Issue 8

News that homeless Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants had been camping out in London's Hyde Park triggered predictable outrage in sections of the British media.

The Daily Mail informed us that the immigrants "pitch their tents in one spot for a few nights, then pack up and move to another. They say they are able to get away with camping in the park, which is technically illegal, because there are no wardens and they rarely see any police".

The article was accompanied by a flood of comments from readers urging the authorities to "kick out" the "campers".

Across the road from the National Gallery in Sofia, there is a plaque on the wall of what is now the BNP bank but was once part of the Grand Hotel Bulgaria. It records that James David Bourchier, the Balkans Correspondent of the London Times, lived there from 1892 to 1920.

Going back a few months now, I was in TsUM. You know the place. Bulgarian Harrods.

I don't hang out there or anything. No, honestly. I was looking for a reassuringly expensive trinket for a lady friend's birthday, or something. Anyway there I was, rotating a plastic Swatch display cabinet and looking dubiously at the cheaper models, when I witnessed an unusual exchange in a nearby cafe.

There was a family there. Mum and Dad, and two kids. Pale and podgy they were, with father and son sporting matching ginger nut spiky hairstyles and Manchester United T-shirts.

During the years when Bulgaria's membership of the EU seemed but a beautiful daydream people would often take comfort in the thought "So what! We've been Europeans for 1,300 years." In 681AD the Byzantine Empire had to make a treaty with a young, steadfast confederacy formed alongside the Danube and thus admit the political existence of Bulgaria. But the Bulgarians of the 7th Century were not exactly the Bulgarians you see today walking the streets of Sofia or Sozopol.

Ivan Moudov, a young contemporary artist, looks like a man capable of smoking his wife's cigarettes after painstakingly cutting the filter tip off each of them - in secret. Not because she would mind, but because he made a bet that he wouldn't smoke for six years, and still has five to go.

It all began with an email I received in the summer of 2005. I was impressed by something Sava Hlavacek wrote when asking for assistance in taking photos in Bulgaria. “Bulgaria is one of the least known countries in Europe. No events from Bulgarian history have become part of European consciousness.”

This practice seems to be a case of dual pricing which I understood had been outlawed. How would you see it?

Andrew, Sofia

Georgi Etimov was born in 1963 in Sofia and graduated in civil engineering, a vocation that runs in the family: both his father and grandfather were engineers. He worked as one for a good part of his life, and is married to an architect. Given this background, you would be correct in thinking he would have a strong opinion on the recent construction boom. “Things are not just black and white. There are contractors who go for quality in everything they do, and there are of course the others who make all kinds of compromises.