FLYING COLOURS & METEORITES

FLYING COLOURS & METEORITES

Fri, 07/28/2023 - 13:10

While Mads Mikkelsen is reputedly getting bald, Bulgarians preoccupy themselves with two ostensibly unrelated events

rozhen flagople.jpg

Firstly, a bright light appeared in the sky over Vidin, at the River Danube, one dark, hot and mosquito-infested night. It was reputedly followed by a loud explosion. People were mesmerised and slightly frightened. During the following days the media reported a unusually large meteorite burning over Romanian territory, leaving no identifiable debris. But the event, which will probably go down in local lore as the World-Famous Vidinska Event, was the beginning rather than the end of the story.

A few days later the notorious 111-meter-high flagpole was finally inaugurated in the Rozhen area of the the Rhodope mountain range, in the south. The flag attached to it, according to the "patriotic" organisations that had set up the event, was the largest in Bulgaria. And the flagpole itself, manufactured in Turkey, was the highest ever erected at such a, well, height above sea level (pun unintended). Just 2,000-3,000 people turned up (some of whom pictured above), but the Facebook verbal battles surrounding the World-Famous Rozhen Flagpole, as it will probably go down in local lore, contributed significantly to the public perspiration caused by the ongoing heatwave.

As is befitting a devout and god-fearing Orthodox nation, the flag was first consecrated by a priest, although no one bothered to first fold it.

It soon emerged that the "voluntary" contributions collected to make the new symbol of national pride and unity a reality included... the Bulgarian state. The Bulgarian Development Bank, all state-owned forestry corporations and three state transportation companies had donated a total of 114,000 leva (about $65,000) for the flagpole. The Bulgarian national anthem was sung, followed by some Communist-era patriotic hits, such as the 1970s "My Country, My Bulgaria."

President Rumen Radev, who was in attendance, held one of his speeches in which he condemned the flagpole opponents who had argued, unsuccessfully, that Bulgarians should better be proud of a better education and health systems as well as smoother pavements in the cities rather than flagpoles in the mountains: "Today we reject the nihilism and unfatherlandness that crashed in their attempts to smear and stifle this initiative."

Auntie Vanga

It emerged, unsurprisingly, that Auntie Vanga, the blind clairvoyant of Petrich, who died in 1996 but whose real or imaginary prophecies continue to make the rounds, had predicted both the Vidinska Event and the Rozhen Flagpole. "When they erect a flagpole in the Rhodope, a meteorite will hit Vidin," Vanga was quoted as saying.

But not even that was the end of the story. It soon emerged that the Vidinska Event did not involve a meteorite at all. According to one of the conspiracy theories that Bulgarians just love to put into circulation, the alleged meteorite was in fact an US Air Force missile that the Americans shot at Vidin in order to implicate the Russians. However, Putin successfully intercepted it and destroyed it, both saving Bulgaria from obliteration and the world from the Third World War...

If Mads Mikkelsen was in Bulgaria and understood what was going on, he would certainly bald at least as fast as John Cleese.

Issue 202

Commenting on www.vagabond.bg

Vagabond Media Ltd requires you to submit a valid email to comment on www.vagabond.bg to secure that you are not a bot or a spammer. Learn more on how the company manages your personal information on our Privacy Policy. By filling the comment form you declare that you will not use www.vagabond.bg for the purpose of violating the laws of the Republic of Bulgaria. When commenting on www.vagabond.bg please observe some simple rules. You must avoid sexually explicit language and racist, vulgar, religiously intolerant or obscene comments aiming to insult Vagabond Media Ltd, other companies, countries, nationalities, confessions or authors of postings and/or other comments. Do not post spam. Write in English. Unsolicited commercial messages, obscene postings and personal attacks will be removed without notice. The comments will be moderated and may take some time to appear on www.vagabond.bg.

0 comments

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.

Discover More

three generations monument
'DEFILING' ABANDONED PILE OF STONES
Perushtitsa, now a small and offbeat town rarely visited by tourists, is known to every Bulgarian as the sight of a massacre in the failed April 1876 Uprising against the Ottomans.

gabrovo carnival
KOSTYA KOPEYKIN'S FOUNDATION KICKS OFF
Though Dead Souls used to be on the national school curriculum, few latterday Bulgarians, and possibly even fewer English speakers, have actually read it, so here is a short synopsis.

buzludzha night.jpg
BUZLUDZHA LIGHTS UP AGAIN
The Flying Saucer, which in recent years has become one of the Top 10 world monuments for urbex, or dark tourism, was constructed in the early 1980s. It was designed to celebrate the Bulgarian Communist Party, in control of this country from 1944 to 1989.

lz airplane
FLYING LOW
In early June a small plane flew into Bulgarian airspace from the northwest and landed at what used to be a commercial airport near Vidin. Apparently, the aircraft refuelled.

airport bulgaria
IS THERE A PILOT IN THE PLANE?
In early June a small plane flew into Bulgarian airspace from the northwest and landed at what used to be a commercial airport near Vidin. Apparently, the aircraft refuelled.

bulgarian parliament doors
IRON BARS, NO IRON BARS
Lovers of freedom were quick to cry fowl. Is this what the supposedly liberal, pro-Western Changes Continued government is doing? Protecting itself from the love of the general public with iron bars?

russian embassy bulgaria
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
A recent example is the Sofia City Council's decision to rename one of the streets around where the Russian Embassy is situated to The Heroes of Ukraine, and a nearby small square to Boris Nemtsov.