WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?

by Stamen Manolov; photography by Anthony Georgieff

An unusual housing estate constructed in the late 1970s has become a landmark in this major Bulgarian town

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Locals refer to it by its popular nickname, The Cucumber, rather than by its official urban plan address, which is a boring Block 77. Whether the British architect, Norman Foster, was inspired by it for his Gherkin in London, which he erected two decades later, will probably never be clarified, but the town it is in aspires to become the European Capital of Culture in 2032.

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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Major resorts like Sunny Beach and Golden Sands are located at strips of sand and dunes, and there are numerous small fine sand beaches that more often than not you may end up being the only visitor to. But the Bulgarian Black Sea has a lot more to offer.
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Eighty-eight percent of its waters are dead owing to the high concentration of hydrogen sulphate. Through the centuries it has changed its name several times. Its shores colonised by Greeks, who promptly invented a plethora of myths and legends about it.
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
By far surpassing Christmas, which in the local tradition is mostly a family dinner feast in the middle of a cold, dark winter, Easter is in spring.
where in bulgaria.jpg
WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Made in 1949, it shows Moscow as the greatest and most important European city (sorry, London), omits to mention the existence of Dublin, but points out to a "world-famous" location called Magnitogorsk in what at the time was the Soviet Union.
where in bulgaria are you.jpg
WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Whereas in the West it signifies the introduction of Baby Jesus to the magi, in the East it celebrates Christ's baptism by St John in the Jordan river and the simultaneous appearance of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
To reach it you have climbed and climbed and climbed for hours on end, starting from a mountain chalet called Bezbog, or Godless.
where in bulgaria are you.jpg
WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
The city was cosmopolitan and rather rundown, part Danubian and part post-Ottoman – a place where one could drink a huge Viennese coffee in a brightly lit coffee shop that served both Mitteleuropean cakes and pretzels, and Middle Eastern kataifi and baklava
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
A look into its history will reveal why. Though it has medieval origins, after the 1878 liberation from the Ottomans the village was populated by ethnic Bulgarian immigrants from the Banat, now in Romania, Hungary and Serbia.
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Situated in the heart of what is probably Bulgaria's best farming land, it has a rich history of which... almost no material heritage remains.
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
In Antiquity and onwards the area developed as a thriving centre for mining lead, iron, silver, gold and copper. As it happened, one of the first Bulgarian rebellions against the Ottomans originated here, in the 17th century.
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WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Cultivating the rose bushes is difficult enough, but the real challenge comes with picking up the buds: it can be done only within a few weeks in May and early June, and only very early in the morning.
where in bulgaria are you.jpg
WHERE IN BULGARIA ARE YOU?
Besides the fortress, it sports plenty of Ottoman-era heritage, including a well-preserved city wall, a post office, a cross-shaped barracks and perhaps the most eccentric mosque this side of the Bosporous.