My Country: Bulgaria - General Info

I am a Bulgarian, living in Bulgaria. It seems to be an exotic country for most of my virtual guests here. Something totally unknown, distant and maybe interesting to most of you. So I think I have to explain something about Bulgaria.

It is the white country on the old map shown here /the only map showing almost all of Europe that I found - it is really old and the colour coding is quite out-dated, but you can see the location/.

It is in Europe, on the Balkan peninsula /South East Europe/, west to the Black sea. It is a small country with great history and beautiful landscape situated on the crossroads of various routes, cultures and interests. This proved to be a great chance and more than great trouble.

We have 4 seasons, great mountains /and vegetables and fruits/. Lots of resorts /too many in the last few years/, amazing history and cultural and folklore treasures, and a post socialist transition economy, suffering a substantial brain drain /plus negative population surplus for a long period right after the democracy introduction /1989//…. Bulgaria is a European union country, but not a euro zone one yet.

We use Cyrillic alphabet, which is similar to the Russian /that you can see on some Japanese fabrics/ but has less letters. The Russians added some new letters after adopting the Cyrillic alphabet.

For more details I am coping some of the Wikipedia info below. If you are curios about my country, feel free to ask.

“The state of Bulgaria [bʌlˈgɛiɹiə] (Bulgarian: България, transliterated: Balgaria,[1] pronounced IPA: [bəlˈgarija]), international transliteration Bălgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria (Република България, Republika Balgaria, pronounced IPA: [rɛˈpubliˌka bəlˈgarija]) forms part of the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. It borders five other countries: Romania to the north (mostly along the River Danube), Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south. The Black Sea defines the extent of the country to the east.

Bulgaria includes parts of the Roman provinces of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia. Old European culture within the territory of present-day Bulgaria started to produce golden artifacts by the fifth millennium BC.[4]

The first Bulgarian kingdoms on European soil date back to the early Middle Ages (VIIth century). All Bulgarian political entities that subsequently emerged preserved the traditions (in ethnic name, language and alphabet) of the First Bulgarian Empire (632/681 – 1018), which at times covered most of the Balkans and spread its alphabet, literature and culture among the Slavic and other peoples of Eastern Europe. Centuries later, with the decline of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185 – 1396/1422), Bulgarian kingdoms came under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 led to the re-establishment of a Bulgarian state as a constitutional monarchy in 1878, with the Treaty of San Stefano marking the birth of the Third Bulgarian State. Following the Young Turk Revolution Bulgaria declared her independence from the Ottoman Emipre in 1908.[5] After World War II, in 1945 Bulgaria became a communist state and part of the Eastern Bloc. Todor Zhivkov dominated Bulgaria politically for 33 years (from 1956 to 1989). In 1990, after the Revolutions of 1989, the Communist party gave up its monopoly on power and Bulgaria transitioned to democracy and free-market capitalism.

Currently Bulgaria functions as a parliamentary democracy under a unitary constitutional republic. A member of the European Union since 2007 and of NATO since 2004, it has a population of approximately 7.6 million.”

You can find more on the Wikipedia link mentioned above. All the 5 information sources used in the copied text are listed there too,along with many others.