Issue 130

THE TASTE OF SUMMER

DimanaT — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 09:46:29 +0000

THE TASTE OF SUMMER

by Bozhidara Georgieva

DimanaT Thu, 08/03/2017 - 12:46

There is one proven way to enjoy the warm days and evenings more - a glass of white or rosé wine

Oh, summer! We spend the whole year dreaming about its got days and blissful evenings, about the vacation and the time we will have in the company of the people we love. Summer is the season when we are more relaxed, wear light clothes and flirt, meet new people and strengthen our friendships, when we go to the seaside and travel.

The summer's unbearable lightness becomes even more unbearable when we are not only at the place we want to be with the people we want to be with. The experience becomes richer and more optimistic with a glass of well cooled white or rosé wine in hand. These wines are light and aromatic, charming and exciting, just like summer itself.

Happily, Bulgaria is experiencing a boom in the production of excellent, memorable white and rosé wines. Here grow not only internationally popular varieties like Chardonnay, but also local varieties like Misket Cherven, Dimiat and Keratsuda, each of them with its own character and charm. Of them, a number of dedicated winemakers make drinks to remember. The popularity of the white and rosé wines is evident not only from the increase in demand, but also by the fact that this year in Kazanlak was held for the 7th time a festival dedicated to the rosé wines.Misket and Italian Riesling by

Chateau Sungurlare: A blend of fresh emotions

This dry white regional wine is made from hand-picked grapes from the vineyards of Chateau Sungurlare (www.chateausungurlare.com). The wine is characterised by elegant and fresh taste, filled with the scent of summer. Its colour is saturated, with greenish hues, deep aroma and fruity notes. Long, fresh and balanced wine with great body and exquisite finish – a wonderful addition to the recipe for an incredible, memorable summer.

Kaynardzha Wine Cellar Cabernet Sauvignon Dry White Wine 2010: Tender taste

This excellent suggestion by Kaynardzha Wine Cellar is made of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from the winery's own vineyards. Its brilliant golden colour is distinguished with a tender herbaceous tinge. Its flavour is delicate and crisp, with hints of honey. The well-balanced harmonious taste leaves a pleasant lingering on the palate, with a charming white cherry jam aftertaste. The Cabernet Sauvignon Dry White Wine 2010 by Kaynardzha Wine Cellar pairs well with white meat, pasta, seafood, pizza and young yellow cheeses – some of the ultimate foods of summer and fun.

Thracian Legends 2015 Organic Rosé: Cherry summer
Dense aroma and taste of juicy raspberries, cherries, honey and herbs. The eyes stop at a blossoming cherry tree. And although the tree blossoms every year, it seems to us amazingly beautiful and wondrous.
Organic wines Thracian Legends are natural wines and always bring us close to nature, where we feel in harmony with ourselves and happier. This year, Organic Rosé Thracian Legends 2015 was distinguished with a bronze medal at London Experts in Wine Awards (The Best of Bulgaria) under the patronage of His Royal Highness Kyril, Prince of Preslav and Duke of Saxony, and with a silver medal from the festival of rosé wines Rose Wine Expo in Kazanlak.

Chardonnay Prisoe: With the breath of sea
Created in the region of the Pobiti Kamani nature phenomenon, near Varna, Chardonnay Prisoe (FB: Prisoe Wine - Изба Присое) is full with the freshness of sea and summer. This wine has a distinctive bright yellow colour with light greenish nuances, shining with brilliance. The aroma is fresh, well balanced, with elements of summer fruits and intensive mineral notes. The flavour is harmonious, with fresh acidity, well-defined fruitiness and excellent length of taste. The final is complex and balanced with the Chardonnay's distinctive aromas and flavours supplemented by light resinous, woody and vanilla tones from the oak wood. Chilled, Chardonnay Prisoe is an ideal complement to seafood, fresh desserts and summer nights.

Issue 130

WINE & DINE

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REASONS FOR A SMILE

DimanaT — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 09:44:36 +0000

REASONS FOR A SMILE

by Bozhidara Georgieva

DimanaT Thu, 08/03/2017 - 12:44

Modern dentistry helps us keep our teeth healthy and beautiful

Smile is the quickest manifestation of our good mood. This is probably why children smile at an average of 400 times per day, the happy adults – about 40-50 times per day, and the average person – around 20 times per day. Regardless of the mood, smile is good for our health. Even when we are in a bad mood and we force ourselves to smile, it yet brightens us.

Regardless of their mood, however, many people are not able to smile. The reason? Bad teeth.

Happily, modern science and dentistry offer us reliable ways to deal with our dental problems, regardless of whether we are talking about prophylaxis, caries treatment, correction of crooked teeth, replacement of missing teeth, whitening or smile correction.

It might sound banal, but care for our health begins with prophylaxis. Regular visits to the dentist are a must at least once a year, and should include cleaning of dental tartar, which can damage the gums. Teeth should be cleaned twice per day with a toothpaste containing fluoride. It doesn't matter whether you will opt for a classical or electric tooth brush, if you carefully clean all the surfaces of the teeth. Recently, the benefits of dental floss in prevention of bad breath and dental tartar were disputed, but in all cases it is better for removing of food particles from the teeth than toothpicks, which can damage the gum.

In the past 20-30 years, modern dentistry offers innovative methods for dealing with the different types of dental problems, from the types of the fillings to prosthetics and aesthetic dentistry.

The old amalgam fillings are still on the menu, but an increasing number of people prefer fillings of ceramics or photopolymer. Crowns underwent the same change, and technical advance in them doesn't stop in the materials used. The implementation of computer technology in the practice of dental technicians allows the amazingly precise and quick making of the crowns.

The loss of a tooth or teeth due to an illness or trauma until recently was a sentence for life – the patient should put up with a dental bridge, which asks for the filing of healthy teeth, or with the uncomfortable dentures. Today, prosthetic dentistry is experiencing a heyday with the introduction of dental implants. With this treatment method in the bone, on the place of the missing tooth or teeth, is inserted an implant, usually of titanium. When the implant is integrated with the bone, on it is placed a crown that looks completely like a natural tooth. The procedure is already available as well for patients who lack the sufficient amount of bone tissue, on which the implant should be inserted. The advantages of dental implants can be hardly overstated. They restore the self-confidence of the patient and his or her ability to eat properly. The care of implants includes excellent dental hygiene, stopping smoking, regular check ups.

