BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria

Subject: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 01:58 PM

http://www.questbg.com/lifestyle/life/653-ten-reasons-to-love-bulgaria.html

Reasons to Love Bulgaria
Weather
Food
Neighbours
Personal safety
Fresh air and Nature
Traditions and Culture
Low cost of living
Medical Service
Life is Relaxing
Proximity to other countries

Other-
It's a lang way fra' Scotland.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 03:30 PM

Their floral attars and essences.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 04:38 PM

I've been to Bulgaria five times. I think that it's one of the most interesting and beautiful countries that I have ever been to. I'm an amateur botanist and Bulgaria has a very rich and varied flora. Two of my favourite recollections are:

1. I was on a guided walking tour of the Pirin Mountains and found a yellow columbine by the side of a mountain track. I fell to my knees to photograph it and our guide said: "Ha! He is like a musullman, he worships this plant!" "Musullman" is a Slavic word meaning 'Muslim'. I thought that it was a word confined to the pages of Edwardian boys' adventure stories - I never expected to hear it used in real life!

2. I hired a car and drove up from the Black Sea coast into the Strandzha Mountains, near to the border with Turkey. My botanist's instinct made me stop the car next to a hornbeam thicket, near to a road junction. In the midst of the thicket I found several huge scarlet peonies growing wild. These turned out to be the species Paeonia peregrina - the 'Scarlet Peony of Constantinople'. After taking some photos, I heard a noise from the road and through a gap in the thicket , I saw a small boy, wielding a long switch and driving a small herd of cows along the road. A truly magical moment which will live with me forever.

Bulgaria is magic! Us Brits should stop being mean to Bulgarians!

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 04:50 PM

"Us Brits should stop being mean to Bulgarians!"

For a non-Brit can you expound on how Brits are mean to Bulgarians.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 05:18 PM

I seem to recall that yogourt has a Bulgarian originn tha Buulgar wheat is fine and the nation is close to latin-speaking Romania.But, I am unsure if Whitey Bulger had any connection.
Yes, they took sides with the losing sides during both world wars. But, looking at it in perspective, many powerful nations backed the wrong sides since the last two wars.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: Elmore
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 08:37 PM

I truly love their folk music, particularly the female a cappella groups, even the diaspora.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,ollaimh
Date: 18 Jan 14 - 11:06 PM

what they really mean is that prior to 1905 there were a series of Balkan wars during which Britain stepped in a stoped the unification of all the bulgar related linguistic groups from forming one nation. Macedonian, Bulgarians and northern greek Thracian Macedonian/Bulgarians. they wanted to be one nation and the british were instrumental in stopping that. this still causes ethnic disasters and strife in the Balkans. the greeks have tried to destroy the thracian Bulgarians from learning their ancestral language, serbs tries to stop madeconidans from getting independence, and there is till a slice of Serbia that speaks bulgar/Macedonian.

these are all related and mutually intelligible dialects. not separate languages.

all the Bulgarians I know are quite bitter about this, and blame the british empire.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 02:58 AM

"Us Brits should stop being mean to Bulgarians!"

Bulgaria and Romania are now part of the European Union and, as a result, are now able to live and work in the UK. Our right-wing press has recently stirred up a panic about "hordes" of Bulgarians and Romanians landing on our shores and 'taking our jobs'/'living off welfare' (it's not entirely clear which they are intending to be guilty of). This hysteria has tended to cast citizens of these two countries in a negative light.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 03:39 AM

They do a mean line in umbrellas. Get your hands on one if those babies and you'll never need to lose an argument again.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 06:36 AM

Since everybody else seems to have overlooked it, Bulgaria is home to some of the most fantastic music traditions in the world. The rest of their folklore is pretty cool too.

Musket. Vicious little prat aren't you?

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 07:09 AM

Proud Balkan Mountains,
next to it the Danube sparkles,
the sun shines over Thrace,
and blazes over Pirin.

