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The Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe, merged with the local Slavic inhabitants in the late 7th century to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantine Empire to assert its place in the Balkans, but by the end of the 14th century the country was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. Northern Bulgaria attained autonomy in 1878 and all of Bulgaria became independent in 1908. Having fought on the losing side in both World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946. Communist domination ended in 1990, when Bulgaria held its first multiparty election since World War II and began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. Today, reforms and democratization keep Bulgaria on a path toward eventual integration into the EU. The country joined NATO in 2004. To be updated

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By Travelling Lady
August 30th 2006

Rural Bulgaria

Europe » Bulgaria » North » Veliko Tarnovo

1
The Black Sea in Bulgaria just south of Romania.

Hello everyone, The highlight of my travels through Bulgaria was at the town of Veliko Tarnovo. It goes way back and has a huge fortress. Visiting during the day was okay, but at 9:30 most evenings they have a light and sound show. The music was specially written and covers the history of Bulgaria. The entire structure--cathedral, walls, gates are lit up with lights coordinated with the music. In all they use 630 km. of cables powering 2500 colour projectors, 140 flash lights, laser rays and 6 mechanical bells. The show lasts about half an hour and is just wonderful. Even [View Full Entry]

By SlavicNerd
August 27th 2006

last goodbye to Bulgaria :-(

Europe » Bulgaria » West » Sofia

well kids, i'm back in sofia after my adventures in macedonia. seeing as my bus got in before 6am this morning, i've been quite bored or the past couple of hours. after some coffee and pretending to understand the bulgarian newspaper at the bus station, i dropped off my bags and headed out for a morning stroll through the city. its quite peaceful in the morning. we'll see what i end up doing for the rest of the day before my flight to warsaw... so yesterday morning i think i finally felt like part of the family, which was unfortunate considering [View Full Entry]

By pjhowe
August 27th 2006

Catching up..

Europe » Bulgaria » West » Sofia

Ok, so this hasn't been updated in a while, a long while. I'm going to try to do it one bit at a time, but give us a bit of a break because this is all from ages ago. I'm going to be slipping in and out of present and past tense, but hopefully you should get the idea. Peace. [View Full Entry]

By corbandkel
August 21st 2006

Stuck in Sofia

Europe » Bulgaria » West » Sofia

So the train was pretty sweet, we had our own little room and everything. The border guards rudely awakened us in the night to sign out of Turkey and into Bulgaria but otherwise it was pretty mellow and we slept alright. The countryside as we drove through was prety cool - lots of wildflowers and burnt out old communist bloc style bunkers and buildings, nuts. We arrived in Sofia around 1pm and unloaded a bunch of our passengers. We were just chilling in the carriage waiting to zoom off again when our friend from the next room, Samir from Serbia, poked [View Full Entry]

By SlavicNerd
August 15th 2006

още в Търново...

Europe » Bulgaria » North » Veliko Tarnovo

pretty hot view
from our favorite restaurant...

i just wanted to let everyone know that today i had what i'd like to call a "language seizure" that happened as a result of my speaking catalan, spanish, english, french, and bulgarian all within a 2 minute period. i literally started shaking and sweating. in other news, i bought a cell phone yesterday, but as of now there aren't any minutes on it so i have to go buy a voucher. i'm keeping it in bulgarian which is pretty sweet, plus no one will be able to get into my phone unless they know bulgaria or cyrillic, i suppose. also, [View Full Entry]

By susantravels
August 15th 2006

Resten av vansinnesfärden ett töcken

Europe » Bulgaria » South » Plovdiv

Galet oväder i Venedig, blixt efter blixt efter

Jag minns att jag tvingades vända i Serbien för att jag hade glömt kreditkortet på en mack nånstans söderut, det var ganska besvärligt att få tillbaka, och jag minns ett hotellrum med ett monsterbubbelbadkar. Så sov jag visst några timmar längs italienska autobahn, och ja just det så plockade jag upp några holländska liftare nånstans i närheten av Mont Blanc. Det försenade mig ytterligare. Om man nu kan prata om förseningar när det gäller en så lång resa. i princip åkte jag lika långt på fem dar som jag gjorde på sex veckor ner till Damaskus i våras. Och nej, det [View Full Entry]

By SlavicNerd
August 14th 2006

cherno more, mnogo e dobre!

Europe » Bulgaria » East » Varna

us on the beach
taking in the sun...

so this past weekend was spent at the black sea, right outside of varna. after quite a bit of drama with the directors not wanting us to go, aka they don't trust us because we're american (despite the fact that our friends from denmark, ukraine, and romania were going as well) we departed by bus. once in varna we searched for this restaurant, kushtata, and qute a bit of searching finally were able to find it. the food was quite good, though having to wait like 45 minutes for manuela's tripe (of all things) to come was a bit ridiculous. our [View Full Entry]

By mr wind up bird
August 7th 2006

Laid low on the Black Sea

Europe » Bulgaria » East » Varna

Varna Port

Not much to report here I'm afraid. Bulgaria's Black Sea coast is a bit like an action film. It's fun but not very interesting. Trying to escape from some zealous American missionaries (Missionaries? Bulgaria is almost entirely orthodox Christian) I had met on the Bus from Velika, I jumped into a taxi that drove me to the hostel I had planned on staying in. Up three flights of stairs later, and it was clear that the either 'Coast Hostel' didn't exist, or someone was making some extravagant claims on the web sight. Some wide-boy Bulgarian, who might have worked in this [View Full Entry]

By SlavicNerd
August 6th 2006

amazingness

Europe » Bulgaria » North » Veliko Tarnovo

so basically i'm having the most amazing time of my life and i never want to leave... bulgaria has turned us americans into alcoholics and chain smokers, so i don't think i'll be able to elaborate much on our fun times in this blog, lol. but just so you know, we're all totally in love with this place and don't want to leave anytime soon. luckily it hasn't even been one week yet. yesterday i had this "excursion" at 9am instead of class all throughout the city. significantly exhausted and hung over after another night of fun and 2 hours of [View Full Entry]

By Travelling Lady
August 4th 2006

Sofia

Europe » Bulgaria » West » Sofia

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St. Nikolai Russian Church in Sofia. Built in 1912 by Russian workmen and paid for by Nicholas II. That is why it is named after him. Holds the body of St. Serafim. Pray to him at the church and m... [more]

Hello everyone, Bulgaria is more like the former Soviet block atmosphere that I had expected. You still see horse carts and horses instead of tractors in fields. They use shepherds instead of fencing. They are trying to get on track--hope to join the European Union in 2007. Their history during WWII is a little different. The government chose to support Germany rather than Russia, but the people wanted to support Russia--Russia had liberated them from Turkish domination back in 1878. The damage from bombing was actually done by Russia. The Soviets still liberated them and they became p [View Full Entry]

Links: Bulgaria Travel Blogs (all) | Bulgaria Travel Photos | Bulgaria Travel Forum | Bulgaria Facts | Map of Bulgaria

Travel Blog » Europe » Bulgaria