Word: bulgaria
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...Gaucho's Eastern European career has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride. In Bulgaria, he played for Levski, a Sofia-based club then owned by a Russian oligarch named Michael Chorny who, at the time, was banned from setting foot on Bulgarian soil because of alleged ties with organized crime. A big star in Sofia, Gaucho threw a tantrum after a coach replaced him in an important UEFA Champions League qualification match. He picked up his brother and a bottle of Jack Daniels and disappeared for a week, leaving reporters to speculate about his whereabouts. (He had retreated...
...Compared to Russia and Bulgaria, Gaucho says the Czech Republic is a breeze. His troubles have shrunk to figuring out where to go fishing, his favorite pastime. In Prague, he is tilting at bureaucratic windmills in order to angle a fishing permit. He used to fish in the Czech town of Olomouc, where he played with another team. But in all the time he spent at the local river there, he managed to catch only "one trout and a karpyonka [Russian for carp]." He is mystified about the kind of bait Eastern European fish prefer. "I don't know what...
Hospitality in hand, Bulgaria is the next little thing on the international travel scene. The Balkan nation joined the European Union on Jan. 1, with blue flags waving in the streets on New Year's Eve, yet only in recent years have tourists ventured much beyond Black Sea beach towns and into the Ohio-size expanse of rose farms, medieval monasteries and Roman ruins. Visitors, especially Western Europeans, are flocking to ski resorts in the Rila and Pirin mountains and have even sparked a property boom in Bansko, where investors are scooping up cheap vacation homes. Meanwhile, low-cost labor...
Sofia easily matches the rest of Europe in cobblestone streets and cathedrals. Aleksander Nevski Memorial Church, a massive neo-Byzantine tribute to the Russian soldiers who died fighting for Bulgaria's independence from the Turks in the late 19th century, is well trafficked, as are the souvenir stalls outside selling communist and Nazi paraphernalia. Fewer sightseers meander into the Sveta Nedelya Church, where Sofians gather for incense-imbued Bulgarian Orthodox services in a mural-covered sanctuary. It was there that a church employee approached my camera-toting travel companion, asking to be photographed. We wound up sharing warm bread...
That, though, is starting to change. Bulgaria doesn't move to the euro until 2010, but the country is already seeing the effects of integration with the European economy. The Sofia Echo, an English-language weekly, reports that in the last few months of 2006, the price of bread went up more than 10% and is expected to increase another 20% to 50% this year. The evolving landscape is perhaps nowhere better observed than at the gleaming new glass-wrapped Mall of Sofia, where locals sip $2.60 caramel macchiatos, browse stores such as Lacoste and Hugo Boss and take...