Dish of the day:

Bulgarian food is influenced by Slavonic, Greek and Turkish cuisines.

How about starting a Bulgarian meal with a Shopska salad (salad topped off by grated goat's cheese)?

Then for the main course, try a kavarma which is a casserole of pork or veal with onions and mushrooms.

Then round off the meal with some yoghurt - a dessert that some claim originated from the country.

Just think, if some careless so-and-so hadn't let the milk go off by mistake, we'd still be living in blissful ignorance.

National dress:

Bulgaria has more than one style of national dress.

Different communities in the country's many regions have their own traditional costumes.

For example on the Danube Plain and north slopes of the Stara Planina, women wear the 'bruchnik' or double apron.

Whereas in mountainous parts of the country and Thrace, in the south-east, ladies choose to wear the soukman or closed tunic.

The men on the other hand have the choice of belodresnik or chernodresnik, which is a white or black dress.

The colours, however, tend to be brown or blue. Go figure.