This is an inside look at the current cultural, ethnic, historical, religious, social, and linguistic dimensions of Bulgaria, complete with photos from my 2007 vacation. It also analyses the issue of Islam in Europe, the Gypsy race, and the mysterious masters of gold, the Thracians.

English name: Bulgaria

Local name: Balgariya

Population: 7,322,858

Religion: Bulgarian Orthodox 82.6%, Muslim 12.2%, other Christian 1.2%, other 4%

Language: Bulgarian (Bulgarski/Balgarski), with Turkish minority

Ethnic groups: Bulgarian 83.9%, Turk 9.4%, Roma 4.7%, other 2% (including Macedonian, Armenian, Tatar, Circassian)

Average fertility/woman: 1.39 per woman

Migration rate: -3.71 migrant(s)/1,000 population [Bulgarians are leaving]

Per capita average income: $10,700

Unemployment: officially 9.6%

Population below poverty line: officially 14.1%

Extant populations elsewhere of Albanians: USA, Germany, Greece, Russia

Source: CIA World Factbook

Bulgaria is one of the more interesting former Soviet puppets in Eastern Europe, with a complicated and ancient history of its own as one of the oldest nations on earth. It prides itself as being the first Slavic nation, as the Slavic race in Central Russia had split and traveled south into modern Bulgaria, displacing the previous Greek and Thracian inhabitants to establish the First Bulgarian Empire in the 7th century CE. They quickly established themselves as one of the most powerful empires in southern Europe, annexing much of the Balkans and adopting the Orthodox faith of their Byzantine neighbors after rejecting the Catholic Papacy. By the 11th century, the Byzantine Greeks had conquered the Bulgarian state, but within a century the Bulgarian Slavs had expelled the Greeks and re-established themselves as the powerful Second Bulgarian Empire. After a series of conflicts with the increasingly powerful European empires of the northwest and other Slavic states like Serbia, the Bulgarian Christians were conquered in the wake of the Islamic Jihad of the Ottomans by the 14th century, one of its first victims. The Bulgarians endured centuries of persecution, economic exploitation, forced conversion, a required blood tax that forced at least one Bulgarian child per family into forced conversion and conscription into Istanbul's awesome janissary armies. Thousands converted in order to avoid persecution and unlivable Jizyah taxes (which in theory allowed the Christians to practice the religion that was at the same time persecuted), and thousands of Turks settled in the Christian land, a legacy that is visible today with Bulgaria having one of Europe's largest Muslim populations. Bulgaria became a source of military and economic strength for what was the world's greatest empire at the time, under the banner of Islam. By the late 20th century, however, other Christian Balkan peoples' independence movements inspired the Bulgarians -- with the help of German, British, and French military aid -- to wrest themselves free of Islamic rule, establishing the Kingdom of Bulgaria by 1908 (though independence was declared much earlier). It engaged in a military assault on its own Christian Slavic neighbors in the Second Balkan War only to fail, forfeiting Kosovo and Macedonia to Serbia for the time. It aided the Germans during World War I and World War II, where it joined the Fascist Axis against the Soviet Union. But by 1941, when its Tzar Boris III had died and the tides of the incredible Soviet might had turned against the Axis, Bulgaria broke the alliance and forfeited itself as a vassal to the USSR, later to join the Warsaw Pact as a Communist puppet. By the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Bulgaria had re-established itself once again as a very centralized yet democratic state of today. Bulgaria's long and tumultuous history, ultraconservative Orthodox Christian heritage, ancient and unchanged Cyrillic (and Glagolitic) Slavic alphabet, and hordes of the oldest and most elaborate gold treasures in the world (both from the separate Thracian race and from Bulgarians alike) define Bulgarians with great pride to this day.

Bulgaria's recent troubles -- including corruption, a presence of Russian and KGB mafia even today, and ethnic conflict between Russians, Slavs, and Gypsies -- make Bulgaria quite new to tourism, making us some of the few to have visited. Our ship landed at the lovely coastal port city of Varna. Expecting to see yet another broken down "Soviet country", Bulgaria was quite impressive and upright despite all its hardships over the last century. Though its waters seemed relatively dirty and unregulated, the cities were relatively clean and well-maintained, with few dilapidated and broken down buildings (unlike in Romania or Albania, separate EHA articles). There is seldom trash on the street as one would expect from a larger city like in the United States or Europe. The economy is doing well with a massive growth and recovery factor from its Soviet period of decline. There seems to be more graffiti than in Ukraine, which many of the locals attribute to a higher immigration and minority population (Turks, Gypsies, etc.) than in extremely-homogeneous Ukraine. Bulgaria's Varna is one of the few cities experimenting with the occasional "city art" move, that being when the city pays local "artists" to spray graffiti-like images and text on a specific regulated wall. There are few tourist shops, as little tourism is expected. There are a seemingly infinite number of restaurants and eateries, many of them open-air in the center of ancient cobblestone paths impassable to cars, offering a variety of Slavic, Greek, and occasionally Turkish foods for a good price. Bulgarian red wine is renowned across Europe, and is offered in the American White House, famous for its thick and dry red pallet. Pita-like bread filled with cheese is a local favorite. English is relatively common, as taught with compulsion in most schools, as is German, though very little English text is visible anywhere on the streets. Most of the Bulgarians in the street appear to be relatively young by comparison to the remainder of Europe, roughly 15-40. Not too many infants or very young are commonplace oddly. Bulgarian women generally dress conservatively and well, a trait that distinguishes them from most of the Ukrainian, American, and Russian youths today. In rural Bulgaria, attractive hills and mountains are adorned with broad fields of thick grass, bush, and golden wheat. Bulgaria's urban cities are a growing light in a dark part of Europe, but its rural quarters are an explosive source of a thriving agricultural economy. Crops, horticulture, hydroponic gardens, sheep, fowl, and horses decorate wide and well-maintained roads for miles and miles until the next growing city. This is no dilapidated "Eastern Bloc" country like Georgia so rife with suffering and internal schism in Abkhazia and Ajaria.