People have tried to correct crooked teeth since Antiquity. Modern orthodontics, however, has the most effective methods of dealing with this problem. Brackets become better and lighter, and the innovations in the field are impressive. They include brackets created with technologies like 3D imaging, software for treatment planning, robotic design of the wire. Another advanced technology are removable transparent brackets. The so-called smart brackets are also developed; they have a microchip measuring the pressure on the bracket and the tooth surface.

The abilities of modern aesthetic dentistry for complete change of the smile are impressive, too. Thanks to the veneers of ceramics or zirconium, imperfections can be corrected quickly and easily. Tooth whitening is becoming a popular procedure. What is important to know, however, is that it should be done under the supervision of an experienced dentist.

Professional education in dentistry in Bulgaria is at an exceptional level, and specialists are constantly honing their skills with attending trainings, seminars and conferences in the country and abroad. Bulgaria has not only the advantage of having excellently trained specialists: it is also incredibly competitive in regards of the cost of dental services.

In the US, a large filling of white coloured materials is about $200. Treatment of root canal is about $700, a porcelain crown is $1,200, and the implant is $1,900. Having a veneer is $870, and tooth whitening is $440. In the UK, a private dentist will take about £100 for a large filling of non-white material, the treatment of root canal is £380, a golden crown is £420, and an implant costs £1,320. The veneer is £340, and tooth whitening is £300.

For comparison in Bulgaria (we quote the price list of a mid-range dental practice), a large filling with photopolymer costs 70 leva, the treatment of root canal is between 70-150 leva, a crown of white material is 250-500 leva, and the implant is 1,500 leva. The ceramic veneer is 600 leva and tooth whitening is 250 leva.

All of this is more than a reason enough for us to smile wide, and feel happy.

Issue 130

HEALTH

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TO UNLEASH POTENTIAL

DimanaT — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 09:42:55 +0000

TO UNLEASH POTENTIAL

by Bozhidara Georgieva

DimanaT Thu, 08/03/2017 - 12:42

Contemporary trends in the field of human resources put personality in the centre of business

Regardless of its size, not a single business can be stable and develop if its employees work without enthusiasm. This is an old truth, so old that it was identified as early as the 18th century, in the dawn of the industrial revolution.

However, knowing an old truth doesn't mean that in the times that have past since the dawn of the industrial revolution we have learned everything on the effective management of human resources. The trends, principles and practices in this field of modern business have changed through the years, mirroring the changes in the society, economy and technologies at the particular moment.

Today, in our globalised age, effective management of human resources is more important than ever. Globalisation made easier the movement of talent not only between companies, but also between countries and continents. Modern employees cannot be motivated solely with well known methods as good salary and social benefits. Regardless of the size of the company they work for, they want to feel like individuals whose opinion matters, whose activity has tangible results, and who can develop.

Companies, for their part, need to attract the best employees for them, to motivate them for effective work using the full potential of a team before hiring new staff. They have to be able to identify the leaders among their employees, giving them the opportunity to develop their managerial skills within the company. The companies should also have reliable tools for performance evaluation. The constant changes in technologies also impose the need of trainings that keep the employees adequate. Last, but not least, companies need loyalty.

Bulgaria is not isolated from these trends. In the past years different business fields, from IT to tourist services, have signalled lack of qualified labour.

Big companies are aware that good management of their human resources is a strategic task. But even their large teams of HR experts specialising in different fields have difficulties to follow all the novelties. The new requirements from the management of human resources cause the appearance of innovative solutions. The best people who can offer the right combination of solutions for the problems of a given company, are outside specialists in management of human resources.

IVВ (Sofia, 9B Latinka St, www.ivb.bg) is a consultancy company for strategic management of HR, and its founder Iva Balasheva uses her year-long experience in the field to create a 10 step programme aimed at managers and owners of companies with 20-80 employees. The programme includes analysis, building of systems for quality employees management, selection and motivation, effective delegation from the top management. "Following the programme, besides learning a lot of new things, you will be expected to co-operate in the creation of the policies and to be systematic in their implementation," says Iva Balasheva. "As a result the relations and the internal communication inside and between the teams will improve, the managers will acquire specific skills for working with people, the staff will know better their responsibilities, how to execute them and what can they improve. You will be able to successfully delegate some of your tasks and to free your time for strategic projects and relaxation," explains she. The results of the IVВ programme are individual. "The achieved results depend on the type of business and and how fast you will apply the strategies and policies. Most of our clients see serious results in their company after 4-6 months working with me," says Iva Balasheva. "The method works when you identify the right people to trust with key activities; when are implemented policies that keep, motivate and engage employees who are important for the company; when structure and order are created. All of these lead to effectiveness of your work and the work of your company, and to better financial results."

The approaches for solving of concrete problems in the field of management of human resources are diverse, and sometimes openly exotic. The good specialist will analyse carefully the problem, will offer a solution and will take care for the sustainability of the results. The latter is important – motivating the people in a company is not a one-side, one-part act, but a process that has to be approached carefully and responsibly. Only in this way the company will have employees who put their hearts in the common cause – the success of the business.

Issue 130

BUSINESS

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THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW

DimanaT — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 09:39:56 +0000

THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW

by Bozhidara Georgieva

DimanaT Thu, 08/03/2017 - 12:39

Stepping on a new market, improving of performance and efficiency, implementation of a new technology: regardless of the particular problem, every business meets challenges it is unable to solve with its internal resources.

The outside consultant is the solution. This is a professional who is a specialist in a particular field, but has the indispensable advantage of having an outsider's outlook of the situation. Thanks to this he is able to identify the problem, to offer a solution and to inspire change. The consultant is objective and is not under the influence of the company's internal dynamics. He or she can organise effective trainings of the employees, and also perform unpopular measures such as firing people. The good consultant can identify fields where the company has potential for development and to lobby for the best strategy and policy for change.

The investment in quality consulting is worth the money. Thanks to it, the company can optimise its expenses, find new markets, implement more effective processes, optimally use the potential of its employees, and adapt its services to the market's demands.

