Euro Blog

From Thracian Tombs to Communist Monuments: Bulgaria’s rich history

I get up at dawn to photograph the site. It’s very windy and I expect to be alone but I instead bump into a small film crew. They are students making a documentary about how this building reflects Bulgaria, how it symbolises the plight of their country. The young man behind the camera is Bulgarian, a student of Architecture in Paris. He applied to get access to the inside but was refused by the authorities.

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Bucharest, not Budapest

There’s a punchline, quipped by locals and adopted in a high-profile media campaign in 2013 that is part self-deprecation, part self-promotion. It was lovingly quoted to me on multiple occasions when I sought advice on the beautiful sights to visit: You know you’re in Bucharest, not Budapest don’t you?

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Prince Charles knows: we have something to learn from this cultivated landscape of Transylvania

I’m not Royalist but I am with Prince Charles on this one when he says that “We, the rest of the world, have something to learn from this cultivated landscape of Transylvania. They have a spiritual but also social, economical and ecological significance.”

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