As in Romania, Bulgaria's social and economic problems root in its large Gypsy ("Roma" or "Sinti") population. Descendant from northern India centuries ago, the nomadic "Gypsies" traveled throughout Iran and Mesopotamia before settling along the Caspian and the Balkans, where they were routinely persecuted or massacred by nearly every culture they entered (much like the Jews, as later occurred in the Holocaust for both ethnic groups). For centuries the Gypsies have lived as an impoverished and starving people with a bizarre syncretic religion whose sole source of occupation other than subsistence farming appears to be theft and offering collections. As in Romania, it was amazing to learn that these seemingly racist and denegratory descriptions of this race were entirely true. In Bulgaria it seems that few are wealthy, but if there are poor, it is because of the Gypsy population in the outskirts of the city. They live in unthinkable conditions with entirely demolished buildings, collapsed walls, infested foods taken from waste baskets, unclean drinking water, they defecate in public outside their homes, and they do not bathe nor shave. All of them either seem fatally ill or deformed. Five or so kilometers from town, Gypsy "villages" that are akin to an Zimbabwean slum are regulated, segregated, and offered economic recovery (akin to a type of welfare or subsidy). Horses, carriages, plows, and frail cows are to the Gypsies what Audis and Saabs are to the Slavic natives. Some of them attempt to enter public life or employment but generally fail miserably and return to economic assistance. Whereas in Romania they are considered to be leeches and thieves in public Slavic Romanian life, in Bulgaria they appear to be a marginalized and segregated race of the morbidly poor. In both countries, their sympathetic asking for handouts, with decrepit hands extended holding basins for coin donations, are deemed entirely a false act of theft and swindling. They account for the largest rate of theft and crime by proportion in the nation. Several of the locals and passengers of the cruise ship were robbed by the Gypsies when they had their wallets open to make a purchase at a local shop. It is far worse in Romania. They even stand outside churches to inspire Christian compassion to offer them money (or even let their guards down to be open to theft), which is entirely a false ploy because of the fact that the Gypsies embrace a unique religion descendant from India blended with the nations they infiltrate. In some cases, local businesses actually hire Gypsies to panhandle in order to gain extra income for the firm, or even to stand outside another business to steer away clientelle from thieves. The slang word "Jip" (to cheat or steal) derives from the word Gypsy. Few of the locals donate to them, in fact many push them away or spit at them, pleading for tourists not to fund their perceived heist. This ethnic group faced genocide during World War II by Axis Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Germany, and later by the Soviets as well. The ethnosocial conflict remains strong to this day.

Bulgaria is rife with some of archeology's greatest mysteries and treasures dating back to the time of the Iranian pre-Zoroastrian states of Sumer and the Hittites. Varna is full of massive state-owned archeological museums with the most impressive coffers of gold, burial remains, gems, and rare metals in the world. Aside from a plethora of Roman baths, ducts, temples, and burial chambers all over Bulgaria (all made in stone and brick), there are other simple findings that eclipse it tenfold. Buried skeletons -- with women buried in the fetal position and men laying on their backs -- are collected here from Bulgaria, Romania, and Thrace (between today's Turkey and Bulgaria) covered in refined and smithed gold, gold leaf jewels, rings, earrings, and intricate artwork including a hand-carved angel with near-microscopic detail. They are attributed in majority not to Greek tribes of Homer's time nor to the Romans or Etruscans, but to a bizarre culture or race called the Thracians. Their origins are entirely shrouded in mystery and theory. A venture to Bulgaria was a fascinating opportunity for me to study the mysterious ancient race that perplexes European historians over the ethnic history of the current Romanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks to this day, all dating from 800BCE and even as early as 3500BCE. The fact that this race and its technology disappeared suddenly is more perplexing. Many historians like myself debate over their racial origin as an advanced Greek tribe (akin to the Minoans of Crete, one of the oldest civilizations in the world), even ancient Atlantis, to an abstract and theorized "Indo-European" group, to the Phoenecian Arabs of Lebanon, and to Iranian or Anatolian civilizations. The few burial, cultural, and religious characteristics that we can absorb from skeletons instead of buildings and temples does not link them to any of these groups. It seems appropriate that they are at least loosely connected -- ethnically, historically, and technologically -- to the only major magnificent race at that time in the area: the culturally Iranian/Mesopotamian states of the Hittites, the Lydians, and especially the Scythians whose immigration westward led to their settlement in the eastern Balkans, where the Romans later annihilated their statehood and presence in the Dacian Wars. Later, the Slavs entered the region, establishing today's Bulgaria as one of the world's longest-lasting nation. No conclusion has been made to universal submission in Bulgaria or otherwise. There is no greater outlet to study this European historical gate to the east than in the Slavic Bulgaria which replaced its predecessors.