How to identify the good consultant? Have a thorough check on his or her biography and portfolio, and be sure that the solution you are offered is tailored for your company and the particular problem.

The effective consulting is the customised option, knows Teodora Angelova, ASC (IAPCM), founder of Target HD (phone: +359 885 353 655, target-bg.com), a consultancy company with years of experience in helping businesses in fields like pharmaceuticals, IT, financial services, telecom, automotive, transportation, distribution, call centre, engineering, NGOs. "It's all about the balance between price and value," says Teodora Angelova. "Customising equals focus, reality check and best fit solution. Ready-made, copy-paste and best practice solutions may seem efficient in the short run. They very rarely work in the long run and usually attract additional costs. It's a choice between paying the money for what's best, or pay for what's best for you now," adds she.
Individual solutions often are based on already established systems, whose effectiveness has been tested over the years.

"Our trainings and consulting are based on the Hubbard Management System which is used by more than 200,000 companies worldwide. This system represents a complete organisational know-how, meaning whatever the situation is there are practical and easy to apply tools that can help make it better or more efficient," says Marc J. de Turck, author, trainer and consultant of Belgian origin, and founder of IDEAS Free Boss (www.freeboss.eu). The company was established in 1996, and it delivers training, consulting, coaching, testing and ad hoc help to business managers worldwide. Through the years, IDEAS has trained more than 30,000 managers worldwide. Marc J. de Turck arrived in Bulgaria as team leader of a project called “Modernising the Bulgarian State Administration”, one of the 3 biggest and most strategic projects in Bulgaria. He developed a love to Bulgaria and decided to open a subsidiary in Sofia in 2007. Since then, IDEAS trained in Bulgaria more than 5,000 managers and 200,000 students. "IDEAS is specialised in Free Boss and Blue Ocean training. Free Boss is a programme to help the manager to free himself from daily activities. Blue Ocean is a program helping companies to find new market niches midst heavy competition (red bloody Oceans)," explains Marc J. de Turck.

IT consulting is a field that has growth potential in Bulgaria, believes Timm Rüger, founder of Rüger Consulting (Sofia, 53A N.Y. Vaptsarov Blvd, East Park Trade Center, www.rueger.consulting). The company efficiently uses its small, but highly professional staff to work on data and software engineering or service management projects with international clients. "As opposed to outsourcing companies we focus on value creation by continuous improvement rather than cost savings by cheap labour. In fact, many of our customers are unhappy with their outsourced processes and applications and call on us for advice. This is when our consultants can make a real difference by solving major performance issues and helping the customer to become more agile and value-driven. We are much smaller than the global players like Accenture, but we still outperform them by delivering better results with less effort in less time. And this is mainly because we are not structured hierarchically, but like a network of experts, which puts the consultant at the centre."

Being an IT consultant requires not only excellent knowledge in a particular field, but also communication and leadership skills. "Consulting is demanding, because even though you may know what the best solution is under the given constraints, you still need to communicate it and convince the customer," explains Nikola Gaydarov, Director IT Service and Project Management at Rüger Consulting. "And you are only given what the customer thinks is the problem, but you need to challenge him, in order to ensure this really is the problem," adds Timm Rüger.

"For people who start to work as consultant it is at times confusing that nobody gives you a task or feature list. Rather the customer expects you to come up with different options on which he can decide. But it is not enough to help the customer in selecting the best option, you also need to make sure he sticks to the decision once it is made. This can be complicated, because as a consultant the people you work with are not your employees. They actually pay you, but you need to manoeuvre them in the right direction. When you are an outsider, you have to be influential and earn the customer's respect first. Otherwise the customer staff won't work with you. That is why we are not only looking for technically talented candidates, but for candidates who can communicate and sell their view and who are prepared to stand their ground," says Nikola Gaydarov.

As a pragmatic advice to professionals Timm Rüger recommends considering working as a consultant, "if you think that you need to become a manager in order to progress in your career, but you want to continue working on technical solutions. Because as an IT consultant you have the best of both worlds: management and tech."

Issue 130

BUSINESS

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LAND OF LOST LENINS

DimanaT — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 13:07:05 +0000

LAND OF LOST LENINS

by Dimana Trankova; photography by Anthony Georgieff

DimanaT Mon, 07/31/2017 - 16:07

Only a handful of the hundreds of Lenin statues under Communism remain standing

This statue of Lenin stood for years, face down, in the back garden of the National Art Gallery in Sofia

If you could (or would want to) go back in time 29 years and visit Communist Bulgaria, your trip would unfold under the constant presence of one man, Lenin. There was hardly a place in Bulgaria – big city, small town, village even – without a monument to Lenin, or at least a street, school, or kindergarten named after him. Sofia, the capital, had a tall statue of Lenin in front of the Largo, where the main institutions of the People's Republic of Bulgaria were: a visual addition to the line of highly charged monuments that included the one to the Red Army and the statue of the Tsar Liberator, or Russian Emperor Alexander II.

Portraits of Lenin hung in every school and were paraded at the mass demonstrations celebrating 9 September, the day of the Communist coup in Bulgaria in 1944, and 7 November, the day of the 1917 October Revolution, which overthrew Imperial Russia and installed the Bolsheviks in power over what would become the USSR. Students used to study "Leninism," a particular take on Marxism considered to be the only viable ideological view of the theories of Marx and Engels. It was Lenin who said that, before reaching the utopia of Communism, society should first go through Socialism, and who stipulated that the road to the coveted dictatorship of the proletariat is paved with a violent revolution.

Lenin was venerated across Bulgaria as the perfect poster boy for Communism. Even when the personality cult of Stalin began to crack, in the mid-1950s, that of Lenin survived intact.

Born into a middle class Russian family, nothing at the birth of Vladimir Ulyanov in 1870 suggested that he would become a man who would turn the world upside down. In 1887, however, his elder brother was executed for his participation in a botched plot to assassinate Emperor Alexander III, and this radicalised young Vladimir. He became a prominent figure in the nascent Socialist movement, and after a three-year internal exile was forced to leave the country. In the following years he led an itinerant life, living at various times in Munich, London, Geneva and Cracow, and was responsible for creating a breach in the Russian Socialist movement. He headed up its radical wing, the Bolsheviks. He campaigned, in absentia, for the failed 1905 revolution and, when the First World War broke out, he called for the conflict to escalate into a global proletarian revolution.

