Serbian Cyrillic uses beautiful ligatures for "ль" and "нь".
Sofia's most famous landmark is marvelous and photogenic.
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The most beautiful church in Bulgaria that you’ve probably never heard of.
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If you give a Bulgarian man some grapes, he’ll want to make wine. After he drinks the wine, he’ll want to use the pressed and fermented remains of the grapes to make a traditional brandy called rakia. This is easily the most famous cliché about Bulgaria, but in my experience it’s not that far from the truth.
Pitting plums to add to the grape pomace
Much of modern-day Bulgaria and Northern Greece was inhabited by loosely organized Thracian tribes during the first millennium or so before Christ. Legend has it that they have made wine along the banks of the Maritsa river for the last 5,000 years. The ancient Greek poet Homer partially corroborates this in his epics written around 800 BCE. From The Iliad:
Continue reading...The picturesque little city of Vratsa (Враца) sits at the foothills of the Balkan Mountains in Northwest Bulgaria. On a recent road trip I was amazed when I saw the city sitting under the craggy cliffs of the “old mountain” (Стара Планина / Stara Planina in Bulgarian). What with the water and all it’s kind of like a poor man’s Cape Town!
The city of Vratsa below the Balkan mountain