14th Century Gothic cathedral hang bones which have nothing to do with piousness. Yellowed by the years and chained to the old wrought iron gates are the bones of a mammoth, a rhinoceros and a whale.

The busy Władysław Warneńczyk Boulevard is the road you need to take through Varna to reach the Sofia-bound motorway. It is also the road to one of Bulgaria's strangest and most moving museums.

Among the firs of the park – an oasis of calm amidst the urban buzz – two Thracian burial mounds stand. One of them, adorned with a monument, encloses a burial chamber where lies the stone effigy of a medieval knight.

A medieval knight? In Bulgaria?

The best place for paragliding in Bulgaria: that is the unlikely fame of Sopot. The town in the valley between the Stara Planina and the Sredna Gora mountains is most famous as the birthplace of Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria's venerated 19th Century writer. Sopot is also the hometown of Bulgaria's biggest military ammunition factory.

Someday soon,
he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You're talking to yourself.

Richard Hugo

"To the Small Basilica, please," we say to the taxi driver we hail in the centre of a warm, autumnal Plovdiv. Then we realise. The driver is very unlikely to know the whereabouts of Bulgaria's latest archaeological museum, only one day after the official opening.

When former Pink Floyd front man, Roger Waters, visited Bulgaria in August, one of his must-see sights was the grave of Major Frank Thompson, in the village of Litakovo outside of Botevgrad. If you are exiting from the Sofia Metro at the James Bourchier station, there is a large sign directing you to Major Thompson Street. In the town of Svoge, the train station is named after this mysterious Englishman and there is a also village called "Tompsan" in the Svoge Municipality.

Born in Ireland, Diana Rowan has lived, performed and studied on the US East Coast, in Europe and the Middle East before choosing Berkeley, California, where she received her Master of Music degree. Each country left a strong impression on Diana's music, which interweaves Celtic, Eastern European, Near Eastern and classical arts with mythology.

As dozens of Syrian refugees enter the country, mostly illegally and mostly through the Bulgarian-Turkish border, the Sofia establishment is failing to even address the issue in its entirety and complexity. Politicians bicker, and amid the flow of accusations and counteraccusations traded among former strongman Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and the current rulers the Bulgarian state is failing to handle the most basic needs, including food and shelter, of the hundreds of new arrivals from war-torn Syria.

Politics

– Are you interested in politics?
– Of course.
– Passively or actively?
– ?
– I mean, are you an MP or you just watch TV?

EU

What now that we are in the European Union? Many people still live in the Soviet Union.

Nightly Bread

An MP meets with his constituency. A man shouts from the last row: "Your honour, do you know that many people go to bed without bread?
"This is an insinuation! There are so many night shops around!"

Ataka is missing from Bulgaria for four days and the whole state is on the verge of collapse. The conclusion is: Keep us like a flower.

Ataka leader Volen Siderov after his MPs stayed out of the no-confidence vote

The current ado may qualify Bulgaria for a Nobel Prize in idiocy.

Tatyana Doncheva, MP for the BSP

We are simply not prepared. Bulgaria has not had this kind of problem for the past 90 years.