Turkish Airlines has scores of international awards for the outstanding quality of its services in both economy and business class. However, it only takes a single flight with the company to realise that all those awards are more than well-deserved. Turkish Airlines takes hospitality, comfort and efficiency to a whole new level, and its extensive network of flights to 302 cities spreads over the planet, making the company the largest carrier in the world by number of countries.
One of the things that has clearly distinguished Bulgaria's Prime Minister of about 10 years, Boyko Borisov, from his obvious authoritarian ilk – Hungary's Orban and Poland's Kaczynski – is the fact that sometimes, usually at the right time (in the presence of Western leaders), he asserts that he is pro-Western.
We cannot have infrastructure like in Vienna if our taxes are like in Pernik.
Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov
Conscripting the youth in the military will restore their manly appearance.
Defence Minister Krasimir Karakachanov
The Russian patriarch is a second-class KGB officer who made billions on untaxed cigarettes.
Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov
Australia has the emu, South Africa the springbok. Canada has the beaver, China the panda. In Europe, the countries are almost equally divided between those – Germany, Poland, Albania and so on – which cherish the eagle as its national animal, often putting it on their coats-of-arms. Then there is Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium and of course England which venerate the lion. Bulgaria belongs to the second group.
According to the poll, 29 percent of those interviewed believe that extraterrestrials exist while 13 percent are undecided.
1. In which year did the April Uprising take place?
A. 1878
B. 1903
C. 1876
2. What is the Bulgarian for Easter?
A. Velikden
B. Gergyovden
C. Lazarovden
3. The name of Vitosha's highest summit, Cherni Vrah, means...
A. Black Peak
B. God's Peak
C. Good Peak
However, as so often happens in Bulgaria, appearances are deceiving. Leave the main road and you will discover that the rolling hills hide intriguing natural phenomena.
The Krushuna Waterfalls is one of the best known. Located by the eponymous village, near the town of Letnitsa, the waterfalls started to attract visitors in the 2000s, when an eco trail was built around them.
The Krushuna Waterfalls is a cascade carved by the Proynovska River into the soft travertine rock, the largest formation of this sort in Bulgaria.
Photography has of course changed beyond recognition since the digital revolution. Everyone with a smart phone now considers him or herself to be a photographer, and there is already a generation of young people who not only have no idea what a "darkroom" as opposed to Adobe Lightroom means, but who take Instagram to be the ultimate tool for disseminating visual statements ranging from the political to the selfies taken in front of some sunny beach or secluded waterfall.
They do exist, however: forgotten remnants of the time when the Eastern Roman Empire was trying to hold back the invasions of the Barbarians in the Balkans. Most are nothing more than low crumbling walls, almost invisible in the undergrowth and interesting only to archaeologists. Others, however, are still striking, despite time, neglect and the depredations of those seeking second-hand building materials.
One of them is near Perushtitsa, a town at the northern foot of the Rhodope, more famous as the scene of intense fighting and a massacre during the 1876 April Uprising.
Victor Blagoev is an up-and-coming Bulgarian/American bassist born and raised in Prague, Czechia. He is quickly expanding his repertoire, playing with internationally renowned musicians such as blues singer Diunna Greenleaf, and some of Prague's biggest names including Martin Kratochvil, Rene Trossman, Cyrille Oswald and more. He is also set to work with, and eventually create and record music with the Rene Trossman, as well as developing a unique musical project with a modern neo-soul, Latin, R&B, jazz group, Skeptemistic.
More than 10,000 Bulgarians live in Vienna today, a community with its own life, cultural centres and even a newspaper. Most arrived after 1989, although the Bulgarian presence in the Austrian capital is much older. It stretches back to Ottoman times, when Bulgarians lived, studied and traded in the capital of the then Habsburg Empire. This trend intensified after the Bulgarian state was restored, in 1878. Vienna was then the cosmopolitan heart of Central Europe: a place of wealth, culture, political thought, science and innovations that poured into Bulgarian lands via the Danube.
I wake up with the increasingly sticky morning heat and the crushing smell of the traditional feijoada's black beans with pork that Suzanna is already stirring in the tiny kitchen. Suzanna is the live-in maid. All middle-class households have one here – just because they can. Ours is 22, with warm sparkly eyes and three kids, the youngest of whom she had at 16. Preta (Portuguese for black), she says, poking an index finger at her chest.
Architecture and interior design are not abstract concepts, which has nothing to do with reality. Our homes and our offices, the stores and streets where we shop and walk, the summer and winter resorts where we have our vacation: all of these influence directly our way of life, defining its tempo and even our moods. Who doesn't have fond memories of a hotel or a home where they have felt relaxed or impressed by an innovative solution or a piece of furniture that is both comfortable and looking as a piece of art?
When a big event in our life or business is coming, we have to clear dozens of details. Each of these is important for the final success and each step on this road should be made carefully and with consideration.
Long time ago, in the prehistoric era when the only screens in our lives were TV ones, the adult worried that long hours of watching TV would damage our eyesight. Oh, times of bliss! Today we have dozens more excuses to keep our eyes glued to a screen of some sort for hours on end: smartphones and desktops, large TV sets and electronic readers, smart watches and tablets. According to a survey conducted in the USA in 2017, the average adult spends 9 days and 22 minutes per day in front of some type of screen.
Lovech is one of those places in Bulgaria that under their tranquil surface hide impressive landscapes, long history and interesting sights that stay for long in the heart. Each step here leads you to stories previously unknown, some new and some centuries and millennia old.
Bulgaria has a rare form of wealth: about 200 locations of 520 registered mineral water springs. You will hardly find another place in the country, however, where this impressive natural resource brings such pleasure, as in Velingrad.
Regardless of whether we are tourists visiting a new place or we are living our ordinary lives, we are after authentic experiences and tastes. Food is probably the most significant manifestation of this trend. Indeed, in Bulgaria are being introduced new culinary ideas from all over the world, but authentic food remains one of the pillars of Bulgarian national culture. We cannot imagine Easter without sweetbread and coloured eggs, St George's Day without roasted lamb, Christmas Eve without odd number of meat-free dishes, or New Year without Banitsa pastry with good luck charms.
History sometimes moves in mysterious ways, as indicated by the story of the role two bridges played in two revolutions, a century and an ocean apart.
Most of the tourists visiting Koprivshtitsa, a town of beautiful traditional houses in the Sredna Gora mountains, pause at a certain bridge. Small and humpbacked, it does not look that important.