France rediscovers Albania, Montenegro and Croatia
BalkanTravellers.com
Albania is featured with its capital Tirana, which, according to the author Rafael Pic lives a fast life to compensate the times, lost under socialist dictatorship.
Montenegro is seen more attractive with the quite shores of Skadar Lake, then with the fast overdeveloping Budva or with the spectacular, but crowded Kotor bay.
But from Slovenia to Albania, the magazine considers the East Adriatic coast a hidden treasure.
The first guide on Serbia and Montenegro in French was only printed in 2005, but according to reports in local Balkan media, the French tourists multiply each year in steady numbers, reaching over 50% annual growth in some spots on Croatian coast.
Read more about Montenegro and Croatia on BalkanTravellers.com
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.
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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*
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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.
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Photogalleries
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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