This happened, in a way. In 1917, the Germans were desperate to get Russia out of the war. The country had already undergone a democratic revolution, in February, but Germany needed more. Chaos in Russia was seen as an opportunity for Germany, so Lenin, a known agitator, was arrested by the Germans and put on a sealed train heading for Saint Petersburg (from 1924 to 1991 the city was called Leningrad). He began propagating a revolution immediately upon arrival, and soon the Bolshevik October Revolution erupted.

Lenin monument, Novgrad village, near Svishtov

With Lenin at the head of the new Bolshevik government, Russia experienced a series of rapid, often brutal changes. It withdrew from the First World War. The royal family was executed, and the Bolshevik government did away with private property. There was a bloody civil war between the Red Army and supporters of democracy joined by royalists. There was famine. There were plans to export the revolution to Europe, including Bulgaria and, in a bitter twist of historical irony, to Germany.

Meanwhile, Lenin was becoming an international celebrity, visited by the likes of H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell.

His health, however, was in steady decline, which effectively crippled him in the later years of his life. He died in 1924 and was succeeded not by Leon Trotsky, whom he had favoured, but by Joseph Stalin. Immediately after his death, Lenin was embalmed, and his mummified corpse was exhibited in a specially built mausoleum on Red Square, in Moscow. It is still there, attracting long queues of visitors. In spite of their personal tensions while Lenin was alive, Stalin wisely turned the man who had headed the Bolshevik Revolution and the USSR into the founding symbol of the regime.

The cult of Lenin spread all over the USSR and, after the end of the Second World War, to its satellites. Bulgaria was no exception.

Lenin began to disappear from public spaces in Bulgaria soon after the democratic changes of 1989. Unlike monuments of partisans and the Soviet Army, there was little debate over whether Lenin's images should be removed or demolished, and the streets, schools and so on were renamed. In the process, a significant number of monuments and statues were lost forever, particularly those of bronze, which were sold cheaply for scrap metal.

Some of Lenin's images, however, survived, preserved by private collectors, galleries, and municipalities. The best way to see many of them – from the monument that stood on the Largo until 1991 to desktop Lenins to paintings and other visual propaganda featuring him – is to visit the Museum of Socialist Art in Sofia (7 Lachezar Stanchev St).

Monument of Lenin and Georgi Dimitrov, Banya village, near Razlog

The other is to undertake a trip around Bulgaria that will take you to places which, with one exception, you would otherwise never visit.

The village of Novgrad, near Svishtov, in Northcentral Bulgaria, is proud to be the only place in the country that has kept its official, life-size Lenin intact. The bronze statue in the village centre is not particularly good, but as Novgrad lacks any other claim to fame or tourist interest, the locals love it. Rumours that the owners of the land on which the monument stands plan to sell it appear regularly, but so far have proved to be unfounded.

The people of Novgrad are not exactly correct in their claim for uniqueness. Banya village, near Bansko, in the Southwest, has a life-size statue of Lenin together with Georgi Dimitrov, Bulgaria's first Communist dictator. The people of Banya love their monument as their brethren in Novgrad do, and have an interesting story about it. The double statue was commissioned by a local man who emigrated to the US in 1912. In the 1960s he donated a significant amount of money to his native Banya that, according to his wish, should be spent on a new a community centre and… the aforementioned monument of Lenin and Dimitrov. Did Lenin and Dimitrov know each other? It is highly improbable, but Dimitrov did attend the second congress of the Comintern in 1920. He could have met Lenin there. According to local mythology, the two knew each other well enough for Dimitrov to be one of the men who carried Lenin's coffin, together with Stalin and Trotsky.

The other two surviving monuments of Lenin are neither large, nor popular.

A metal bust of the leader of the October Revolution is now gathering dust among rusting industrial paraphernalia in the yard of a factory, in Nikolaevo village, near Kazanlak. Under Communism, the factory was, of course, named Lenin. The bust is the only thing that remains from these times.

Bust of Lenin in the yard of a factory that used to be named after him. Nikolaevo village, near Kazanlak

On Veliki Preslav Street, in central Shumen, in the garden of one of those better-quality apartment blocks built under Communism, stands a strange figure: A man in a cloth cap protectively embracing a boy and girl. The trio's eyes are fixed on what should be the bright Communist future. When Shumen's Lenin appeared is not clear. In a city famed for its visually stunning monument to the 1,300 years of the foundation of Bulgaria, smaller statues tend to go unnoticed.

The Shumen Lenin is also the only one bearing clear traces of vandalism.

Curiously, while Bulgaria is still struggling to understand and make peace with its Communist past, it parted relatively quickly with the memory of Lenin, the very man who brought about Communism, and changed the world forever.

Lenin in central Shumen

One of the many Lenins in the collection of the Museum of Socialist Art in Sofia

High Beam is a series of articles, initiated by Vagabond Magazine, with the generous support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation, that aims to provide details and background of places, cultural entities, events, personalities and facts of life that are sometimes difficult to understand for the outsider in the Balkans. The ultimate aim is the preservation of Bulgaria's cultural heritage – including but not limited to archaeological, cultural and ethnic diversity. The statements and opinionsexpressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the America for Bulgaria Foundation and its partners.

Issue 130 America for Bulgaria Foundation Communist Bulgaria PostCommunism

HIGH BEAM

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ELIZABETH KOSTOVA

DimanaT — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:49:53 +0000

ELIZABETH KOSTOVA

interview and photography by Anthony Georgieff

DimanaT Mon, 07/31/2017 - 15:49

The Shadow Land, famed US author's newest novel, is entirely set in Bulgaria

Elizabeth Kostova is a well-known name in literary circles in the United States. Her first novel, The Historian (2005), quickly became a national and then an international bestseller, and it was subsequently translated into many languages. In The Historian Kostova, who lives in North Carolina, interwove themes such as Count Dracula and folklore, Christianity and Islam, West and East, America and Europe, to create what critics were quick to bill an amalgamation of genres: a Gothic novel which reads like an adventure mixed up with a detective story; an epistolary epic turned into a historical thriller.

