Issue 202

Antifreeze, AdBlue® diesel exhaust fluid, windshield wiping fluid, grease... When drivers and car mechanics in Bulgaria and the Balkans buy such crucial products, they often choose one brand in particular. TSAKI has been around since 1989, but had only started manufacturing products for the car industry in the late 2000s. This crucial change took place under the helm of Krasimira Hristova, the second generation of managers in this family owned company.

The beaches on Bulgaria's southern Black Sea coast are under threat: every year developers take new ground to build hotels and bars on. Sand dunes, which are protected by law, overnight turn into plots ready for the diggers to arrive, and new buildings rise right by the sea on the site of former cliffs, marshes and wetlands.

Bulgarians are present in many fields of modern science and engineering, from medicine to space exploration, pushing new boundaries and breaking new grounds. If you have not heard much about it, it is because the great majority of them work for foreign universities, scientific institutions and R&D teams. As a result of the decades-long neglect of the fundamental and the applied sciences and of engineering in Bulgaria, academically gifted Bulgarians go abroad the moment they graduate from secondary school.

When John Jackson became the first US diplomat in Bulgaria, in 1903, the two nations had known each other for about a century. In the 120 years that followed a lot more was to happen, as politics of the day and world conflicts would separate and then bring Bulgaria and America closer.