News

  It may not be at the seaside and it may not be in the mountains, but Plovdiv remains true to its image as The cultural city in Bulgaria.

  The Old Town in the city bears the spirit of the past two centuries almost untouched, and it takes only a few minutes’ walk on the paved narrow streets to feel the “old artistic” atmosphere that lingers from the city’s past. The past, and how it influences the present, is a key theme in Plovdiv. Apart from Greece, Plovdiv is the only place in the world where you can watch opera in a genuine 2nd century CE ancient theatre. This year, visitors can enjoy the XXI Opera Festival, June 20 to July 12. Three operas and one operetta will be performed on the renovated stage of the theatre, perhaps the best setting for such performances. Johan Strauss’s Gypsy Baron will make its debut at the event on July 4 and July 5 and on July 12, Verdi’s trademark Aida will be the closing performance. Both performances will be in the original languages in which the works were written.

  In the past few years, Balchik was undeservedly overshadowed by the popularity of its northern neighbour Kavarna and the numerous rock concerts which take place there every summer.

  This, however, does not mean that Balchik has little to offer to visitors. The relatively quiet beaches of the town and the shape of the harbour and the bay conjure up the time of Greek mythology. The place is suitable for everyone with a yacht and a desire to voyage by sea. The botanical garden and the summer residence of Romania’s Queen Marie (dating from the times when Balchik was in Romanian hands between the two world wars) are the town’s trademarks.

  Classic, blues, fusion, Latin, nu-jazz, gipsy jazz, R&B, soul, afro-beat and other jazz styles.

  All of these may be experienced in Bansko this August. This year, the small town in the Pirin mountain celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Bansko International Jazz Festival. In the past decade, the event has become a world-class attraction, combining the incredible mountain scenery with the modulations of jazz. The open stage, combined with the mountain nights, creates an atmosphere that is special. The event will start on August 8 and will last till August 13. Organisers promise that it will be true feast of music.

  Especially for the jubilee, organisers have invited an audience favourite, an Egyptian band led by virtuoso percussionist Yehya Khalil.  

  If you want to escape the heat in an alternative way, take the chance to boost your adrenaline by bungee jumping, paragliding and rock-climbing.

  A good place to start bungee jumping is with club Vertikalen Svyat . The club offers a wide selection of jumping spots, including the bridges at Bunovo, Klisura, Rozino, Dolno Kamartsi, Koprivshtitsa, Vitinya, and at the Devetashka Peshtera and Prohodna Peshtera caves. Prices are between 25 and 50 leva, with the most expensive being from the Vitinya bridge, which at 115m is the highest bridge in Bulgaria.

  The club offers various discounts. For example, if you would like to take the plunge with a second jump on the same day, the discount is 50 per cent. Students get 10 per cent discounts. If you are a part of an organised group of five or more people, 20 per cent is cut from the entire price.

  A number of reasons given by the Russian property investors for their orientation to Bulgaria, as shown in the Russian “Digest Nedvijimosti”.

  Recently a representative of the Bulgarian National “Real Properties” Association mentioned in an interview that oil companies from Russia, Great Britain and Israel show interest in the building of closed-type residential complexes near Varna. According to him, there are five complexes in process of construction, which are going to be used by the said companies, and besides their Black sea coastal invasion the oil investors have shown interest in the Pamporovo mountain resort and the picturesque villages of Arbanasi and Bojentsi.

  The oil corporations are a fraction of the foreigners who recently have been interested in Bulgaria, wrote “Digest Nedvijimosti”. The demand is multifarious and not only for closed-type residential complexes. As a whole the geography of the foreign buyers in the country is very diverse, commented the Digest.

  Jazz represents a merging of different people and cultures. The phenomenon spread across America and Europe merging with traditional music creating the basis for blues and ragtime from which jazz evolved. And now, the music genre that originated in the plantation fields of deep southern America, is a form of music celebrated globally. Bansko in Bulgaria is no exception; the town celebrates its culture and people with jazz at the annual International Jazz Festival held at the beginning of August (7th - 15th).

  At present Bansko is probably better know as a good value ski destination and for its booming property market with investors pouring into the area, however they will have to get in line this August as the International Jazz Festival in Bansko is one of the biggest and most prestigious musical events in Bulgaria, and is growing in popularity each year.

  The Project “Common Heritage From Pre-historical Times – Means to Develop the Border Region Between Bulgaria and Greece” is financed with 254 thousand euro under the PHARE program.

  The Region

  The region itself is an amalgamation between cultural richness and social poverty – these words best describe eastern uplands of the Rhodopes mountain. Close to Greece and Turkey, but remaining far due to insufficient border access stations.