Elizabeth is well-known in Bulgarian literary circles as well. With the proceed from The Historian, she set up a foundation to promote the work of Bulgarian writers and poets in translation, and bring world-famous Anglophone writers to Bulgaria. Each year for the past 10 years the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation has organised its annual seminar in Sozopol, followed up by literary events in Sofia and once in Koprivshtitsa. In the process, Elizabeth has been accumulating, through her many travels, knowledge about Bulgaria, its cultural diversity and its sometimes uneasy history.

So, in a way her latest novel, The Shadow Land (2017), which is entirely set in Bulgaria, comes as no surprise.

The Shadow Land is the story of a young American woman, Alexandra, who comes to Bulgaria for a reason you find out early in the novel – no spoilers! – and immediately gets herself into a very complicated situation. She's been in the country only an hour when she finds herself helping an elderly couple into a taxi, and accidentally keeps a piece of their luggage. She opens this bag after the old people's taxi has driven away, and discovers that it contains an urn of human ashes with just a name in Bulgarian on it.

The book is the story of Alexandra's search for this family and her attempt to return their most precious possession to them. This journey takes her not only all over Bulgaria but also into the past – back to 1940, in fact, and then the establishment of the communist regime – and through many decades of modern Bulgarian history. In the process, she encounters both danger and friendship, and learns to love the country and its landscapes.

I worked on The Shadow Land for about eight years and I really sweated blood over this one. It's meant more to me than any other book I've written so far.

A book set entirely in Bulgaria. How do you expect this to sell in the United States and in other countries where readers barely have any knowledge of Bulgaria and things Bulgarian?

Some of the early chapters are actually set in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, in the United States – another of my favorite places.

It's been very interesting touring in the United States with a book set almost entirely in Bulgaria, especially since it contains some very dark moments in Bulgaria's history. I wondered what this would be like; in fact, it has been a very pleasant surprise. Most American audiences do know a little something about Bulgaria, some of them have visited Bulgaria already, and almost all are curious about Eastern Europe.

To my delight, I have heard over and over this response: "After I read The Shadow Land, I wanted to pack my bags and visit Bulgaria." Many readers have told me that they have actually planned trips to Bulgaria because of the book. And many tell me they've been interested in Bulgaria since reading my first novel, The Historian. It's very gratifying.

Wherever I go on tour, I also try to take the opportunity to recommend works by Bulgarian writers translated into English and by Bulgarians who now write in English, as well as works by foreigners who've written about Bulgaria, such as Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You and Rana Dasgupta's Solo.

In what remains of the Belene labour camp for political prisoners, 2013

Apart from your personal relation to Bulgaria, what do you find interesting about this country that may appeal to a wider audience?

Bulgaria is interesting to a wider audience – by which I'm assuming you mean Western – partly because it has been less known to them and was closed for so long. I think the first appeal for foreigners as they learn about Bulgaria is the country's tremendous natural landscapes, and the second is the amazing layered evidence of history here, something that my young heroine Alexandra is very drawn to along her journey, too.

You have been the founder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation which organises the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, the Capital Literature Days and once the Koprivshtitsa Poetry event, and also the Krastan Dyankov Translation Award.

I'm very proud to have cofounded the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation with publisher Svetlozar Zhelev – and also proud of the fact that we've recently celebrated 10 years. Our mission is to bring together Anglophone and Bulgarian writers, editors, publishers and other literary professionals; to bring Bulgarian contemporary literature more widely into English around the globe; and to honor the work of Bulgarian literary translators.

In 10 years, our annual workshop, the Sozopol Fiction Seminar, has hosted more than 300 writers and other literary lights. The other events you named have also been quite successful, both on paper and in a human way. I'm delighted to find that a lot of writers and editors in the United States know about our work in Bulgaria. Much of the success of EKF is due to the amazing work of our staff, Milena Deleva and Simona Ilieva, and our many sponsors. I'm a small part of this big effort, at this point.

In Leshten in the Rhodope, 2014

Can you name a few writers/editors/publishers who've come to Bulgaria because of the EKF?

I can't do justice to all of them here, and some of those who actually aren't famous have been among our most wonderful guests. Among the well-known ones, we've hosted Orhan Pamuk from Turkey; Claire Messud, Richard Russo and Barry Lopez, as well as poet Linda Gregerson from the United States; Alex Miller from Australia; Kate Mosse and Rana Dasgupta from the UK; Ilija Trojanow from Germany/Bulgaria – and many, many others. Our recent Sozopol Seminar hosted non-fiction writers, including Philip Gourevitch, Philip Graham, Ladette Randolph, Benjamin Moser and Elif Batuman – among others – all of whom have important work in that field.

These are only a few – it's hard for me to stop there! And of course this list doesn't even include all the distinguished Bulgarian writers and literary professionals who have participated in our programs.

Can you name a few Bulgarian writers whose work has been or merits to be made known outside Bulgaria?

People ask me this all the time and I always try not to answer – I don't think it's for me to speak as some kind of arbiter of taste for Bulgarian writing in the world. There are numerous Bulgarian writers working today who either have found readers abroad or will certainly do that soon.

It's more appropriate for me to give a very happy statistic here. Ten years ago there were only two or three works of Bulgarian contemporary literature in print in English; now there are almost 20. It's quite exciting to watch. More and more, Bulgarian writers are touring in the United States and the UK, as well as receiving important literary fellowships abroad.

What are the main problems that Bulgarian writers face? The notorious lack of state support, living in a small language environment – I suppose, these are but just two.

I think Bulgarian writers face two kinds of problems. One is the kind all writers face: writing is hard, it seldom makes a living, there's never enough time, and everything else in life militates against it.

The other kind is more specific to Bulgaria and similar environments: the lack of good state support (we're facing this problem increasingly in the United States, with our current political emergency in the arts) and the dilemma about publishing in a "small" but very rich language rather than the ubiquitous English.

