Bulgaria

This weekend when we made a road trip to Washington Sasha and Vladi went to the Bulgarian embassy on Sunday morning to vote for the run-off in the presidential elections.

The elections were won by current President Georgi Purvanov, defeating ultra-nationalist Volen Siderov easily in the 2nd round.

Last summer we went to the embassy also, when Sasha voted in the parliamentary elections. Note that then we still had our own camera which was already broken at the time -- I remember spending quite some time trying to revive as much as I could from the digital picture of the embassy.

Friday was March 3, Liberation Day in Bulgaria. After work we went to a celebration organized by the Bulgarian Embassy.

We arrived just in time to hear a live performance of the Bulgarian and American National Anthems, followed by a speech by the Ambassador of Bulgaria, Mrs. Elena Poptodorova.

The celebration was held in the building of the Organization of American States, a very beautiful location, with a large indoor garden with tropical plants.

We met Bella and Ramiro just after we arrived, and later met many other Bulgarians and it was a very pleasant company.

Around 9.00 pm the party was ending, and we went with our group to Bistro Bulgari, a Bulgarian restaurant in Crystal City. We had a really nice evening there; we were with about 15 people, most of them Bulgarian -- one Dutch, one American. It was the first time Sasha and I were in this restaurant and it was a nice discovery -- great lukanka, rakia and an excellent shopska. And yes, they had my favorite... sirene po shopski. We went home late, after a fun evening.

The inside of the building of the Organization of American States (from their website).

Bulgarian archaeologists have found 15,000 miniature golden rings that date back to the end of the third millennium BC.

The rings were found near Dabene, which is close to Karlovo and about 120 kilometers from Sofia. The treasure is part of the heritage of ancestors of the Tracians, "proto-Thracians", who lived in what is now Bulgaria until the 8th century.

The discovery is said to match the famous treasure of Troy.

Today were the elections in Bulgaria for a new parliament. It looks like the BSP, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, has won with about 32% of the votes.

The result of the election was known around 16.00 o'clock our time, so when we left to the embassy we already knew the result.

The Bulgarian Embassy is located in downtown D.C., near Dupont Circle. It was nice to see the Bulgarian flag, and in front of the embassy there was a statue of Vasil Levski.

Sasha went inside to vote, and as it was the end of the day there weren't many people anymore so she was done fairly quickly. Four years ago we went to the Bulgarian Embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands, to vote.

Thursday was March 3rd, Bulgaria's National Day. On that day in 1878 the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire became official by the signing of the Peace Treaty of San Stefano between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

To celebrate, we went out with Ramiro, Bella, Elena and Antonia on Thursday night. I left work a bit earlier and we went to Levante's, an eastern Mediterranean restaurant downtown D.C.

So, we were four Bulgarians and two semi-outsiders, and most of us were wearing a martenitsa: the token that is sent to friends on March 1st, and is a sign of the coming spring. Of course, a lot of the conversation was about Bulgaria and it was a very enjoyable evening.

A white Christmas!

It started snowing on the day before Christmas, and in the morning whole Perushtitsa was white. Too bad I can't put some pictures online now, it's a really pretty sight. It's a serious amount of snow, and big trucks were cleaning the roads in the morning.

Milan had bought a whole turkey (about 20 kilo!), and we brought it to a friend who has an oven that's big enough for it. This friend lives a bit up the hill in the city, and some roads there weren't cleaned so we walked quite a bit with the turkey through the snow. An interesting journey ;).

The turkey was really delicious (with cabbage and fresh garlic). And shopska salad of course.

We had a nice (Bulgarian) evening. Bulgaria's soccer team won with 3-0 of Andorra, and is still first in their group. I think that means that they'll certainly go to Portugal for the European Cup next summer. Let's see if the Dutch team will also play well tonight.

We had shopska, rakia and pursholka... delicious.

Two new editions of books about Bulgaria have been released: Bulgaria, the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet Bulgaria. For a long time it was difficult to find good and up-to-date travelguides, but this afternoon I saw these two books in the library. They were both published in 2002 and looked very interesting. The Rough Guide is the 3rd edition, the Lonely Planet the 1st.

At the same time I saw that the archive of the library is now open to the public -- very nice. In the attic there are many more books. There I found an old history book about Bulgaria, written by the famous historican Ilcho Dimitrov. It's from 1979 -- years later Dimitrov became Minister of Education.

Good news perhaps for the summer. On the website of the Dutch embassy in Bulgaria this press-release:

"Bulgarian flagcarrier Balkan Air Tour will launch direct flights to Amsterdam twice a week as of 4 May. This became possible after the company signed a cooperation agreement with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. The agreement allows for direct flights to most KLM and partners' destinations and for flights with a stopover to cities across Europe, USA, Canada, South Africa and the Far East."

See the original press release too (notice the typical Dutch photo). They are looking for pilots too.