Loud, colourful, vibrant and dizzying, digital advertising resembles a jungle. Only those equipped with the right knowledge, tools and approach can carve their own path through it, overcoming the repetitive chorus of ready-made solutions, resisting the overpowering allure of AI and proving that creativity and a genuine understanding of the landscape will deliver the right results.
If opinion polls are anything to go by (and in Bulgaria they usually aren't), the next snap election, scheduled for 19 April, will produce a less fragmented parliament. If this does happen, the country may be in for a period of relative political stability, something which the constant bickering in Bulgarian politics has deprived citizens of since the beginning of the current bout of snap elections.
Once the homes of early humans, caves have always tickled the imagination. Their darkness, echoing caverns, hidden rivers, screeching bats and bizarre rock formations have become the setting of countless legends, stories and discoveries about times past. Bulgaria is no exception. This country's caves might not be the biggest or the most spectacular in the world, but many are very impressive and well worth a visit.
Eighty-eight percent of its waters are dead owing to the high concentration of hydrogen sulphate. Through the centuries it has changed its name several times. Its shores colonised by Greeks, who promptly invented a plethora of myths and legends about it. Among those, the Golden Fleece and the Argonauts still tickles the imagination. It is in Europe, but it is still less known than, say, the Bering Sea. An enigma that continues to generate myths and legends.
If you do not count (pun intended) the odd-number of lean dishes that Bulgarians gorge on Christmas Eve, you will be hard-pressed to distinguish their way of celebrating the Nativity from the rest of the globalised world. Easter is a different story, and it is not only because the dates of Eastern and Western Christians rarely overlap.
It happens all the time. In parliament, they fight, pull and curse one another. After 5-10 minutes in the assembly hall, you need a psychotherapist.
Boyko Borisov, GERB leader
Are Xi Jinping and Putin younger than me?
Boyko Borisov on whether he is not too outdated to appeal to Gen Z
The result of the general election will be what it will be.
Toshko Yordanov, There Is Such a People party
The Aleksandr Nevskiy cathedral and the Yellow Brick Road, the Largo and NDK: tourists in Sofia tend to gravitate around these focal points of interest. The more adventurous explore the multiethnic bustle around the Women's Market, and everyone is into discovering Sofia's restaurants and nightlife.
1. Which of these town is in the Stara Planina mountain range?
A. Gabrovo
B. Kardzhali
C. Gotse Delchev
2. When you order kavarma, you get…
A. A plate of grilled sausages
B. Meat and vegetables stewed in an earthenware pot
C. A rice pie
3. What is the name of the famed ancient rock city in the Rhodope?
A. Castra Martis
B. Bukelon
C. Perperikon
A former hotel, abandoned in the mountains and kept off limits by a group of mysterious guards. A former foreign minister stumbling upon the road that leads to it, and gets arrested. Rumours of something sinister hidden deep beneath it.
No, this is not the elevator pitch for a TV series based on the mysterious deaths of six people connected to a hut in Petrohan. This is the story of Object 17, which the hacks sometimes dub "Bulgaria's Area 51."
The main reason is that it gained popularity due to a French couple, who lived in the north of Bulgaria, not far from Dve Mogili near Ruse, at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century.
If you have spent in Bulgaria more than a Bansko ski weekend or a binge drinking tour of Sunny Beach, you have probably become familiar with a number of concepts, events and personalities firmly embedded in the Bulgarian national consciousness. The pagan ruler drinking wine from the severed head of a Byzantine enemy he'd just had killed is one. The creation of the alphabet that you still struggle to remember is another. The idea of lost Bulgarian might, when the country experienced its Golden Age and "spread on three seas" is as good as the previous two.
Because he defected from Communist Bulgaria and settled first in France and then in the United States, Christo Yavacheff was not much talked about in the country while he was still alive. Born in Gabrovo on the northern slopes of the Stara Planina mountain range, in 1934, Christo fled the country in the 1950s. At that point, not unlike other East bloc intellectuals who had escaped from Communism, he ceased to exist as far as the local media were concerned. His name would resurface only after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact.