Bulgaria celebrated its National Day on March 3. In a rare patriotic act, Ekaterina Petrova – a Bulgarian-born, self-described non-patriot and resident of anywhere the wind blows, found out about the things, people and events the small Balkan country is associated with around the world

When I was in college in the US, my friends would joke that I was in fact a Russian spy using Bulgaria – a made-up country, as a cover.

Now, my college friends were quite well read and worldly; it’s just that Bulgaria – more so 10 years ago but even still, is obscure enough to serve as a fictitious cover (if one was indeed a Russian spy and needed one). In any case, being wound up like that was better than being asked by some (not so well read and worldly) guy at a party to tell him about my country – Bolivia, moments after finding out where I was from.

These stories go to show that the majority of people around the world don’t quite know what to think of Bulgaria. Unlike other countries, the place doesn’t have a clear symbol it is widely associated with. It isn’t known as the “land of opportunity” or the birthplace of “liberté, égalité, fraternité”; it doesn’t have the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall, the pasta or the sushi, Hollywood or Bollywood. By the same token, Bulgarians aren’t proverbially known and collectively labelled as a stingy, loud, leather-hosen or beret wearing, hamburger-and-fries-eating or salsa-dancing bunch.

Having said that, however, some very unlikely – and not officially designated, agents abroad have done their part to establish a character for Bulgaria.

When I lived in New York City, I would sometimes visit “the Bulgarian bar” Mehanata with non-Bulgarian friends. The only “authentic” signs of Bulgaria there were the imported Zagorka beer and sometimes the projection of an Aziz (one of Bulgaria’s biggest chalga, or pop folk, stars) concert on the wall. The sweaty, smoky (even after the ban) venue was a meeting point of fresh-off-the-boat Eastern Europeans who rubbed shoulders (and hips, and behinds) and sometimes banged heads with Williamsburg-type hipsters to the gypsy and retro Euro beats spun by the moustachioed, Ukrainian-born DJ Eugene Hütz of Gogol Bordello fame. Located as it was then on the second floor of a building in China Town, the bar single-handedly gave Bulgaria the reputation of a drunkenly debaucherous, rule-bending, table-top-dancing, anything-goes kind of place in the minds of my non-Bulgarian friends and New York’s young crowds in general.

If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere

Those who haven’t had the pleasure of such experiences, however, are left only with sporadic references to Bulgaria in popular culture, which – when surveyed, do little to lift the confusion. If mentioned at all, Bulgaria usually serves as a symbol for obscurity or randomness, with allusions varying from the slightly arbitrary to the extremely shady or even straight up fictitious. At best, Bulgaria is mentioned as a faraway, mysterious place, the source of all kinds of strange phenomena.

Recently, an article in The Guardian reviewing a friend’s Minneapolis-based band described one of their songs as sounding “as though it was recorded during a particularly downbeat Bulgarian wedding sometime in the 19th century.” I can’t even begin to imagine what that would sound like, but it surely fired up at least a few of the readers’ imaginations.

References to Bulgaria and Bulgarian-ness in American movies and television don’t do much to clarify things either. Steven Grlscz, the main character in the vampire thriller “Wisdom of Crocodiles,” claims that his unpronounceable, vowel-free last name is Bulgarian.

In “My Name is Bruce” – a parody film about B-movie action star Bruce Campbell, when the hero is asked if he’s ready to “take on a heinous monster and stop him in his tracks,” he answers, “Kid, I made a movie in Bulgaria. I’m ready for anything.”

In an episode of “ALF” – the tv show beloved by those of us who grew up in the 1980s, the dopey extraterrestrial is watching television when he exclaims: “Oh, hey look! There’s John Candy! [pause] No, wait, that’s Miss Bulgaria.” (John Candy is the obese character actor best known for his roles in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “Cool Runnings.” Good looks were definitely not his strength.)

Turkish toilets and rose oil

As some kind of a counter point, a few concerted attempts – both from outside and inside Bulgaria, have been made to define quintessential Bulgarian-ness – with results ranging from the straight up sardonic to the hopelessly outdated.

The latter is exemplified by the epitome of the Bulgarian souvenir – the unsightly wooden, pyrographed vial containing rose oil. It was forever immortalised by the infamous Bay Ganyo – the chief character of a series of stories dating to the end of the nineteenth century, who must have surely attended at least one of those weddings mentioned above, and who – a caricature of all the deplorable traits stereotypically assigned to Bulgarians by Bulgarians, travelled around Europe and sold the vials.

As an example of the former – the attempt to define, quite scathingly, Bulgaria from the outside, was Czech sculptor David Černý’s 2009 installation in the European Council building in Brussels. The artwork, called Entropa, consisted of pieces, like the snap-out parts used in modelling kits, each representing a EU member state as a stereotype. So, alongside the Netherlands, submerged under water with mosques’ minarets poking over it, and Italy, the outline of its map entirely filled by a football field, Bulgaria was portrayed as “a Turkish toilet” – the kind of hole in the ground that one has to squat over.

