Bulgarians are very sensitive to all kinds of monuments. Monuments are OK if they celebrate some kind of a glorious if rather imaginary past – the more distant, the better. The past is safe as there is no one alive to get offended, but monuments can also generate considerable acrimony if they relate to not-so-distant events, especially in the case where Bulgaria's sometimes odd sense of "national honour" is concerned.
More than 50 Britons gathered at a protest in front of the Bulgarian embassy in London on Saturday, 27 November. They requested the intervention of the Bulgarian government in a real estate fraud case in Bansko. In March the Britons gained entry by force to their legally owned residences in the Four Seasons complex. They changed the keys to obtain access to the apartments after Bulgarian real estate company Zekom, which owns less than half of the property, kept them away for many months.
Two complexes with 23 apartments owned by foreigners have been robbed of air conditioners, boilers and ceramic hot-plates, the Nesebar police informs. This is just one of the many cases of resort thefts that are plaguing the big Bulgarian resorts. Places like Sunny Beach turn into ghost towns during the winter, when few hotels are open. The lack of people allows thieves to operate undisturbed in apartment complexes where many owners are foreigners. In certain cases the thieves are tipped off by insiders or security staff who service the complexes.
I have seen and photographed many war monuments while living in Bulgaria. This particular one, which shows three Bulgarian Communist partizani, or guerilla fighters from the Second World War, is on the road from Kocherinovo to Rila, near the village of Stob. It would not have impressed me much had I not noticed the nickname of one of the three "heroes." Hristo Nikolov Hristov was known as Sokola or the Falcon, a nickname that reminded me of the fictional French partisan Chocolate Mousse in the 1984 comedy film Top Secret.
Expats used to buying their copies of Vagabond in Sofia will no longer be able to do so at Onda, the coffee shop chain, as its new management has decided against renewing its distribution contract with Vagabond Media. Victoria Pavlova, Onda's new general manager, told us that she would like to see "other opportunities" to "add value" to Onda's customers.
To understand why Bulgaria has become the only EU country – and one of a handful of states in the world with dubious media records – to ban the BBC World Service on FM, one has to consider the historical background.
Since the BBC started broadcasting to the world in the 1930s, the Bulgarian governments have been either less than enthusiastic about it or openly hostile – exactly the opposite of what listeners who relied on the BBC for fast and reliable information felt like.
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.
Over 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain Sofia City Council has decided to dismantle dozens if not hundreds of Communist-era signs that still adorn the façades, sides and roofs of houses and blocks of flats. For the time being council employees will reportedly be going around central Sofia jotting down the details, including locations, of the city's long-defunct neon lights in a log book. It is unclear when the actual dismantling will begin, nor how the sometimes massive signs, mainly wrought-iron and electrically illuminated letters, will be disposed of.
In a much publicised U-turn, the GERB-dominated Bulgarian parliament scrapped previous legislation to ban smoking in all public places. Instead, it decided to let restaurant and bar owners decide for themselves whether to make their properties non-smoking. Larger establishments will have to provide nonsmoking sections, a requirement critics say will mean nothing in reality.
You have a birthday and your best Bulgarian friend has a gift for you: a leather wallet. You unwrap it carefuly, you admire it and then, on closer inspection, you find one stotinka (the equivalent of less than half a penny) inside it. Giving an empty wallet is a bad omen in Bulgaria. It means that it will never get full.
Now that Bulgaria is not going to ban smoking indoors you reach for your cigarettes. Do not even think of lighting a cigarette from a burning candle, especially if you are on the Black Sea coast. It means that you will be taking the soul of a sailor.