The role of religion is central to Bulgarian history, heritage, and culture 1500 years ago and today, enduring past nearly five decades of atheistic Communist rule. 82.6% of the citizens profess conservative Orthodoxy, with some 12.2% professing Islam (mostly due to Turkish settlers and those forced to convert during centuries of Ottoman rule). Bulgaria has some of the Slavic world's most glorious Orthodox cathedrals, which tower atop the cities with a bright cross with the traditional Orthodox diagonal planks to discern from the excommunicated Catholic faith. The conservative churches of Orthodoxy require men to cover their legs and shoulders, and women to wear veils or headscarves upon entrance like in Islam. Beautiful gold leaf-finished onion domes link Bulgaria with its ethnic Russian roots in its ancient homeland. Inside, the traditional roots of the Slavs are epitomized with pride: the Glagolitic alphabet which preceded Slavic Cyrillic of today's Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia wrap around the church resounding Biblical verses much like in mosques with Arabic. Fantastic mosaics and frescos of the holy saints wrap around the room glowing with gold for several centuries. Few chairs are present generally. Unlike in Catholicism, Orthodox faith is far more independent, and Bulgarians can be seen flocking to church throughout the week at all hours of the day to pray. Prayer faces the saints, with candle in hand or hand against an icon of a saint, just as Muslims pray to Makkah. There is seldom a charge for lighting candles to pray, unlike in Catholic churches. Confession is done in public for all to see and hear; an Orthodox Christian bows before a metropolitan or pope, who promptly places a holy tie-like cloth over their heads, after which the two pray together aloud. Weddings are held several times a week, as Bulgaria's long and ultraconservative religious history are directly connected to its elaborate marriage rituals. Bulgarian traditional religious Slavic chant singers are celebrated throughout the nation. Bulgaria places a critical deal of pride as well in its unique and elaborate sewing, weaving, and traditional dress costumes that are rich in blacks and reds to distinguish them from their other Slavic brother cultures of Ukraine, Serbia, and Poland. Most Bulgarians still pay a type of marriage or dowry to one another upon marriage, including monetary moneys, jewelry, and traditional dress to be worn at the church wedding. Their Slavic race, long history, somewhat unique culture, traditions, and conservative faith define Bulgarian heritage then and now. Even today, when skepticism of Biblical claims are commonplace, religion acts as a tool to justify Bulgaria's right to independent statehood. So too, it is reported that some 50% of recent births in the last few years are out of wedlock (a tenet rejected by the church), with many claiming that elaborate weddings, parties, dowry, and planning are too difficult, though most eventually become wed via the Orthodox church. This is less a problem than appears, as Bulgaria has such a low birthrate (one of the very lowest on earth) that few are born at all this way in totality.

The role of Islam in Bulgarian history and today is complicated and in many ways unique. Universally Orthodox before the victory of the Turkish Jihad in the 14th century, the combination of mass forced conversion, persecution, unlivable taxes, and second-class conditions cause Bulgaria to be one of the few white nations under Turkish rule where large-scale conversion of the natives to Islam occurred -- primarily by force, otherwise by best socioeconomic interest during foreign rule. Only Kosovo (today in Serbia), Albania, Bosnia, and what was later Macedonia surpass Bulgaria with populations of white European Muslim converts during Turkish Islamic rule. Today, some 12.2% of citizens in Bulgaria profess Islam (primarily Sunni). Unlike in nearly all of Europe, where the Muslims are immigrants who exploited post-war liberalism imported largely by the victors and the new governments, in Bulgaria roughly half of these are native Bulgarians. The remainder are ethnic Turkish Muslims (Sunni, Sufi, or Darvish) who settled either during Ottoman rule or during post-war guest labor immigration. The Bulgarian government throughout the 29st century and after World War II expelled the Turks and Muslims on several occasion back to Turkey. Today, as in all of Europe, there is a firm ethnosocial conflict between the Europeans and the settling Turks and Muslims. Bulgaria is no different due to its close geographic proximity to the very capital of the Islamic world for some 500 years in Anatolia. There are, however, few mosques due to a strong reprisal against the occupying powers by the native Christians. There are, predictably, few synagogues as well. Bulgaria is a lovely experience and an exclusive opportunity to study the Thracians, the earliest of the Slavic states, the proud Orthodox faith, and the influence resultant of centuries of Islamic Jihad in a Christian European nation.