I can relate to your sister's email because, like her, before I had any attachments to it, I had barely even heard of it, barely knew the country existed. Then, I met and eventually married a Bulgarian man, and I started to notice references to it EVERYWHERE. Until this blog post I had not put much thought into it, thinking that I was only noticing it because now I knew it. I never really considered the references to be "cheap jokes". It is interesting to read everyone's take on it.