Being overpowered by the heady aroma of tobacco while travelling through the Rhodope is as easy as buying contraband cigarettes in downtown Sofia. Pull over near a field. Step out of your car and face the endless rows of tall stalks undulating in the soft breeze. Can you feel it? They give off an intense odour that crowds out the usual aromas of thyme, yellowing grass and parched soil.
"How about a fresh before we go to the fitness?" sounds like perfectly good English.
I find myself saying "I really love the nature here."
Hiking in the mountains must be the secret of health and longevity ‒ we sometimes feel we're the youngest (and slowest) people on the trail, as octogenarians power past us.
It is possible to eat tomato and cucumber for breakfast.
It is also possible to spend three or four hours over a meal and it is OK not to order the whole meal in one go. Unless you like having chips with your starter.
The attitude of Bulgarians to the gay pride parades of recent years curiously resembles their sentiments towards the Orthodox Church: it is obviously wrong, yet presidents, prime ministers and many ordinary citizens vie to be seen kissing the hand of some octogenarian bishop because it does their "patriotic" image good.
What's in a word? A poet, especially a grand 19th Century man of letters, should know best; but he would be turning in his grave if he knew he had been hailed as a political activist for what, during his whole life, he considered his arch-enemy.
Bulgarians use the expression "to carry two watermelons under the armpit," which roughly translates us "running after two hares." But when you see the enthusiasm with which Bulgarians consume watermelons in the summer, you might easily think that carrying two watermelons under the armpit is the norm. Tarator still keeps its reputation as the best way of dealing with the summer heat, but watermelons come a very close second.
When you see Karlukovo, near Lukovit, for the first time, you'd be hard put to believe that you are in the part of Bulgaria richest in karst rocks. The settlement lies among low, monotonous hills and there's nothing – not even a signpost pointing to a tourist sight to indicate that underneath this modest landscape lies a labyrinth of caves. It is the result of thousands of years of action by wind and water, which carved the pliable karst rock and formed caves, magical shapes and whirlpools.
Ten years have passed since the day on which I began my studies in archaeology at Sofia University. In this decade the subject has undergone significant changes. Back then literature in foreign languages in the university library, and also in the National Library, was scarce. The students would ferret out information, burrowing in dusty catalogues in much the same way as their predecessors used to do in the time of the legendary Professor Bogdan Filov (1883– 1945). The small number of computers ran the MS DOS operating system.
There's a folder at home that I rarely touch.
I'm afraid to. The folder holds part of my childhood letters. Collected by my mother. Although there are letters to my father there, too. When my parents burned up in a plane crash a quarter-century ago, I was twelve. I don't say "only" twelve, because even twelve years turned out to be enough to experience what I experienced.
The letters were written before that age, obviously.
I am always elated when I see the new issue of Vagabond at the Onda located across the road from the Russian church. Since my arrival in Sofia two years ago, much of what I have learned about Bulgaria has come from your well written and interesting articles. I thank you for being a part of the English language community here in Bulgaria.
Michael Branch, USA