Bicycle Path to Link Black Sea Coastal Cities in Bulgaria and Romania
Balkan Travellers
The 500,000-euro project, financed by Brussels, will begin in May. According to the Romanian daily newspaper Adevarul, its expected completion date is in November.
Both the Bulgarian and Romanian municipalities have received approval for the project and will organise a tender for the construction of the path shortly.
The town of Shabla is located on Bulgaria’s northernmost Black Sea coast, about 80 kilometres north of the major port city of Varna. The waters around the town boast many sunken ships that make it a popular destination for diving. In addition, the nearby Shabla Lake is a natural reserve, housing a diverse population of animal and plant species, while the area round Shabla’s lighthouse boast numerous warm, sulphur-rich mineral water springs.
The village of 2 Mai, though much smaller than Shabla, has become popular in recent years among Romanian tourists as a quiet and peaceful sea-side resort. Located between the port city of Mangalia and the village of Mama Veche, many of its inhabitants are the Lippovans, a minority that lives in the Dobrogea region of Romania.
The bicycle path project is the latest in a series of initiatives to build closer and stronger ties between the two states. Despite the fact that Bulgaria and Romania are neighbouring countries, the traffic levels over the Danube – which forms much of the nearly 500-kilometre border between them, were surprisingly low until a few years ago.
This is changing rapidly, as the scores of Romanians who head south for the holidays testifies.
In addition, local and national authorities are taking measures to increase cooperation and strengthen ties between the two states. As BalkanTravellers.com reported in January, the districts of Pleven in Bulgaria and Olt in Romania – along the border’s central portion, initiated a new project for cross-border cooperation for the development of alternative tourism.
Another much-anticipated development is the construction of a second bridge over the Danube between Vidin and Calafat in the western part of the border, which – as BalkanTravellers.com reported in March, has been in the works for the past two decades, but is scheduled to be completed by 2010.
Read more about Bulgaria and Romania on BalkanTravellers.com
Use BalkanTravellers.com's tips to organise your trip to Bulgaria and Romania
Epicure
Bulgaria
Pumpkin head!
If you wish to insult somebody in Bulgarian, you could call him tikvenik – a word whose content isn’t quite clear, and which Bulgarians use to mean anything from ‘thickhead’ to ‘airhead’. The good thing about this kind of insult is that it expresses your definite lack of approval, Full Story
Curiosity Chest
Macedonia
Recycled Life: Bottle Collectors in Skopje, Macedonia
Like quicksand, poverty is hard to escape - the harder you fight, the worse it can get. In Skopje, some work hard scouring the city for "treasures." They are bottle collectors, spending the day in search of recyclable plastic which they can sell for a subsistence income.
Full Story
Useful Reads
Bulgaria
Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (2008) | By Kapka Kassabova
Danube blues
Text by Nicholas Lezard for The Guardian*
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
-
Photogalleries
-
A Perfect Shot
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