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.
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.
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.
Squirrels and small children frequent unkempt alleys under towering oak and beech trees; а romantic wooden gazebo is often decorated with balloons forgotten after some openair birthday party; melancholic weeping willows hang over an empty artificial lake: it is hard to believe that one of Sofia's quietest and most delightful parks belongs to an institution inherently connected to state-sanctioned... violence. Welcome to the Military Academy.
In 1965, Dimitar Kovachev, a biology teacher from the town of Asenovgrad, was on a field trip to Ezerovo village. A previous find of a mammoth tooth from a sandy area near the village had ignited Kovachev's imagination – palaeontology was a passion of his and the region was known for its fossils from the Miocene and the Pliocene, geological periods that lasted roughly between 10 and 2.6 million years ago. So he was there, with a group of students, on a hunt for more fossils.
How often do you hum, while driving or doing chores, Uriah Heep's song July Morning? Is it on your Spotify? The answers are probably "never" and "no." Uriah Heep was an English rock band that was formed in 1969, named after Charles Dickens's infamous character. It did make a name for itself in the 1970s, but remained largely unknown.
Bulgaria has its fair share of intriguing caves, from the Devil's Throat underground waterfall to Prohodna's eyes-like openings and the Magura's prehistoric rock art. One of the most interesting of these, however, would not be of much interest to a caver as it is neither large, nor deep or covered in stalactites. This cave is interesting for its role as a sacred place in the lives of generations of people, as well as its remoteness on the Bulgarian-Turkish border.
Owing to its geological history, the Rhodope mountain range – in contrast to the nearby Rila and Pirin – lacks any impressive Alpine-style lakes. However, where nature erred, man stepped in. In this case the Rhodope man-made lakes, or reservoirs, are worthy of attention as some have even become tourist and holiday spots.
"We are fascists, we burn Arabs": the youngsters start chanting as soon as they emerge from the metro station and leave the perimeter of its security cameras. Their voices grow stronger with each step in the dark streets of the relatively central Sofia neighbourhood. Then they gradually disperse, still ecstatic after a protest provoked by an alleged attack by a group of Arab migrants on Bulgarian teens on Vitosha Boulevard.
The names of foreigners, mainly Russians, are common across the map of Sofia – from Alexandr Dondukov and Count Ignatieff to Alexey Tolstoy (a Communist-era Soviet writer not to be confused with Leo Tolstoy) who has a whole housing estate named after him. An understandable situation. After Bulgaria's Liberation as a result of the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, the new nation was eager to express its gratitude to the Russian Empire, its diplomats and administrators who had laid the foundations of the modern Bulgarian state.