Bulgaria Month, June 2

Most of the media sites are in Bulgarian, but there are a couple I intend to monitor during Bulgaria Month. In today's news were the following two tidbits.

From http://news.dnevnik.bg/: "Bulgaria dropped from the top of the rankings in terms of highest spikes in housing property prices, with an increase of just 3.3% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009, according to the latest report of British property advisors Knight Frank. The country slipped to ninth spot from year-ago’s second, when home prices skyrocketed by 30%. ... Israel strode atop of the first-quarter table with a 10.9% increase, followed by the Czech Republic, where home prices soared by 9.9%. Bulgaria was leapfrogged also by Switzerland, India, Indonesia and Russia. Dubai and Singapore trailed at the bottom of the table with falls of 32% and 23%, respectively. Thirty of the 46 countries in the ranking saw their housing property prices collapse, with Dubai and Singapore again marking the steepest drops of a respective 40% and 16.2%. The worldwide economic deterioration and the mounting unemployment continue to pinch the global housing market, according to the analysts, who predict that the sector will stay in the doldrums by the end of the year."

And from http://www.sofiaecho.com/: "At noon on June 2, sirens sounded in honour of one of Bulgaria's most beloved heroes and revolutionaries, poet and rebel Hristo Botev (1848-76). Following custom, people stood still for a minute until the sirens stopped. Even traffic on Sofia's busy roads was halted for one minute. The sirens are a reminder to remember the day on which Botev died after several days of fighting the Ottoman army in the days when Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule. The sound of the sirens at noon marks the beginning of a minute of silence in honour of Botev and his comrades who fought on the last day of the April uprising in 1876."

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hristo_Botev, Botev in 1848 was born a liberal teacher's son from a southern Bulgarian mountain-valley town. He goes away to study in Ukraine and falls in love with Russian, Polish and French revolutionary writing. When he was 19, he returns home to substitute teach in place of his sick dad and speaks at a nationalist festival that his dad had actually helped launch. It turns out to be a screed against Ottoman rule and wealthy, Uncle-Tom Bulgarians, and it gets Botev pegged as a rabble-rouser. Feeling the heat, he again skips town--this time for Romania, a popular destination for Bulgarian exiles.

Over the next few years, Botev lives hand-to-mouth, writing poetry and befriending Vasil Levski, the key organizer of Bulgarian insurgency from Romania. This had to be absolutely great. Oh, what a perfectly heady gas it must've been to spend ages 20 to 25 sleeping on couches and spewing out poems with titles ranging from "Patriot" and "Epistle (to the Bishop of Tarnovo)" to "To My First Love" and "In the Tavern" that come to be received as the moral compass for a bunch of fast-talking, jittery revolutionaries! At some point along this era, Botev marries a woman named Veneta with a son, Dimitar, and they eventually have a daughter of their own, Ivanka.

But, alas, the fun and games end when Levski is tried (for treason, I suppose) and executed on Feb. 19, 1873. This splits the Bulgarian revolutionary movement in Romania. Botev is the voice of a camp that says now is the time to gather a revolution, while there forms another, more moderate position that suggests regrouping, retooling and waiting for the next train. When the leader of that group becomes ill and steps out of the scene, Botev becomes the singular head of all things "Take Back Bulgaria."

If you've read this far, I encourage you to scroll down to the "Death" section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hristo_Botev. Here's some lively writing involving Botev and his band disguising themselves as gardeners, seizing control of an Austro-Hungarian passenger steamship but eventually converting the captain to their side, kissing the homeland upon their invasion across the Danube (only to find the locals not very interested in confronting the Ottomans) and, despite limited training and equipment, putting up a sticky and inventive mountain defense against the authorities that exploited the Ottomans' custom of suspending any operations at nightfall. Botev took a bullet to the chest on May 20, 1876, and died.

The legend of Botev grew not only in Bulgaria but also in Russia in the decades following his death, and today he's a national icon. In addition to a bunch of streets and public buildings, a number of soccer stadiums and teams are named after Bodev, including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFC_Botev_Plovdiv.

Given all of this, I hereby expand the list of topics of my Bulgaria interest:

-- Bulgarian National Revival,
-- feuilletons,
-- bashi-bazouks,
-- the Paris Commune,
-- the organized-crime problem,
-- NATO membership after being on the losing side in two world wars,
-- the Bulgarian Orthodox Church,
-- Saints Cyril and Methodius,
-- music,
-- food,
-- John Ross Beryle (U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria),
-- star speedskater Eugenia Radanova,
-- 2014 Olympics candidacy and
-- the June 6 soccer must-win vs. Ireland/Hristo Stoichkov.