IUB is a place where you - willingly or not - meet Bulgarians a lot. But apart of (*attention: stereotypes!*) them being loud, partying all the time, but always helpful and as a whole - hard to understand Balkan people, what else do you know about Bulgarians and Bulgaria at all?

This question - and probably its answer, apart from the food - has gathered an eager crowd in the Mercator Common Room on October 5th, 2006, Thursday. Like always when there is a CID in the college. Contrary to the good old Eastern tradition, the program started just on time, kicking off with a short video showing some of the beauties of the land of Bulgaria as a warm up.

After that Prof. Klaus Boehnke, the College Master of Mercator College and the ideological initiator of the CIDs, held his traditional opening speech. This time he announced that the "second round" of the CIDs had begun - and Bulgarians had the honor to start it (and a new decade in the CID-chronicles, by the way) by hosting the 23rd CID. With that he passed the stage to the Bulgarians, for whom this was the culmination of a quite an intensive final week of preparation.

Bulgaria is a land, in which the music is indivisibly intertwined. That's why the program started with a traditional folklore song sung live by Svetlina and Luyba, which was accompanied by a slide show with pictures from Bulgaria.
This loudly applauded performance was followed by a short movie, which was shot on campus specially for the event, where Alex, Dancho, Deyan and Ivan represented the legend of Khan Kubrat, the great Khan of the Bulgar tribe, whose son Asparukh founded Bulgaria in its contemporary lands. The arriving of Asparukh from Middle Asia on the Balkan peninsula in 681 was presented with a short speech, after which about 200 years of history were jumped over to give way to a comical sketch, in which Vihren and Georgi K. - as the Cyril and Methodists brothers - "invented" the Cyrillic alphabet that Bulgarians are still using today.


The historical part of the CID was concluded by Venelin, whose presentation introduced a crash-course in Bulgarian history, which covered more than 1000 years of it - from adopting the cyrillic alphabet and Christianizing in 865 to the end of World War II.
After 1944, for almost a half of the 20th century Bulgaria was under a totalitarian communist regime. This part of the the history was presented by Petya, one of the main organizers of the event, Georgi K., Vihren, Sasho K. and Mitko N., who had the chance to get a feeling of their parents' lives, by reconstructing a manifestation - a famous in the former communist countries way of celebration.

It served as a transition to a presentation, held by "Jimmy" Kovachev, in which some of the positive and negative aspects of today's life in Bulgaria were discussed - among them Bulgaria's tourist attraction and resorts, the golden treasure of Kazanlak, but also corruption, organized crime, and the like. An accidental mentioning of Ethiopia in negative light was later followed by a passionate reaction by Ethiopians and a heated debate on political correctness, which lead to an official apology by Bulgarians and possibly conclusions for the organizers of the next CIDs.

After this presentation, the political topics ended with another slide-show of pictures from Bulgaria, accompanied by the music of Isihia. It was followed by a traditional folk-dance - "horo" with choreography by Petya A. and danced by herself, Ani, Elena, Emilia, Petya D., Yana, Pencho and Yani.


Alex took the stage from the dancers still in the costume of Khan Kubrat to present to the audience some of the Great Bulgarians - the national hero Vassil Levski, Ivan Vazov, Raina Kabaivanska, Hristo Stoichkov and Vesselin Topalov - some of the people that we, Bulgarians, are proud of.

Bulgaria is a land of contrasts and that was proven by the following sketch, in which Georgi "Giorata" Dragolov performed a one-man show in the role of Gaco Bacov, which was followed by a mix of popular chalga-songs (with subtitles).

The rest of the CID was again dedicated to music. Firstly, Elena, Lyuba and Svetlina performed "a cappella" another Bulgarian folk-song, then Petya A. and Yani, dressed in national attire, showed the folk-dance "rachenitsa". The CID was closed by a live performance on a "tupan" (a kind of drum, typical for Bulgaria) and an accordion.

After Prof. Boehnke took the microphone for the announcement that the next CID will be hosted by Romania, this evening of music, dances, history and show ended with a lot of Bulgarian food, which - although its monstrous amounts and the long time it took to be prepared - disappeared in less than ten minutes. I guess the Bulgarian girls just cook magic.

(written by Ivan Stefanov)