Following a public outrage (which reflects Bulgarians’ gung-ho patriotism and (in)ability to laugh at themselves, but that is the subject of another article altogether), the Bulgarian piece of the installation was eventually covered with a black shroud. Not a huge contribution to crystallizing the country’s image - good or bad, to the outside world, it must be said.

“We, too, have given something to the world”

Many acquaintances who’ve come to Bulgaria from abroad – either en route to somewhere else or to settle, have shared that, for all practical purposes, Bulgaria has indeed been covered by a black shroud, as they knew almost nothing about it before coming. This murkiness is surely exasperated by the country’s geographical proximity both to Western Europe (so it must be ‘civilized’) and to the Orient (so belly-dancers and hookah-smoking aren’t out of the question). Those more apt at geography might know that Bulgaria is close to Romania, which muddies matters even further (so maybe it is home to vampires?).

On the other hand, patriotically inclined Bulgarians, largely oblivious to the confusion their country creates in the collective consciousness of the outside world, like to say that, “We, too, have given something to world.” After getting over the cringe this statement initially induces in me with its blowfish kind of cockiness, I found there is some truth to it.

Apart from its dubious reputation as a wild partying, table-top-dancing-kind of place and a fictitious land of obscurity, the country has in fact contributed a number of characters, products and historical events to the world, which have achieved a certain kind of notoriety – if not for Bulgaria, then at least for themselves.

The Characters: Kick and Curse, Push and Bow

Perhaps one of the most common associations people have with Bulgaria is Hristo Stoichkov, especially in football-obsessed Western Europe. To me – being a complete (and self-imposed) dimwit about the sport, he is the man who once sat behind me on the plane from London to Sofia and kicked the back of my seat throughout the entire flight. However, I am still dumbfounded by the extremely frequent (and surprisingly long-lived) reaction of people – ranging from cab drivers to university professors, who – upon hearing my country of origin say “Aaaaah! Stoichkov!” and wink at me, as if letting me in on a conspiracy.

Stoichkov – known for his foul mouth as much as his swift feet, successfully played for Barcelona in the 1990s, but his crowing moment of glory was when the Bulgarian national football team – unexpectedly not just for the world but for Bulgarians as well, reached fourth place at the 1994 World Cup. Besides shooting him straight into the hearts of football fans everywhere, Stoichkov’s contribution to the self-esteem of Bulgarians cannot be underestimated. In its recent history, the country – normally used to being criticised for rampant corruption, wide-spread poverty and uncontrollable organised crime, was never prouder or more united than during the national team’s unexpected climb to the World Cup semi-finals.

Another sports personality comes to Japanese people’s minds when they hear Bulgaria. Although not unprecedented (a string of foreigners, mostly from Hawaii, rose to fame as sumo wrestlers in Japan in recent years), it is mind-blowing that Kaloyan Mahlyanov from the central Bulgarian town of Veliko Tarnovo went on to become Kotoōshū Katsunori, one of Japan’s biggest sumo stars.

Also known as “the Beckham of sumo,” Kotoōshū – like his football “counterpart,” is the face of advertisements for various products. One of them? Yogurto from Bulgaria.

The Products: Milk gone bad

Yogurt is in fact another of Bulgaria’s claims to fame, and not just in Japan. People in the US and Western Europe also associate the country with it, though not many are likely to be familiar with the details: Supposedly, yogurt was “invented” as far back as Thracian times, when the ancient inhabitants of Bulgarian lands placed sheep’s milk in lambskin bags around their waist and fermented it into yogurt, using their body heat. In the early 1900s, Stamen Grigorov, a Bulgarian scientist working at the University of Geneva identified one of the bacteria that causes the fermentation of yogurt and named it Lactobacillus bulgaricus.

Fast-forward 100 years and 5,000-odd kilometres to the East, to the north Indian state of Punjab. One of the popular snacks there, gulab lassi, combines yogurt with another product Bulgaria is associated with – roses. The flowers, according to a friend now living in India, are one of the chief associations people in that part of the world have with Bulgaria. Judging from the stories of Bay Ganyo mentioned earlier, roses and rose oil have been a Bulgarian export of choice for over a century now. But like with the yogurt, the cultivation of roses on Bulgarian territory supposedly also dates back to Thracian times. Especially in the valley of Kazanlak in what is now the western part of the country, the local climate and generous soil prove excellent conditions for rose-growing.

