Adventure Travels

If Westerners have an image of Bulgaria, it tends to be coloured by the murky intrigues of Balkan politics, with tales of poisoned umbrellas and plots to kill the pope. The nation has come a long way, though, since it threw off the 500-year yoke of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s, and is now struggling to cope with the aftermath of Communist misrule. The Socialists retained power through the early 1990s, and moves towards free-market reforms were slow. The election of a right-of-centre government in 1997 brought some measure of economic stability, and in 2001, the former king, Simeon II, was democratically elected as prime minister. His party has pledged to fight institutional corruption, speed up the privatization process and, now safely in NATO, to prepare the country for membership of the EU (slated for 2007). In the meantime, however, low wages and high unemployment remain ever-present features of life. 

Rough Guide to Bulgaria, 2008