I don't pretend to be a Bulgarian writer or to speak for Bulgarians writers – after all, I would never expect anyone to understand me just as an "American writer." All writers are individuals, with stories that transcend their culture and nationality. But I will say that being a writer from a complex, sometimes traditional, possibly lesser-known country is not just a challenge. It's also a strength in terms of material and perspective and uniqueness. Orhan Pamuk didn't spend a lot of time worrying about being a Turkish writer. He spent a lot of time writing about Turkey.

Proudly displaying The Shadow Land just off the press, in Sozopol, 2017

Issue 130

BULGARIA INTERVIEWS

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PRIME MINISTER WITHOUT A SMOKED SAUSAGE IN HIS HAND

DimanaT — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:43:48 +0000

PRIME MINISTER WITHOUT A SMOKED SAUSAGE IN HIS HAND

by Stamen Manolov

DimanaT Mon, 07/31/2017 - 15:43

Life in the warped reality of life in GERB's Bulgaria can sometimes assume surreal dimensions.

Each outrage committed by the top GERB functionaries is almost immediately followed by something totally unexpected – and even more outrageous than before – in order to distract the attention of the general public from the really important issues such as the failed judiciary reforms, the unwillingness or the inability of the police to solve even street crimes (whose number increases by the day) and the plummeting standards of democracy in the EU's poorest and most corrupt member state.

Consider this. Zhivko Martinov, a GERB MP for Dobrich in northeastern Bulgaria, was accused of… extorting a local businessman for 4,000 kilograms of sausages plus 60 kilos of jerked beef and some Elena fillets. The businessman, who is a local meat producer, was told that the sausages were to go directly to… Prime Minister Boyko Borisov for his own perusal – so they should be the best available.

The man complied. Perhaps he really loved the idea of presenting his produce directly to the prime minister. Perhaps he feared if he refused bad things might start happening to him… His motivation will probably remain a mystery forever.

Then the MP transported the sausages in his own van – 4 times, 1,000 kilos on each ride – to a special room he had prepared for drying up the foodstuff.

Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov, who made the announcement and called to have the GERB MP immunity lifted, explained that "not a single sausage actually reached the prime minister."

Boyko Borisov personally stepped in. He fired the whole GERB leadership in Dobrich.

Anyone outside Bulgaria may be wondering whether the above story is not a bad joke by a sick standup comedian. But Bulgarians take a different view. To start off with, there is nothing wrong in the prime minister – or anyone else in power, even locally – being given donations of sausages, cheese, sometimes fresh chicken and/or eggs. Maybe a piglet. This is something that has been going on in Bulgaria for a very long time and has been described by writers of different political inclinations throughout the 20th century. The scandal, if any, is that the prime minister was actually left sausage-less.

Anyone outside Bulgaria may also be wondering how the GERB leader might fire his whole team in Dobrich without at least a probe to verify that some of those GERBers might actually not have been involved in the racket. Locals, however, take a different view. They actually like to see someone as resolute as Boyko Borisov fire, without delay and with extreme prejudice, a bunch of simple mortals. Whether they really erred or not is entirely beside the point.

Boyko Borisov again emerged pristine from what some critics were quick to dub the Sausage Affair. He immediately parted with those he thought might have been complicit in the wrongdoing. But most important of all, no one ever caught him with a smoked (the pun is unintended) sausage in his hand.

Do you think that if anyone had, the outcome might have been different?

Issue 130 Boyko Borisov

JOKE OF THE MONTH

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FALL OF 1,300 YEARS OF BULGARIA

DimanaT — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:24:16 +0000

FALL OF 1,300 YEARS OF BULGARIA

by Dimana Trankova; photography by Anthony Georgieff

DimanaT Mon, 07/31/2017 - 15:24

Demolition of huge Communist-era monument turns as controversial as monument itself

In the summer of 2017, after years of debates, projects and protests, Sofia looked as though it would finally part with one of the most controversial monuments of the period referred to as Mature Socialism (roughly, the 1970s and 1980s in Communist Bulgaria). Everyone knows the monument in question: it is the 35-metre-high angular construction of granite plates and metal, crowned with ghostly statues and disintegrated slogans, in front of the NDK in central Sofia.

Ironically, the name of the monument slated for demolition is 1,300 Years of Bulgaria.

The monument appeared on the square of the NDK, or National Palace of Culture formerly known as the Lyudmila Zhivkova People's Palace of Culture, in 1981. According to the original idea of its author, sculptor Valentin Starchev, the shape, the statues and the slogans the monument represented "the evolution of the Bulgarian spirit."

At the base of the sculptural composition there was a statue of King Simeon the Great, under whose rule Bulgarian culture and state experienced a golden age. Above him, a Pieta embodied the periods of stagnation and struggle for survival under foreign dominations. The bright future was represented by the statue of The Creator. The slogans included quotes by 19th century national hero Vasil Levski ("Time is within us and we are within time") and poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev ("He who falls in fight for freedom shall live forever more"), and the first line of the anthem dedicated to Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the Slavic alphabet, by Stoyan Mihaylovski ("Walk on, revived people…").

The project was ambitious and so were the deadlines.

Struggling with an impossible schedule, the sculptor and the construction workers spent 24 hours a day on the site, but the monument was still unfinished on its ribbon-cutting day, the top not yet clad in granite. The builders came up with a last-minute solution and covered, Potemkin village-like, the empty spaces with plywood painted to resemble stone.

This was the first of many setbacks that turned the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria into what is arguably the most unpopular object of public art in Sofia.

The deadlines were met, but no one actually liked the piece. According to an urban legend, Todor Zhivkov himself was so shocked by what the overwhelming majority thought was an eyesore that he ordered his driver to never pass by the monument again. Ordinary Sofianites were quick to come up with alternative names for the monument, all of them obscene. "The Fallen Messerschmitt," a reference to the exceptionally ugly Second World War German warplane, is the only one fit for print. The subterranean level of the monument was, for its part, dubbed the NDK Catacombs.

The Law of Gravity, too, was against the monument. Due to the speedy construction and the tight deadlines, a year after its opening, the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria started to disintegrate. By 1989 it had already deteriorated badly, its subterranean level becoming a haunt for drug addicts and homeless people. Some of its metal parts were stolen for scrap.

