Dr Branimir Kirilov, a leading implantologist, oral surgeon and founder of Medical Dent Dental Clinic, keeps a demanding schedule: treating both straightforward and complex cases, attending conferences and training programmes, and managing a team of professionals. Drawing on this experience, he has identified a growing problem in modern Bulgaria – and he is ready to offer a practical solution.
Two economic crises, a pandemic and a war that threatens to turn global were still in the future. Bulgaria's Boyko Borisov was just a rising star, not a cunning politician who would rule the country for close to two decades. Social media was yet to be born. Targeted advertising was in its infancy. Print media prospered. There was no AI slop.
Today, knowing what time it is becomes a problem only when your phone battery dies and there is no one around to ask. For previous generations it was different.
For millennia, people measured their days and nights by the movement of the sun and stars, or waited for a rooster to crow.
1. Which is a traditional Bulgarian breakfast pastry?
A. Croissant
B. Banitsa
C. Koulouri
2. What is ayran?
A. An yoghurt-based drink
B. A dessert
C. An alcoholic drink
3. How many Michelin-starred restaurants are there in Bulgaria?
A. 10
B. 3
C. 0
It was supposedly built by the Devil. Or the Devil was seen or heard laughing in the vicinity. Or the Devil agreed that he would leave the builders alone if they managed to construct the bridge so that he, the Wicked One, would be both visible and invisible at the same time. And so on and so forth. The stories about why the Devil's Bridge got its name outshine what even the most devoted tour guide can remember without checking their AI of choice for devil bridge legends.
The epic wars fought in the summer of 2026 all across social media over the historical accuracy of Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey should have taught us something. Myths and poetry are often inspired by historical events and places. They are sometimes backed by archaeological finds. But they are neither history, nor archaeology. They live in a separate realm; mistaking a millennia-old poem and a 21st century film for a history textbook is… beside the point.
The government's action plan was drafted using Sigma AI.
Luybomir Stefanov, political scientist
People who just yesterday denied the existence of fascism in Bulgaria have suddenly discovered that there is indeed neo-Nazi activity here.
Journalist Aleksandar Simov, after it transpired that the five teenagers were affiliated with an extremist rightwing group
Instead of criticising the government's action plan, the opposition should review their agendas through the years.
It was medium-sized, with a slight oblique curve, and a lot more watery than the gherkins being cultivated in Trans-Danubian Bulgaria (the very word "gherkin" is one of the few Proto-Bulgarian remnants found in modern Bulgarian). At that time Anatolia was of course a part of Byzantium which Bulgaria was constantly at war with. Some researchers surmise that many of these battles had been prompted by the Bulgarians' desire to obtain more and better cucumbers.
On 25 January 1944 a paratrooper landed in a part of Serbia occupied by the Bulgarians. He was 23 years old, a British officer with orders to make contact with the Bulgarian pro-Communist resistance. His name was Frank Thompson. Within five months he would be dead, shot in a ditch outside a village most Bulgarians had never heard of.
If you have travelled in Bulgaria, you should have noticed: the deserted, slowly dying villages. The crumbling houses. The abandoned kindergartens and schools. The overgrown healthcare facilities. The empty squares, adorned with monuments to long-forgotten men. The boarded-up stores. The decaying farms. The white rectangles of death notices for people who had called these spaces home plastered on trees and walls lining the empty streets.
Strange rocks and human imagination have been deeply linked since the first Homo sapiens squinted at some weirdly-shaped peaks and wondered why they looked the way they did. In the millennia that have passed since then, natural rock phenomena have been turned into shrines to pagan deities, Christian saints and Muslim sages. Legends, often bloody and brutal, have been invented about their origins.
The Stone Mushrooms, near the Rhodope village of Beli Plast, are a case in point.