Issue 235

Silviya Tomova is the founder and managing director of Privilege Consulting Services, a boutique consultancy company specialising in lending solutions for private individuals and corporate clients. An entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the banking sector, real estate and business, she has developed her professional path with the clear conviction that sound financing begins with the right strategy. She graduated in economics and holds two Master's degrees in banking and business management.

Few figures in European history have left a cultural footprint as deep and enduring as 9th century saints Cyril and Methodius. Revered as the Apostles of the Slavs, the two brothers from Salonica, the modern  Greek city of Thessaloniki, are remembered as missionaries, scholars, translators and creators of the first Slavic alphabet. Their legacy bridges cultures, languages and centuries.

Bulgarians have never been so dissatisfied with their elected politicians. At the 19 April election, the eighth in five years, both the turnout of about 40 percent (extremely low in Western but relatively high in Bulgarian standards) and the voting pattern suggest that that this time around a genuine change may be in the offing. Here are the key takeaways.

Before her arrival as ambassador to Bulgaria Marie Dumoulin held various diplomatic positions in France, Germany and Algeria. A woman of many diplomas and languages (Mme. Dumoulin speaks English, German, Russian and literary Arabic) she has settled down in Sofia remarkably well. For just a few months the French ambassador has explored the hidden corners of Sofia and Bulgaria in general to an extent other expats would require years to accomplish. Yet, Bulgaria, according to her, has a lot more to offer.

The Black Sea has been a part of human history since the first Middle Eastern farmers crossed into Europe, about ten millennia ago. Its shores have been inhabited ever since. Empires fought major naval battles in its waters, ships sank, peoples came and went. Today, hundreds of thousands spend their summer holidays in its bustling resorts, enjoying its beaches. Still, the Black Sea remains an enigma.

1. En route to North Macedonia, you pass through which town?
A. Kalofer
B. Kardzhali
C. Kyustendil

2. Where is the Vacha reservoir?
A. In the Rhodope
B. In the Pirin
C. In the Rila

3. Which is Bulgaria's largest Danube city?
A. Ruse
B. Vidin
C. Silistra

The truth, as ever, lies somewhere between the postcard and the mud.

You know the image. A young woman in embroidered folk dress, cheeks bright in the early morning air, a serene, scented contentment on her face, picking pink roses from luxuriant bushes. She appears on magnets, soap packaging and tourist brochures from Vidin to Varna. She is Bulgaria's most recognisable export after yoghurt and the Cyrillic alphabet. And she is, in almost every meaningful aspect, fiction.

You are violating my personal space.

Interim Chief Prosecutor Borislav Sarafov responding to journalists when the crisis surrounding the legitimacy on his position will end

If anyone thinks that they toppled me from power, they are wrong. We toppled ourselves after we successfully finished our job.

Boyko Borisov, GERB, on the December 2025 mass protests that forced his government out of power

Until March everything was fine, but then some aberrations occurred.

"Where is the parliament?" A few years ago anyone asking this question in Sofia would have been pointed to a butter-yellow neoclassical building at one end of the Yellow Brick Road. Imaginatively, it resembles the Paris Opera House and has the Belgian national motto, "Unity Makes Strength," above its main façade, looking onto the equestrian statue of a 19th century Russian tsar. This was the place where Bulgarian MPs used to gather to forge this country's laws and regulations.

Locals refer to it by its popular nickname, The Cucumber, rather than by its official urban plan address, which is a boring Block 77. Whether the British architect, Norman Foster, was inspired by it for his Gherkin in London, which he erected two decades later, will probably never be clarified, but the town it is in aspires to become the European Capital of Culture in 2032.

For most of us, "writing" simply means the signs that record speech. We rarely stop to consider that writing is an independent system, with its own internal logic, structure and rules. In an European context, we automatically think of an alphabet – letters that represent sounds. In doing so, however, we tend to overlook other graphic systems: pictograms, symbolic signs and complex sets of images that also transmit information. Whether or not they contain phonetic value, all of these are forms of written communication.

In Egypt at the time of the late dynasties, but before the Ptolemies, there was a severe shortage of sand as most of that valuable commodity had been used for the temples and the pyramids. Egyptian merchants tried to capitalise on the situation. They exported large quantities of cotton in an attempt to sell it to the proto-Russian tribes, who for their part, suffered shortages of the cotton they needed to make trendy clothes out of. The Egyptians, riding on camels loaded with "white gold," crossed the Bosporus, and reached the Strandzha mountain range, where they were met by Thracians.

Less than 20 miles from Plovdiv, near the village of Sitovo on the northern slopes of the Rhodope mountain range, a narrow patch of smoothed rock bears a set of "letters" that no one has ever deciphered. Two great stone cliffs rise from a rocky ledge to form a right angle. Above them, a pyramid-shaped rock sits like a roof over the whole structure. One of the natural pillars supporting it has a strikingly human-like shape. Locals call it the Keeper.