Mention Bulgaria to people of the Western Hemisphere, and you can watch their discomfort as they struggle to place a Pushpin in their mental map of the earth. Many get as far as the Adriatic, hoping perhaps that the Balkans are alphabetical and Bulgaria lies between Albania and Croatia.
Those whose imagination or education stretches farther east may conjure the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, Odessa and Istanbul. But rarely do they find Sofia, with no disrespect and through no fault of their own. Sofia is that capital missing from televised maps of global weather reports. And Sofia is that metropolis lost in the fold of in-flight airline magazines, like the American Airlines one pictured below.
Historically, Bulgaria's visibility and strategic importance were enhanced by commerce on the Danube and Black Sea, and by its sometimes difficult neighbors: Romania to the north, Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and Macedonia to the West. Today, trade is constrained by incomplete infrastructure, including roads and rail service, in a frequently mountainous topography. When the often-announced multi-lane divided highways are actually completed, north to south and east to west, commerce and national pride will be reinvigorated.
CREDIT: American Way, American Airlines In-flight Magazine, Oct. 15, 2012
Those whose imagination or education stretches farther east may conjure the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, Odessa and Istanbul. But rarely do they find Sofia, with no disrespect and through no fault of their own. Sofia is that capital missing from televised maps of global weather reports. And Sofia is that metropolis lost in the fold of in-flight airline magazines, like the American Airlines one pictured below.
CREDIT: American Way, American Airlines In-flight Magazine, Oct. 15, 2012
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