Go, Gotse, GO!
Bulgaria has become the
only former Warsaw Pact country to have a stooge
for president
by
Stoyana Georgieva, Mediapool
Abraham Lincoln famously said that you can fool
some of the people all of the time, all of the
people some of the time, but you cannot fool all
the people all the time.
Perhaps the masses are more malleable than
Lincoln thought, at least in present-day
Bulgaria. President Georgi Parvanov, it
transpires from recently declassified documents,
was an informer for DS, or Darzhavna sigurnost -
the Communist-era secret police, the Bulgarian
equivalent of Stasi and
Securitate.
Culture Shock
OK, you've been to Greece, Turkey, and possibly southern Italy. You've kind of got used to manic drivers, street dogs, piles of litter, and Roma women approaching you with offers to read your palm. You had a dodgy tummy in Athens; you developed aches, pains and allergies in Istanbul; and your purse got nicked in Naples. You think you've seen it all? Bulgaria can still surprise you.
Psychologists explain the term "culture shock" as being a feeling of anxiety produced when a person moves to a completely new environment. Generally, it sets in within a few weeks of coming to a new place, or when the plumbers have done the bathroom, whichever comes first. You don't speak the language, the BBC World Service can only be heard on Short Wave, you don't know how to use the bank machines, and you are desperately trying to simulate personal creativity when dealing with the waiters in your local restaurant.
Feel you want to leave? Don't! Here are my Top 10 characteristically Bulgar events and occurrences likely to induce a bout of culture shock - and my proven ways of dealing successfully with them.Read More...