Bulgaria

A thorn in the side of the Byzantine Empire, became a thorn in the side of the Ottoman Empire. Despite the Bulgarian Empire being snuffed out twice, once by those nasty Byzantines, and once by the nasty Ottomans, and despite 500 years of Ottoman occupation, the Bulgarian entity somehow managed to survive and re-emerged slightly worn and battered at the end of the 19th century. More wars followed, and a fifty year stint as a Soviet vassal during the Cold War before Bulgaria finally settled down into the mundane democracy it is now.

It wasn’t all bad though, the Byzantines brought them Eastern Orthodoxy, the art of iconography and monasteries, the Ottomans Islam, kebabs and mosques, the Soviets heavy industry and concrete monstrosities, and the West corruption and unbridled capitalism. What more could you want?

As a result of all this back and forth tugging throughout the ages, the country is endowed with a plethora of ancient sites, from Greek, to Roman, to Byzantine, to Ottoman, to… ahm Soviet. It is endowed with beautiful monasteries, and beautiful mosques, with age old Slavic villages, and age old Turkish villages. It is endowed with hardy mountain folk, able to withstand ages of occupation and come out none the worse for wear. It is endowed with folk who call themselves Bulgars, or Gypsy’s, or Turks. It is endowed with beaches that rival their Mediterranean counterparts, with wild mountains, deep gorges, snowcapped peaks, ragging rivers, glacial lakes, and vast forests where bears, wolves and lynxes still roam free. It is endowed with good wine, and big plastic bottles of beer at ridiculously low prices. It is endowed with food which is like Greek, but not quite, which is like Turkish but not quite, it is in other words uniquely Bulgarian.

Come and see for yourself what Bulgaria is all about!