Schengen Zone Expansion with Bulgaria and Romania Blocked
BalkanTravellers.com
"Two member states today made it impossible for us to make a decision on Schengen enlargement," Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller lamented after the talks, quoted by Expatica.com. "This leads me to a rather sad conclusion regarding mutual trust among the member states," Miller added, saying Bulgaria and Romania were promised a place in Schengen when they joined the European Union in 2007.
"Today the promise has been broken," he said, adding that Romania and Bulgaria had made "huge progress” in tackling corruption and organized crime.
But Finland and Netherlands disagreed. "We don't have complete confidence that these countries will be able to secure outer EU borders because of corruption, among other issues," said Finnish Interior Minister Paeivi Raesaenen.
Epicure
Serbia
Top 10 Restaurants of Central and Eastern Europe
5 June 2011| The top 10 restaurants of Central and Eastern Europe were announced tonight at a Dining Guide Food Show in Budapest. The list, which includes most of the Balkans, is considered to be a pre-selection. The announcement of a single winner will follow at the end of the year. Full Story
Curiosity Chest
Serbia
Serbia: Tito's Mausoleum in Belgrade
Whatever your opinion on communism, many people across Eastern Europe and the wider world have a romanticised view of the former Yugoslavia’s grand leader Josip Broz Tito. Full Story
Useful Reads
Serbia
The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History (2010) | By Jason Vuic
No other car, save perhaps the equally admired Skoda, has inspired as many jokes as the Yugo, the product of “cutting edge” technology from the former Yugoslavia which was ranked by US auto journalists as only the eighth most deadly car on the road. Full Story
Music
Serbia
EXIT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia: Overnight Exile in the Fortress
Located roughly in the middle between Bulgaria's Black Sea and Croatia’s Adriatic coasts, which are both shaken by high-energy rock parties each July, Novi Sad hosts one of the most significant summer festivals on the Balkans – EXIT. As fans from all parts of the region start to gather in the town for for this year’s event, scheduled to take place between July 10 and 13, Mila Popova recounts about the time she spent at the festival last summer.
Full Story
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Photogalleries
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A Perfect Shot
Koprivshtitsa Fair, Bulgara. Photographs by Neva Micheva
In Homo Urbanus Europeanus, exhibited May 9-24 in front of the National Theatre in Sofia, Jean-Marc Caracci presents his photographs of people in the urban environment of European capitals.
RED&WHITE SOFIA. On the 1st of March Bulgarians say goodbye to the winter. They buy each other red&white threads to carry around until they see a stork and spring can begin. Photography by Lode Desmet
BULGARIA D'OR: The Bulgarian countryside, patinated with the noble golden dust of the autumn. Photographs by Lode Desmet
360 degrees Bulgaria, an exhibition by photographer Alexandar Ivanov, is on display at the Sea Garden in Varna until August 28. It will be shown at Plovdiv’s Central Square from Sept 5.
The exhibition Photographs of a Trip Through Bulgaria by Hungarian photographer András Balla can be seen in Sofia's Hungarian Cultural Institute, at Aksakov 16 Street, until August 22
Instant Spring in Sofia | Photographs by Lode Desmet
Off-the-season Beauty of Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast | Photographs by Adelina Iliev
Bulgaria's Northern Black Sea Coast
Photographs by Albena Shkodrova
excellent smugs