In the early 2000s, the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria was already so dangerous that a fence was erected around it. In the 2010s the most dangerous parts of the monument were taken down as the debates for its future continued. A list of suggestions included, but was not limited to, the transformation of the monument into a climbing wall, an LED installation, or an educational centre, or the replacement of the original sculptures with one of Khan Asparuh, the founder of the Bulgarian state. The most radical idea was that the monument to be destroyed and the memory plates with the names of the soldiers of 1st and 6th Infantry Regiment of the Sofia Division, which were taken down during the construction of the NDK and its square, to be restored in its place.

In the summer of 2017, debates were abruptly stopped as the Sofia City Council ordered the monument's demolition. Again ironically, some people protested. Apparently one of them threw a Molotov cocktail at the crane installed to dismantle the monument. The crane burnt down, and the demolition was halted. By the time this journal went to press, whatever remains of the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria is still where it has been since 1981.

In 1988

In 1998

In 2004

In 2011

In 2016

In 2017

Issue 130 Communist Bulgaria PostCommunism Sofia

VAGABOND FEATURES

Comments

Submitted by Dinko (not verified) Wed, 06/16/2021 - 11:25

tragedy

such a shame to see it goin. beautiful monument, and it was a real important part of city identity.

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GOING, GOING, (ALMOST) GONE!

DimanaT — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:19:57 +0000

GOING, GOING, (ALMOST) GONE!

by Anthony Georgieff

DimanaT Mon, 07/31/2017 - 15:19

Bizarre monument in front of NDK may finally be consigned to dustbin of history

This would have been the perfect story for Andy Borowitz. A group of people identifying themselves as intellectuals start a war of words (involving so far just one non-verbal Molotov cocktail) over another group of people whom the intellectuals dub uncouth simpletons with fascist or Taliban tendencies over a monument no one has ever liked and everyone, including the engineers, agrees is actually dangerous not only to your sight and mind but also to your head in case you happen to be walking too close by. I could almost see Borowitz putting pen to paper (or fingertips to the keyboard, whichever saying is more in circulation these days) and starting to philosophise over the irritatingly impossible task of explaining things to idiots - particularly when the things in question are so painfully obvious.

But this is not New York, Bulgaria has no one remotely reminiscent of Andy Borowitz and nothing near the magazine he works for. Significantly, Bulgarians have to explain to idiots that white is white (as the Bulgarian saying goes) on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day.

What prompted the current round of accusations, counteraccusations, the Molotov cocktail (which destroyed a crane allegedly costing 1 million leva) and several tons of e-newsprint is the fate of the strange disintegrating thing in front of the NDK that everyone's seen and no one's understood for the past 36 years. It is officially called 1,300 Years of Bulgaria, was produced by a famous Bulgarian sculptor called Valentin Starchev, who had close links with the Bulgarian Communist Party because because no one in those days could get commissions like that without having good links with the Bulgarian Communist Party. More on the monument, its evolution and the things it tried to tell here.

The Sofia City Council made a decision to knock down the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria back in the early 2000s, for safety reasons, but no one bothered to implement it. Few people at the time, including those now identifying themselves as intellectuals, bothered to even voice an opinion.

Things have changed. Theoretically, Bulgarians live in 2017 and next year they are about to take over the EU rotating presidency for the first time in their lives. If the war of words being fought between the "intellectuals" and the "Talibans" is anything to go by, GERB's Bulgaria has been furled into a time warp more befitting the 1950s than the present time. The same people who never lifted a finger to do anything to make the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria at least a bit safer for the walking public are now up in arms, crying bloody murder.

The "murderers" have equally preposterous arguments. They say they will "restore" an old monument to Bulgaria's dead in the Balkan Wars and the First World War which used to stand near the site of 1,300 Years of Bulgaria and which was hastily knocked down when the BKP decided to place the other one on its site.

The pros and cons of knocking down public monuments or "restoring" ones already destroyed are entirely beside the point. That debate, if any, should belong to the history books rather than the Internet sites. The real issue is elsewhere.

Absurd as it may seem, the 1,300 Years of Bulgaria controversy actually plays quite well for the current rulers headed by strongman Boyko Borisov and his ultranationalist pals. Any public argument which takes up both time and energy is quite welcome as it deffects the attention of the citizens from what is really important. Bulgarians have had quite a nasty experience with that, especially under GERB. They should by now know better. But, alas, as the current "intellectuals" versus "fascists" debate exemplifies, having to explain obvious things to idiots will likely continue for a long time to come.

Issue 130 Communism PostCommunism

BULGARIA SOCIETY

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SMALL COMPANY, BIG DREAMS

DimanaT — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:15:47 +0000

SMALL COMPANY, BIG DREAMS

interview by Dimana Trankova; photography by Anthony Georgieff

DimanaT Mon, 07/31/2017 - 15:15

Timm Rüger and Nikola Gaydarov from Rüger Consulting on importance of expertise and bringing human approach to IT consultancy

Bulgaria's potential in high technologies transcends the outsourcing software services it is popular for now. Rüger Consulting has been a successful example for exploring new fields. It is a regular feature in the top 3 list of the most prosperous IT consultancy companies by the Computer World Bulgaria weekly. It is small, but it's clients' portfolio includes major international names, like UniCredit Germany and the largest financial group in Northern Europe – Nordea. The company implemented and refined many terabyte scale enterprise data warehouses and big data applications. Recently another practice area was added to its portfolio – service and project management.

It all started in a way evoking the tried and tested Chinese saying about crisis as an opportunity. Timm Rüger, an established IT consultant working for IBM Germany, arrived in Bulgaria in 2008 for something that was planned as a 2-year-long vacation. The financial crisis, however, changed everything. Tired of the constant commute between Sofia and IBM's German clients, Timm Rüger quit IBM, and founded an IT consultancy company here, using his previous experience and connections with international clients.

In 2016, Nikola Gaydarov joined the ship, taking over the service and project management, and the company's training programmes.

We meet with Timm Rüger and Nikola Gaydarov at Rüger Consulting's offices in East Park Trade Center, Sofia.

Why did you broaden the company's portfolio with service and project management?

