Bulgaria deserves better

Quite a few Maltese have travelled to Bulgaria, enticed by the bargains they can obtain but also in search of an experience that embraces eastern food, a fascinating landscape of charming countryside, imposing mountains and beautiful beaches, a friendly people and endless cultural opportunities. I too have visited the country often and enjoyed every moment of it.

Bulgaria has a terrible reputation. But it has gotten its reputation unfairly, insists my good friend George Atanassov. It is partly a reputation earned by benign neglect. At the same time, people really do know very little about this nation of under 7.6 million people.

Bulgaria is not just a nation that produces Olympic athletes or has the dubious distinction of having had one of the more intransigent Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, or became infamous for the alleged plot to assassinate the Pope.

Take, for example, the surprising and little-known history of Bulgaria's Jews. Other Balkan neighbours, such as Croatia and Rumania, were brutal in their treatment of them.

The Jews of Macedonia did not fare well. Mostly they died - in Fascist death camps. In Rumania, local Fascists hung Jews on meat hooks and Croatians were among the staunchest and most brutal allies of Hitler. Those sympathies still exist there today.

In Bulgaria, it is not that you do not see both Nazi and Communist graffiti on the walls but anti-Semitism never held sway.

Indeed, in Sofia the main Jewish synagogue is not far from the Turkish mosque at the city's centre and is surrounded by hot springs whose mineral water is piped to the surface for people to take the stuff home.

Bulgarians, from top Orthodox Church officials to parliamentary dealers to King Boris himself, refused to turn over Bulgaria's Jews to Hitler. King Boris, the father of the present King Simeon, was summoned to Hitler's court over his refusal to turn over Jews.

He refused a second time and was flown home - too high and too fast for a man with a heart condition; he died shortly after his return.

The defining moment in Bulgarian history were those centuries spent under the "Turkish yoke" - a reference many Bulgarians still make to their days under the Ottoman empire. Bulgarians did not get a chance to develop such domestic arts as cutlery or furniture making. So that helped focus attention on the two things in which Bulgarians were successful, icon-making and music.

Today, the citizens prowling the shopping streets of central Sofia - the capital city with more than a million souls - are, despite economic hardship, stylish if nothing else.

Perhaps this sense of style comes from the country's traditional art form, the creation of religious icons that have made its churches a "must" stop on every art historian's eastern European itinerary.

The superb collection in the crypt of Alexander Nevski memorial church inspired my wife to start her collection of icons, now rapidly covering a whole wall. At the heart of the icon making is the nation's fierce attachment to its national Christianity.

Even those who are not terribly religious find comfort in the rich icons of the ancient Byzantine churches across the land. So the religion is very tied up with the unique folk traditions and it reflects the fact that it has western and eastern influences, with input from Moslem and Jewish sources.

But Bulgarians have also been very successful in making incredible music, sometimes jazz and classical and even popular, but always based on the rich folk tradition.

Though Communist hero Georgi Dimitrov set in motion one of the most inflexible of Communist regimes, yet at its end Bulgaria's musicians were among the most individualistic and perhaps eccentric of all. Who has not been moved by Boris Christoff's singing?

The Communists understood the value of culture and put their money where their mouth was. On the other hand, in today's new society, there is no one to prevent a musician from making foreign appearances, such as the Communist authorities did to Angel Stankov, Bulgaria's pre-eminent violinist and conductor, on the occasion of a debut performance in London when there were concerns about his politics.

Mro Stankov is the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra's concert-master. Around the time of the Second Millennium, he was invited to conduct the complete cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies as the European Union commemorated the 230th anniversary of the composer's birth and its own 50th anniversary.

In a recent interview, Mro Stankov bemoaned the fact that today's young musicians, though very good, lack the poetry that comes from very personal playing.

Of course, he says, the world is becoming homogenised in many things. But the problem, he says, is that there is no real point to music if it does not communicate through one's individual humanity and humanness, no matter how slick the performances.

Music is not the only area in which Bulgaria has been left in its own morass. Under Communism, Bulgaria had a lot of factories and industries - steel, for example.

But their market was the former Soviet bloc and, with the end of Communism, the factories simply collapsed. Nowadays, Bulgaria still produces a lot of agriculture - you need only eat the luscious peaches and rosy tomatoes to know what those fruits should really taste like. But the EU does not allow the produce in and so Bulgaria is denied a market there.

Today, as Bulgaria tries to get admitted into the EU, one of the prices being demanded is the closing of an old Soviet-style nuclear power plant that provides one of the country's few exports, electricity.

EU officials complain about the plant's safety, yet want to replace it with another in Rumania of much the same kind.

Over the last 30 years Bulgaria and Malta have built up relations in the political, business, cultural, touristic and sporting spheres. Hundreds of Bulgarians have settled, married or work in Malta.

Heli Air Services of Bulgaria has operated the helicopter service between Malta and Gozo since 1997. Even if our President of the Republic almost lost his life in a car accident in Bulgaria, I believe he harbours no rancour.

All those Maltese who know Bulgaria believe the country deserves better.

We could do Bulgaria and its people a service if we helped them on their way to EU accession.