Refrain: (twice)
Dear Motherland,
you are heaven on earth,
your beauty, your loveliness,
ah, they are boundless.

Countless fighters died,
for our beloved nation,
mother, give us manly strength
to continue their path.*

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 07:12 AM

The last post was me. I posted the (kinda catchy) National Anthem.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 07:27 AM

I believe Bulgaria is very beautiful....has wonderful culture etc.
Unfortunately, the wage rates in Bulgaria and the UK differ by a factor of 9, and the "free movement of people within the EU" means that by most calculations 50;000 Bulgarians and Romanians per year will pitch-up here.
By most calculations 0 people will leave the UK and go to Bulgaria/ Romania to look for work.
The UK is relatively small and the infrastructure here is bursting at the seams(housing, health and care services etc) Money is scarce, the UK poor are already being squeezed till the pips squeak.
I have a friend who was re-admitted to hospital after a serious operation became infected, two days ago. She was on a trolley for six hours waiting for a bed; while she was there, the hospital ran out of clean bedding and she had to be discharged early to make room for other patients.   If we continue to operate an open door policy on immigration, any fool can see the social problems waiting down the line.
Today's polls point to the fact that the UK public are not prepared to be kidded any longer by EU and UK government rhetoric, we need to get our young people and long term unemployed into jobs that enable a reasonable standard of living.....the cheap labour available to the UK, benefits only a small sector of employers, who, if they pay ANY tax at all, the rate at which they pay is being cut drastically.

All the Social problems remain.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 07:35 AM

The leopard does not change its xenophobic spots, I see.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 09:17 AM

Richard. Obviously not. The reason why our hospitals are so close to collapse has nothing to do with the Bulgarian hordes who haven't come here yet, but with the fact that the NHS has been consistently starved of funds for near enough the past forty years.

And yes, I know a lot of the blame for that lies on Thatcher's doorstep, but cut backs and economies go back further, at least to the days of the Callaghan government, and they continued unremitting under Blair.

I spent a couple of nights in hospital recently and I can't say I saw any Bulgarian patients in there, or indeed any patients of non-British ethnicity.

What I did see was a lot of doctors, nurses, cleaning staff etc;, running round like blue arsed flies, and unable to pay proper attention to the patients, because they had a workload which was out of all proportion to their numbers. Beyond the fact that quite a few of them were "immigrants", the "numbers coming here" argument does not apply in this case.

When the last A&E department has closed, when the last hospital has collapsed for lack of maintenance, and when the last patient has died through neglect, only then will governments realise that you can't get blood out of a stone, and you can't run the NHS on a shoe string.

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 12:50 PM

Fred, I have nothing against immigrants, they are being cynically used to prop up an economic system which is unable to sustain the population. If the situation was reversed regarding wage rates, I'm sure Brits would be flooding East to take advantage of big money and a give away benefits system.
The stupidity of paying child benefit to the families of Eastern European workers in Britain defies belief, when our own poor are using food banks.


We need to get our own youth and long term unemployed into work which fulfils them, gives them a reasonable standard of living and a stake in the future, importing cheap labour will not do that.
The problems with infrastructure are evident everywhere, even in my rural area.

Maybe its too late for that, but what do you or Richard see as an alternative?
Making snarky remarks about xenophobia doesn't help discussion

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: GUEST,oldtimer
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 03:53 PM

Apart from the beautiful music , scenery & food it is really a pity that "OMERTA" is the pass word to progress .Ar bhuill fhios agat ?

Subject: RE: BS: Reasons to Love Bulgaria
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Jan 14 - 05:14 PM

Went there in the 70's as part of a family trip - we were warned ahead of time that they reverse nods and headshakes for yes and no, and we were talking about how we would have to be careful of that when we asked a taxi if we could go to wherever, and the driver shook his head so we walked away with him chasing us and realized that we had just done what we had been talking about being careful not to do. Hilarity ensued.
Do they still reverse the head gestures for yes and no?