Bulgaria - General Information
Bulgaria lies in the northeastern part of the Balkan Peninsula.The country is 520 km long and 330 km wide. It borders the Black Sea and the Danube river and is at a convenient and strategic crossroad location between Europe and Asia.
History
The Bulgarian State was established in AD 681 by Khan Asparouh. In AD 855, the brothers Cyril and Methodius, later canonized as saints, invented a Slavonic script (the Cyrillic alphabet is named after Cyril). Bulgaria converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864-866. Throughout its 13th-century history, Bulgaria has played a key role in the region. Its location makes the country a natural bridge between East and West, North and South. The road from London to Calcutta, from Antiquity to Modernity, ran across the Bulgarian lands. Bulgaria's location makes it a crossroads of cultures and civilizations, and its landscape a convenient living place for different communities.
Local time: GMT+2
Climate
Temperate continental (2,000 to 2,400 hours of sunshine per year). Four seasons. Dry and hot summer, mean temperature+ 23°C (April-September). Cold winter with snowfalls, mean temperature 0°C. Mean annual temperature 10.5°C.
Population: 8,428,006
Language: Bulgarian.
English, German, French and Russian is spoken in the country's resorts, hotels and restaurants.
Alphabet
Cyrillic. Signs along international motorways, in airports and resorts are also spelled in Roman letters.
Religion
86.6% of the population is Eastern Orthodox, 13% are Muslims. The Bulgarian Church is autonomous and headed by a Patriarch.
Official holidays
January 1 - New Year
March 3 - Bulgaria's Liberation from Ottoman rule - the National Day
Easter - one week after the Catholic Easter
May 1 - Labor Day
May 6 - Bulgarian Army Day
May 24 - Day of Bulgarian Enlightenment and Culture and the Slav Script
September 6 - Bulgaria's Unification
September 22 - Independence Day
December 25-26 - Christmas
Capital: Sofia (pop. 1,141,000)
Large Cities
Plovdiv, Varna, Veliko Turnovo, Sliven, Stara Zagora
National currency
Bulgarian lev (pl. leva). Fractional coins are called 'stotinki' (100 stotinki = 1 lev). The exchange rate against the euro is fixed at Lv 1.90/EUR 1.
