Today's post is for anyone who might have ever thought: Bulgaria-smulgaria.  Or even worse wondered to themselves: where's Bulgaria?  First, Bulgaria is in Europe and it's sandwiched in between Greece, Turkey, Romania, Serbia and Macedonia and boarders the Black Sea. We're part of the EU and the country is changing rapidly.

As if these things alone aren't enough to change your mind about this country, maybe this New York Times article titled: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01arch.html?em">A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity</a> will.   It's a sexy article--for those of you who like culture, history and art.  Oh, did I mention that Bulgaria is at the heart of this article? Here's the first paragraph to get you excited:
<blockquote>Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.</blockquote>
Um, this--the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills--is Bulgaria, Romania and parts of Serbia.  And in case you can't read, or maybe just read too quickly, I'll repeat the fact that the people living in these areas were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade (there's also a great<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/25/science/112409_ARCH_2.html"> slide show</a> if pictures are more your thing).  Not bad for a set of countries and people who have been relegated for years to the back burner of Eastern Europe, hidden behind the iron curtain and who are struggling to make it as a post-communist countries.

If you didn't know it before now, Bulgaria's got plenty of history both recent and ancient. <!--more--> Only now it seems that others are paying heed to this history and that it will be shared and maybe even celebrated.  I mean, I am celebrating it whether or not others decide to follow suit is up to them.  I think that the age, the quality and sheer amount of artifacts--art, tools and trade items in Bulgarian museums is pretty incredible.  And I've said for a while now that while the displays in Bulgarian museums are not as hip, sleek or modern looking as other European museums the quality and range of the collections make them a serious treasure.

Okay, I'd like to see more displays, collections and exhibits curated in two languages--say Bulgarian and English.  This would make the artifacts and the history of Bulgaria more accessible to foreigners.  But this said, most of the pieces speak for themselves.  So why book a holiday to Paris, London or Berlin when you could come and explore Bulgaria part of the heart of Old Europe?

All of this seems to get at something bigger--not mentioned in the article nor on my blog--and that's the sense that even up until modern times, one could still find treasure in Bulgaria.  You might be digging in your field and come across a golden crown made out of delicate leaves, stone carvings or even an ancient burial site.  But it was there a connection to the past, to something bigger than we are and it is just there waiting to be found, to be uncovered, to be discovered.

And more or less this is how I feel about everything in Bulgaria.  There's a lot here--only you've just got to find it, try it out, give it a shot.

I guess now is the time to start (or continue) "flirting with civilization" as the NYT puts it:

<img class="alignnone" title="Flirting with Civilization" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/12/01/science/01arch_graphic/popup.jpg" alt="" width="660" height="518" />