Timm Rüger: I wanted to scale up to new practice areas, and Nikola has a rich practical and theoretical experience. We mainly work in large-scale programmes, like data warehouse or big data initiatives, and thus we needed a better grasp at project and service management. Additionally, we only worked with Western European clients, but now we also want to win Bulgarian customers, i.e. local branches or corporates. For this you need someone like Nikola who knows the local market by heart.

Why did you stick to consulting and not go mainstream into outsourcing?

Nikola Gaydarov: The market in Bulgaria is very much focused on outsourcing, on operational activities. Consulting comes before operations. It is when an idea is born and implemented – which is a lot more interesting work than operations and outsourcing. Also, you can see the results from our work directly and in a short short-time frame.

TR: Outsourcing and offshoring in particular is all about standardisation and cost reduction, whereas consulting is all about creativity, improvement and value creation. The business case for offshoring is rather weak: if labour costs increase and the standard of living in Bulgaria approaches western standards, offshoring to Bulgaria will no longer be attractive. Bulgaria should focus more on consulting, on having top experts in a certain field whose expertise would be valued globally. This would create true competitiveness rather than only cost competitiveness.

What are the benefits of IT consulting over outsourcing?

TR: Outsourcing vendors often link achieving more with adding more manpower – i.e. "doing more with more." But the more people you employ, the bigger the existing problems in the processes and in the applications will be. On the other hand, the outsourcing client frequently delegates responsibility to the vendor. We want to bring the initiative back to the customer, to say that they need to improve their processes and to take the responsibility for it. If you don't do that for years, you fall back so much. We have seen projects fail because of outsourcing. As consultants, we try to convince the customer to regain the initiative instead of relying on an outside company to do this. In consulting, we concentrate on making processes more efficient and adding value for the customer – in a nutshell "doing more with less."

How are you able to help?

NG: A process is a process, regardless of the business. I am an expert in the ITIL framework for setting up an IT organisation and the processes needed for service delivery. I try to convince my customers to focus on the value, not on the process itself, and to move towards better service delivery based on good processes. All companies run on a similar model: you have customer-facing activities and you have supporting activities. If these are not organised well, it ends with either processes that are not good or efficient enough, or with bad services.

We help our customers to setup efficient processes or to improve existing processes. We also support the customer in "agilising" their processes and services which essentially means to rearrange the way the organisation realises its established service or process framework.

TR: We often see two extremes: larger organisations which are very process based and consequently lost adaptability and agility and smaller organisations or start-ups which have no standards and struggle with complexity and find it hard to be in control. Of course, you cannot run a big organisation like a start-up, but it is good to bring a bit of the start-up culture into the big business. It usually means that you have smaller, cross-functional teams working towards a common goal. So, we advise customers on how to become agile without losing needed standardisation or how to standardise without losing agility. And we bring the human factor back in those companies that relied too much on processes.

Where data engineering fits in this?

NG: To achieve your goal, you need to measure where you stand. For this you need data. When data becomes valuable information, it reveals what goes well and what does not go so well in your company and where you have to improve. Data engineering is all about turning data into these insights. For this you need to combine and integrate the data, to analyse and interpret the information it reveals and to decide how it fits your goals.

TR: It is also about using the right data. E.g. the KPIs (key performance indicator) "number of incidents solved" is frequently taken as a measurement for the operations performance. The more incidents are solved, the better it is, the thinking goes. But this is a very narrow view – what about the incidents which were not reported, because the customer thought he better saves the time on creating a ticket rather than dealing with the operations department? Probably only those incidents are reported which have a high likelihood of getting resolved. This shows that you can easily be misguided if you only look at one particular piece of data. You need to look at all the data from different perspectives. This can be rather challenging when you have lots of data, but only very limited time. You need to have an excellent data engineering team that uses high-end technology like massively parallel data processing pipelines and clustered or in-memory databases in order to achieve that.

What is more important? Applying an established framework like ITIL or being creative?

NG: Both are important. ITIL has been around for 30 years and has proven itself working for thousands of companies in the world. For example, that every service delivery company should have a service catalogue is one of the key lessons of ITIL. But you also need creativity to create the service catalogue in the first place.

TR: It depends on the customer situation, but when you try to define and standardise everything, creativity and continuous improvement are gone. You need to relax the rules a bit. You need to stick to your service catalogue as long as it makes sense without giving up the ability to adapt to a new situation. As you cannot foresee everything, imagination and creativity are essential to deal with new situations and the future in general, and this is very important for industries which are undergoing a major transformation like the digitalisation in banking.

NG: That is also the essence of agility – you are a human, you work with humans, so the processes and the tools should support you instead of becoming the focus. As consultants, we don't sell tools. We sell knowledge and solutions. The tools and frameworks should supplement these.

What is required for a company to do actual improvement?

TR: First is creating ideas how to improve, and figuring out what it means to implement them. Second you need to take risks. If you don't take risks, you will never improve. A lot of larger corporations don't want to take risks, either because of bad previous experience, or because they feel insecure as they only think about failure. But without calculated risk, improvement won't happen.

NG: We are not magicians, but we have broad and diverse knowledge in projects both small and big, and this allows us to have confidence, to know the risks, what can go wrong and how to act in such situation. You always have issues, it is inevitable.

TR: And there is procrastination as a risk-avoidance strategy believing that the problem will go away when you wait long enough. But falling behind the deadlines of the initial plan is dangerous. With each delay, the situation changes and the risk of actual failure dramatically increases. The costs increase, too. That means you need to tackle problems head on and you need to stick to your idea and plan as difficult as it may be.

What are the differences between consulting and teaching?

NG: In consultancy, I give you the options and their pros and cons, and you take an informed decision. In teaching, I give you the knowledge, the theory, and the best practices, so you can come by our own with the options. Teaching provides you with the basis and is particularly good for customers in the beginning of their business, when they are forming the needed processes, services and solutions.

TR: As a consultant, you want to have a well-informed and educated conversation with your customer. You cannot discuss service management if the client hasn't heard about ITIL or does not know the Structured Query Language (SQL) that is crucial for working with databases. In that sense teaching is a precursor to consulting. Teaching and learning are the two sides of the same coin. You may not need advice, but you always need learning – without it, an organisation cannot develop.

Issue 130

BULGARIA INTERVIEWS