Guns, roses…. and umbrellas

Judging from what foreigners know about Bulgaria, the country not only spawned some world-class athletes and mastered the art of milk fermentation and rose growing, but left a trace on history as well. It must be said, however, that the best-known Bulgarian marks on world history do nothing to elevate it out of its reputation as the land of shady, anti-religious Russian spies.

Last Halloween, a diplomat friend now based in Sofia dressed as “the Bulgarian umbrella” –a contraption featuring an in-built, hidden pneumatic mechanism that shoots out a small poisonous pellet containing ricin. This type of umbrella was used in the 1978 successful assassination of Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London and, in the same year, the attempted one of the Bulgarian dissident journalist Vladimir Kostov in the Paris metro, both believed to have been organized by the Bulgarian Secret Service with the assistance of the KGB. A model of the “Bulgarian umbrella” was displayed in the International Spy Museum that opened in Washington DC in 2002.

Another bell that Bulgaria rings among world history and political conspiracy enthusiasts is “the Bulgarian connection” in the 1981 assassination attempt against John Paul II. Although Mehmet Ali Ağca, a trained sniper from Turkey and a member of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organisation, was eventually convicted (and just recently released) for shooting and critically wounding the Pope, he initially testified that Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian Balkan Air employee in Rome, was the mastermind behind the plot. Antonov was found not guilty after a three-year trial, but “the Bulgarian connection” has become an inextricable part of the assassination attempt story.

Useful for a game of trivia

While Stoichkov, Kotoōshū, yogurt and roses are relatively well-known Bulgarian exports, the country boasts at least twice as many other contributions that it isn’t commonly associated with.

Some of them are a source of pride to Bulgarians, who whip them out and dust them off periodically when they want to feel proud of their country. Foreigners, on the other hand, seem largely unaware of those “Bulgarian connections.”

One example is the inclusion of the Bulgarian folklore song “Izlel e Delyo Haydutin” in the Voyager Golden Record – a selection of sounds and images launched aboard the two Voyager spacecrafts in 1977, aimed at portraying the diversity of life and culture on Earth in the off-chance they reached any Alien Life Forms (ALF surely wasn’t aware of it).

Or two of Bulgaria’s greatest contributions to science and technology - the first automatic electronic digital computer, invented by Bulgarian-descended John Atanasoff, and the digital watch whose invention is credited to Bulgarian-born, NASA engineer Peter Petroff.

In addition to science, a few Bulgarians whose nationality has been somewhat overlooked have also made a cultural imprint on the world at large and the places that, unlike Bulgaria, are associated with a single symbol.

When it covered the Turkish toilet installation with a shroud, the Bulgarian government wasn’t being terribly inventive. By that point, Christo – the Gabrovo-born half of the internationally renowned artistic duo, had been shrouding objects, buildings and bridges for nearly five decades.

Preceding Christo in Paris by 50 years was the painter Jules Pascin, who though of a diverse Spanish-Sephardic-Jewish-Serbian-Italian heritage, was born and raised in the town of Vidin and went on to become known as “Prince of Montparnasse.”

The voices of Raina Kabaivanska, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Boris Hristov made audiences weak in the knees in the world’s most famous opera houses in the middle and second part of the twentieth century, while the words of Nobel laureate Elias Canetti and philosopher, feminist and literary critic Julia Kristeva took them above and beyond their Bulgarian births.

I stop here, before my heart swells with nationalistic pride and I start beating myself in the chest and shouting slogans.

So, what’s it going to be?

All of this, perhaps, leads to nothing more than the need for Bulgaria to come up with a more coherent strategy to present itself around the world. It could start with something small – like engaging in a debate whenever the opportunity presents itself (rather than sweeping the discussion under the carpet, or, say, covering it up with a black shroud) or coming up with a more updated and appealing souvenir for tourists visiting the country than the pyrographed rose oil vial.

Also, it gives Bulgarians a responsibility to be ambassadors of our country when we are abroad. And while many of us will never reach the heights of Stoichkov, Christo or Kotoōshū, revolutionise science or enrich world literature, it is nice to know that we can make a small difference and put Bulgaria into the hearts and minds of people in some meaningful way. Despite the increased mobility and globalisation, the relatively scarce Bulgarian population, making scarcer still the numbers of Bulgarians who live and travel abroad, means that many of us will be one of only a handful of Bulgarians that people abroad ever meet.

Quite a few of the friends I asked when writing this text said their main association of Bulgaria was me. This is both a responsibility and a chance. Unlike my American and British friends who have to face the existent well-formed and definite prejudices about their fellow nationals while travelling, I am often met with a blank slate (and a blank stare). And it is up to me whether people will go away enlightened, with a heightened awareness of Bulgaria’s many and diverse contributions to the world, or simply thinking that all Bulgarians eat colossal amounts of pickles and dance on tabletops in their down-time from being Russian spies. Usually, I aim for both.

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