Verzhiniya Ivanova is one of those women for whom success is a way of life and the recognition of others – a well-established tradition. She got her first award back in 1998, when she won the Miss Shumen beauty pageant. Twenty years later, already an authoritative financial specialist, she once again reached the top of the beauty ladder, winning the titles Mrs Burgas and Mrs Bulgaria – Business Woman 2018.
Anyone who is even remotely interested in looking at the world from the window of a car will instantly know that driving through Bulgaria's lesser and off-the-beaten track roads is absolutely the best way to take in the natural and cultural beauties of this country and to experience a first-hand interaction with its people.
I let my ministers attend events with Radev, but they do not want to go.
Boyko Borisov, GERB leader
He's just a friend's kid.
Boyko Borisov on a Wall Street Journal report claiming he met with Donald Trump Jr and offered to sell him shares in the Turkish Stream pipeline in exchange for lifting the Magnitsky Act sanctions on Bulgarians
If someone really believes that we are capable of paying for an article in the Wall Street Journal, he has seriously overestimated us.
What happens when two experienced psychoanalysts with interest in film analysis decide to speculate about what really happened in the final hours of one of the 20th century's ultimate movie stars? The answer is one of the latest plays on Bulgaria's theatre stage, Marilyn Monroe's Final Hour. Dr Vivian Pramataroff-Hamburger and Prof Dr Andreas Hamburger have applied both their professional experience, imagination and sense for the dramatic to give their idea of what happened to Marilyn Monroe on 4 August 1962, just hours before she was found dead in her bed.
1. Which mountain is famed for a cluster of seven lakes?
A. The Strandzha
B. The Rila
C. The Rhodope
2. Which town is known for its old clocktower?
A. Tryavna
B. Tutrakan
C. Topolovgrad
3. Which ancient Thracian tomb is a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
A. Mezek Tomb
B. Aleksandrovo Tomb
C. Kazanlak Tomb
Beyond the E871 highway and after the last premises of Sofia's Business Park, a white metal palisade shields an immense building site. The borehole drilling resonates from within. The summer sun is burning. With Vitosha mountain against a clear blue sky for a background, a sandy country lane meanders up a plateau.
Colourful weeds grow tall on both sides of the lane. Modest houses in peeling orange, green or yellow hide behind the old trees. Above them, towers a massive concrete structure, rising from the plateau: Kambanite, or The Bells.
To reach it you have climbed and climbed and climbed for hours on end, starting from a mountain chalet called Bezbog, or Godless. British expat Tony McMurray, who is a financier, a philanthropist and an avid Vagabond reader, did it, in his successful effort to conquer Bulgaria's 56 highest peaks. You will read more about his climbing odyssey in this journal's next issue, but the challenge now is to guess the name of the mountain summit pictured here. A hint: Not far from Bansko.
When the young Patrick Leigh Fermor – a man considered one of the 20th century greatest travel writers – visited Ruse in 1934, he stumbled upon a strange town.