Sandy and Tom: VARNA, BULGARIA

VARNA, BULGARIA

The first Bulgarian State stretched from Transylvania in the north to the Aegean Sea in the south and from the Black in the east to the Adriatic Sea in the West. It fell to the Byzantines (Romans) in 1018.

During that period, in 855 the Stavic alphabet was created. It was named Cyrillic alphabet, after St Cyril and corresponded perfectly to the phonetic riches of the Slavonic-Bulgarian language. As of today more than 250 million people in Europe and Asia use the Cyrillic alphabet for their national languages, half of them are in Russia. With the accession of Bulgaria in EU, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the union.

It was in 864 that Tsar Bois I converted the state to Orthodox Christianity.

The Second Bulgarian State, established in 1185 at Veliko Tarnovo, reinstated the borders and a Golden Age began during which Bulgaria bordered on three seas. From 1396 to 1878 the country was under the rule (the so called “yoke”) of the Ottoman Turks.

Sofia became the capital of Bulgaria after the Velido Tarnovo Constitution was accepted in 1879 (liberation from the Ottoman Turks) to 1944 Bulgaria enjoyed a brief but unstable period of freedom. After 1944 the Communist Party, led by Georgi Dimtrov, took power and proclaimed Bulgaria a People’s Republic in 1946. The Communist regime lasted until November 10^t,1989 when Bulgaria peacefully ousted the Party leader Todor Zhivkov.

One of the first signs of Bulgaria’s demarcation after 1989 was the establishment of a multi-party system. The new Constitution of the Republic was adopted on July 12, 1991, proclaims the country is a parliamentary republic. On March 29, 2004 Bulgaria joined NATO and on January 1, 2007 the country became a member of the European Union.

According to 2011 census 76% of the population is Eastern Orthodox Christians, 10% are Muslims, 0.8% are Catholics, 1.1% are Protestants and 0.2% are from other religions. The population of the country is 7,364,570 people, 84% are ethnic Bulgarians.