  Because of its rich cultural and historical heritage the region is particularly suitable for development of cultural tourism. The region concentrates multiple preserved cultural landmarks, the most numerous and interesting of them being the ones left by the Thracians.

  There are a total of 150 archeological, 50 architectural and 25 art cultural landmarks, representing a large resource for the development of cultural tourism.

  The cultural tourism could unite the cultural routes with other forms of tourism. The ecological, hunting and fishing tourism are characteristic for the municipalities of Madjarovo and Ivaylovgrad, since they enjoy large forest massifs, eco-routes and bio-diversity, including rare animal species.

  A part of the villages in the region have not only preserved the atmosphere typical of the Renaissance, but also the typical for that period stone and sun-dried bricks architecture and are especially suitable for the development of country tourism.

  The Spanish real estate companies continue to pile on the Bulgarian market, motivated by its resemblance with the Iberian market some years ago and the possibilities for future growth. Another contractor – Grupo Metro 2000, plans to invest 70 million euro in Bulgaria, joined the Riofisa, Grupo Urbas and Ferry Group already operating here.

  The company plans to invest some 20 million euro in land purchases until the end of 2008 and a further 50 million in the construction of office and residential buildings, as announced one of the company directors – Julian Dias-Santos, in an interview made for the SeeNews agency.

  Pinned between the slowing growth of the prices of residences and the huge offering in their own country, a substantial number of Spanish companies seek growth in foreign countries. They used to invest traditionally in Latin America and Africa, but lately they have been gradually increasing their investments in Central and Eastern Europe.

  “The Bulgarian market closely resembles the Spanish one 20 years ago” – confided Mr. Dias-Santos in the interview.

  The building process and the real estate properties, closely intertwined with the tourism industry, have for long years been the one of the most important sectors and an engine driving the Spanish economy forward. But the large number of residences on offer, as well as the slowing rise of the prices in the course of the last two years, which is expecting to continue, have forced the companies to redistribute their activities and to consolidate.

  You can hear spring before you can see it. The love songs of birds lend life to the plane tree forest before the first buds have appeared. The trees’ knotted branches and spotted trunks look ancient and wise. Nakedness befits them. As does their imposing size. These sycamores are older than 300 years, spreading on 11 hectares near the village of Gorna Breznitsa, a short detour from the main road from Sofia to our destination – Sandanski.
My initial, though short-lived, response to Sandanski is one of disappointment. My expectations trick me. Somehow I’ve layered my childhood impressions of the unique architecture of nearby Melnik upon memories of quaint spa towns and postcard images of Mediterranean towns in neighbouring Greece. The result was a fiction of a tranquil, optimistic, picturesque little town nestled at the foot of Pirin mountain, a restful respite that befits a spa capital.

  In reality, Sandanski is rather large. Development of the town clearly picked up during the second half of the 20th century. Large apartment buildings – greyish concrete oversized matchboxes that are a product of communist utilitarian architecture – scar the city’s outer edges. More recently, a new surge of development is transforming the town’s landscape, with hotels and holiday villages springing up seemingly overnight. Last year, the local registry reported a record-breaking number of 4120 sale transactions accounting for 126.7 million leva. This amount is based on the official tax evaluation, though estate agents claim the market value is about triple that amount. Foreigners show the greatest interest, especially Russians, Greeks, Irish and Macedonians. So there must be something drawing people here, other than the whispers of red-light tourism that tainted the city’s reputation in recent years. The secret, we learn, is in the region’s natural uniqueness.
Located at 220 to 240m above sea level, Sandanski is the warmest Bulgarian town year-round. There are more than 2450 hours of sunlight annually. The air is exceptionally clean with a low relative humidity of 66 per cent, and an average temperature of about 15°C. There are more than 80 mineral water springs, with temperatures that range from 42 to 81°C. This confluence of conditions explains why the first settlement around the springs took place 2000 years BCE.

  The antique archaeology findings, that were unearthed in the temple of the Phrygian Goddess Cybele in Bulgaria, will be exhibited in the seaside town of Balchik.

  Scientists will soon develop a project for adapting the unique archaeology monument of antique art to the surrounding buildings.

  In the last couple of days the archaeologists working on the object found a third marble statue of the goddess - a deification of the Earth Mother. One of the most precious findings in the temple of Cybele is a 50-centimeter-high Doric column with a well-preserved inscription addressed to the Roman emperor Valerius Licinianus Licinius.

  The archaeologists believe this is the biggest temple of Cybele in Bulgaria. The walls were at least 2.5 meters high, and the base of the building is huge, compared to other important buildings of the same age.